Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Australia

education in, 237

emancipative values in, 225–7, 226, 227

and escape from poverty, 85

happiness ranking of, 475n30

IQ gains in, 241, 241

secularization and, 436, 437

social spending in, 108

traffic death rates in, 178

Austria, 341, 475n30, 489n68

Ausubel, Jesse, 76, 122, 127, 135, 142, 144

authoritarian governments

capitalist, China as, 90, 201, 203–4, 343

claiming the people unready for democracy, 204

democracies backsliding into, 201, 335

educated populace and resistance to, 235

execution of dissidents by, outrage at, 195

intellectual fans of, 445, 446–7, 491n118

patronal/kleptocratic, 205

and poverty, 90–91

premodern, 199, 397

See also populism

Authoritarian High Modernism, 11–12, 400

authoritarian populism. See populism

authority, deference to, 5

autocracy vs. democracy, 202–3, 202, 470n15

automation, 118–19, 300, 331

Availability heuristic, 41–2

awareness of, 369, 381, 383

critical thinking courses and, 378

doomsday prophecies and, 293, 302

media coverage and, 42–4, 201

superforecasters and awareness of, 369

terrorism and, 42, 195

Axial Age, 23, 264, 411

Azerbaijan, 158

Baby Boomers, 225

and crime boom of the 1960s, 173–4

depression and, 280–81

emancipative values and, 226

happiness underachievement of, 273, 283–9, 288

opioid overdoses and, 184–5

and populism, 341–2, 342

secularization and, 437

suicide and, 279–80

Babylon, 253–4

Bacon, Francis, 383

Bailey, Ronald, 464n45

Ball, Lucille, 186

Balmford, Andrew, 122

Banaji, Mahzarin, xix

Bangladesh

democratization and, 442

environment of, 130

escape from poverty of, 85, 86

famine and stunting in, 71, 71, 72

fertility as decreasing in, 126

industrialization and women in the workforce, 94

War of Independence (1971), 160, 161

Bannon, Stephen, 430, 448, 449, 455n1

Banting, Frederick, 63

Baron, Jonathan, 369

Barrett, Clark, 17

Basque ETA movement, 195

Batbie, Anselme, 341

Baudelaire, Charles, 30

Bauer, Peter, 79

Bauman, Zygmunt, 397

Baumeister, Roy, 267, 477n20

Bayesian reasoning, 369–70, 380, 381, 393

Bazile, Leon, 376

Beatles, 257, 274

beauty

in art, 395, 406, 407

counter-entropic patterns as, 18

evolutionary psychology of, 18, 407, 408, 426

intrinsic value of, 18, 35, 248, 414, 433–4

in religion, 432

from science, 34, 260, 386, 407–8, 433–4

Beccaria, Cesare, 12, 174, 417

BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage), 151

Beckett, Samuel, 456n10

Belarus, 209, 313

Belgium, 169, 170, 259

Bell, Daniel, 390

Benin, 203, 475n30

Benjamin, Walter, 39–40

Benny, Jack, 333

Bentham, Jeremy, 223, 417

Bergman, Ingmar, 280

Berlin, Isaiah, 344

Berlin Wall, 163, 200–201, 203

Berry, Ken, 316

Best, Charles, 63

Better Angels of Our Nature, The (Pinker), 45–6

battle deaths (1946–2016), 159–60, 159

capital punishment, 209, 211

democracy vs. autocracy, 202

genocide deaths, 161

hate crimes, 220

homicide rates, 171

homosexuality, decriminalization of, 223

most recent year of data, 156, 466n1

objections to reliance on data in, 43–7

racist, sexist, and homophobic opinions, 216

rape and domestic violence, 221

terrorism deaths, 194

trends of, generally, 156

victimization of children, 229

war between great powers, 157–8, 157

Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, 282, 404

Bettmann, Otto, 178–9, 185, 186

Bible

antihumanistic content of, 440

crucifixion in, 208

despotism in, 199

in fabric of human knowledge, 433

famine in, 68

life expectancy in, 58

literal truth of, belief in, 489n53, 490n84

maternal pain and suffering in, 57

morality as relative in, 429

on the poor, 89

prophets in, 49, 293

suicide in, 278

See also God

Bierce, Ambrose, 428

Big Bang, 17, 385, 424

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 66

bin Laden, Osama, 443

biochar, 150

bioethics, research and committees for, 402

bioterrorism, 300–302, 305, 306–7

Birdzell, L. E., 79

black swans. See power-law distribution; rare events

Blake, William, 92

Blank Slate, The: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Pinker), 45, 373, 484n61

Bloom, Paul, 101–2

Blue Collar (film), 113

blue lies, 358–9

Bogotá, Colombia, 172

Bohr, Niels, 308

Boko Haram, 67, 162

Boltzmann, Ludwig, 15

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 84–5

books, 239, 260–61, 408

Borlaug, Norman, 75–6, 77

Bornstein, David, 50

Bosch, Carl, 75

Bosnia, 151, 404, 436

Boston, Massachusetts, 130, 172, 183

Botswana, 91, 141

Boyd, Richard, 429

Boyer, Paul, 311

brain

consciousness and, 426

hearing and, 20–21

human investment in bigger, 22–3

intelligence and, 21, 242

as metabolically greedy organ, 242

pleasure and pain and, 414

See also cognitive biases; intelligence; reason

Brand, Stewart, 77, 122, 123, 133, 149, 301–2, 463n32, 465n76

Brandt, Willy, 200

Branwen, Gwern, 303

Braudel, Fernand, 68, 69, 79

Brazil, 90, 109, 172, 178, 200

Brecht, Bertolt, 23, 224, 447

Brezhnev, Leonid, 203

Briand, Aristide, 164

Briggs, John, 463n32

Brink, David, 429

Brin, Sergey, 100

Brockman, John, 390

Brontë, Charlotte, 284

Bronze Age, life expectancy and, 54

Brooklyn Dodgers, 179

Brooks, Rodney, 477n20

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 230

Bruno, Giordano, 442

Bryce, Robert, 146

Buddhism, 23, 204, 412

Buffet, Warren, 117

bullying, 49

Burckhardt, Jacob, 165