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NancyLebovitz comments on Open Thread, November 23-30, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Do you think the decline of lynching is mere change rather than progress?
The claim that the morality of a society doesn't steadily, generally, and inexorably increase over time is not the same as the claim that there will be no examples of things that can be reasonably explained as increases in societal morality. If morality is an aggregate of bounded random walks, you'd still expect some of those walks to go up.
To return to the case at hand: the decline of lynching may be an improvement in one area, but you have to weigh it against the explosions in the imprisonment and illegitimacy rates, the total societal collapse of a demographic that makes up over a tenth of the population, drug abuse, knockout games, and so on.
Do you think there's a causal connection between the decline of lynching and the various ills you've listed?
How is causality relevant? The absence of continuous general increase is enough to falsify the Whig-history hypothesis, given that the Whig-history hypothesis is nothing more than the hypothesis of continuous general increase -- unless we add to the hypothesis the possibility of 'counterrevolutionary' periods where immoral, anti-Whig groups take power and immorality increases, but expressing concern over things like illegitimacy rates, knockout games, and inner-city dysfunction is an outgroup marker for Whigs.
You need evidence actual decline to justify reaction. Othewise, why reverse random drift?
Here is a recent example.