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Very plainly said, if we investigate any person that you identify as "hero" we will find a lot of additional people contributing to the hero's success.
Who gathered those people together, to work for that success?
Depends on the size of the effort. The larger the effort, the more people involved in the gathering.
Are you suggesting that the gathering function is more important than any other function?
In response to
The Importance of Sidekicks
One of the things that comes to mind for me is the "Myth of the lone genius" and, in part, it sounds like you are continuing that myth in your use of the word "hero". A single person doing something to better the world. But I don't think such people actually exist. All of the heroes, all of the geniuses, have near armies of people beneath them that make their impact on the world happen. No single person has that kind of impact.
Very plainly said, if we investigate any person that you identify as "hero" we will find a lot of additional people contributing to the hero's success.
Is it helpful to re-frame the discussion to be, you want to contribute to rather than be contributed to? I think that's a valid distinction that people can make choices on.
But in terms of effective impact upon the globe, I don't think it's possible to accumulate power into a small subset to enact change upon the world. That's essentially what heroes are supposed to be, concentrate power to enact change. Instead, I think change happens through the small contributions of a wide system, where the "hero" is but the symbol, image, or figurehead. It is the breadth of the system that has the true power to change, not the concentrated power of a single individual.
people behave violently when they feel threatened
How does this apply to e.g. sexual assault?
That's a really big question. The very short answer is that shame is experienced on a physiological level the same way trauma is experienced. A lot of people who commit sexual assault are operating under beliefs that no one wants them (shame) and so do experience a kind of threat to their psyche.
(disclaimer. This does not excuse sexual assault and is only meant to inform. If you want to decrease sexual assault, look towards the shame triggers of the perpetrator.)
Pinker indicates that a number of factors were important. You think technology is the most powerful. Why?
Also, just because technology has had the greatest absolute impact on human wellbeing (hasn't done much for non-humans, yet) doesn't mean it's the most efficient. In fact, I think it's very likely that it isn't the most efficient. Because it's often a win-win, many people will contribute to creating and using it, unlike the sacrifices many EAs advocate for. They might contend that through sacrifice, a given individual can achieve far more that ey could by focusing on technology, although those altruistic individuals may (or may not!) remain rare enough that technology has a great overall impact.
I certainly also recognize there are other factors, but I think they pale when compared against our technological advancements. Technology in terms of general human betterment is unparalleled. This planet can not sustain a population of 7 billion without technological means of food production. Refrigeration another huge boon for food. Advances in medicine mean more people survive childhood and general illness as well. Technology enables most of our sanitation efforts which is also massive towards the betterment of human life.
None of this can be duplicated with non-technological means. We can't pray our way to better sanitation. We can't even sacrifice our way to better sanitation on any meaningful scale. But pumps and plumbing do the job magnificently.
I then think all of this contributes to lower violence and now I'm trying to tease out how much the other factors contribute. One of the possible other factors is cooperation and/or easier empathy. Can either of these do more good for a group of people than improved plumbing? I personally, don't think so but I want to see if anyone has any good data that shows otherwise.
Can you define the terms that you're using? The PDF you linked to, for example, takes a rather broad view of "violence" as encompassing, say, corporal punishment of children by parents. Or when you say that the trend "has always been downwards", how large a perturbation are you willing to ignore?
Under a sufficiently wide definition of violence, every person engages in it (some more frequently than others).
Homicide and assault are what I think most people are referring to. The harming of the physical body through force. Additionally these numbers are referenced per capita and not as raw numbers. If we look at raw numbers, modern times certainly have more. If we look at per capita, the trend is downward.
As far as size of perturbation? That's difficult to really answer. My rough opinion would be to ignore any perturbations that span less than 100 years. So while WW1 and WW2 might cause a spike to the graph, post-WW is still lower than pre-WW and so the trend is still continuing and valid. Could also try reducing it down to 50 year averages as well to help smooth out the variation.
