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

escape from poverty of, 85, 85, 90

GDP of, 85

human rights in, 208, 208

military government of, 200

nuclear power and, 148

suicide and, 278

South Sudan, 73, 160, 236

Soviet Union

Afghanistan invasion by, 439

atheism of, 430

Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 146

collapse of, 90, 200–201

and economic inequality, 98

former republics, emancipative values in, 227

multiethnic neighbors, peacefulness of, 405

Nietzsche as influence on, 445

nuclear arms race of 1960s and, 291, 313

quality of life and, 247

and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 419

and World War II, 314, 430

See also Cold War; nuclear war; Russia

Sowell, Thomas, 447, 450, 459nn4,32, 460n33, 461nn5,18, 462n47, 467n9, 483n43, 484n55, 487n55, 491n115

Soyinka, Wole, 261

Spain, 200, 234, 341, 481n32, 489n68

Spanish-American War (1898), 376

Spanish flu pandemic (1918–19), 55, 306

Sparky the Fire Dog, 183

Spectator, The, 34

Spencer, Herbert, 399

Spengler, Oswald, 165

Sperber, Dan, 380

Spinoza, Baruch, ix, 8, 410

conatus (effort or striving), 19, 453

and irrationality of humans, 8–9, 353

and reason, ix, 353, 410, 412, 421

P. G. Wodehouse and, 446

spirituality, 433–5

sports

Moneyball, 381

politics similar to, 359, 360, 366, 381, 383

Springsteen, Bruce, 284

Sri Lanka, 160, 203, 278

Stalin, Joseph, 78, 161, 203, 313, 445, 447

Starmans, Christina, 101–2

Star Trek, 427

Stein’s Law, 61, 241, 283, 327

Davies’s Corollary, 61, 327

Stenger, Victor, 423

Stephan, Maria, 405

Stephens-Davidowitz, Seth, 217–18, 339–40, 471n13, 482n44

Stern, Charlotta, 373

Stevenson, Betsey, 269, 270

stoves, cooking, 117, 144