Lower income inequality may also contribute to lower crime rates, see paper below.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=303838
Unfortunately, it is common in social sciences that the complete explanatory model contains a messy stew of variables. I believe it is unlikely that a "silver bullet" such as technological advancement will solve the problem of violence.
Income equality certainly does play a role. This is why I include the GWP stat as well. I don't think we're at a point where income equality fixes the problem. If we made all things equal, I think we'd end up short and more people would suffer. But that is only at the view of right now. If we increased our production output even more so that total equality would put every everyone at 4 times the poverty level, then I think this income equality issue would become the greater force in violence.
I strongly disagree that the reason for the decline in violence is that we are richer now. Being richer, we are able to afford more of the things that we like - and people like violence. The explanation lies elsewhere.
We are less violent because we are more interconnected than ever before. The potential gains from co-operation (trade) have gone up much more than the potential gains from defection (violence) so we see more co-operation and less defection. And so we sate our love of violence through violence substitutes (violent movies, video games, competitive sports, etc).
Indeed, in the resource-unconstrained world suggested by buybuydandavis, I suggest that we would see massive violence. If war isn't going to impoverish, why not invade the neighbouring country in search of honour, glory, religious orthodoxy, etc?
The co-operation theory is certainly possible and active in the whole process. Co-operation can also be more than trade too, but increasing empathy as well. But does co-operation or empathy have more impact than our richness?
Your example of movies and video games: These things exist now as part of the latest iteration of technology. Now is also the time in which violence is lowest. You suggest movies and video games have replaced physical violence. This supports my theory that technology is the cause of decreased violence.
But I disagree that people inherently like violence. As I mentioned, I'm studying counseling and most of what I understand from this is that people behave violently when they feel threatened. If you remove the feeling of threat, you most often remove the violence with it. Thus, technology as a great power in reducing violence. When achieving food, shelter, and safety is hard and requires a lot of energy we tend to feel more threatened. When all of these things are easy to attain we feel less threatened. Technology makes all this easier.
I don't know the context of the quote, but even with infinite resources we could have a fear-based society. A society where if you break some rule, you will be denied the resources you need. And the rules themselves could make you suffer if you obey them. Or the rules could be contradictory or otherwise impossible to follow.
I agree that this is possible. I'm questioning whether or not it really is true though. This could even be our future if we're not careful.
Do you have anything that says this is happening or has happened? Something other than "possibility"?
$12,400 USD, which is just barely above the poverty line for an individual.
This depends very much on you (relative) living standards esp. compared to the surrounding society. I'd guess that with that amount you could live quite comfortably in a south american capital.
The GWP is the summation of the GDP for each country. The GDP is then converted to USD for comparison sakes. GDP also is not average income, so it's not entirely accurate to assume that GWP per capita is the same as having $12,000 USD. The number is all about comparison and estimation.
I realize that this is a very crude number but I still think it is useful for recognizing that we do not yet produce enough to appease all basic needs equally.
Do you disagree with that statement? Are you suggesting that we do currently produce enough and all we need to do is redistribute?
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Who gathers the gatherers?
Gathering and leading are essential functions of a hero. Without them, outside of a few examples in mathematics and the arts, nothing heroic is accomplished.
And yet the gatherer or leader is incapable of doing as much as we claim they do. Frodo didn't gather anyone. Samwise, Merry, and Pippin all forcefully followed Frodo. Aragorn led the army against Mordor but the Stewards had gathered the army, Gandalf pushed Aragorn into the position, Boromir and Theoden led them until Aragorn arrived and took his place.
Real life examples. Steve Jobs was hired by a board of directors. The majority of hiring (gathering) that happens at Apple goes through middle management. It's the recruiters and the managers that do the real gathering.
A leader can do nothing without followers and most of the time it is the followers who make the leader and not the other way around. There is no power in a leader that exists apart from the followers. Heroes are most often myths and not actually real. Reality shows that most heroic efforts are done through a massive collaborative effort and the leader in such a situation is filling but a small role surrounded by many other small roles.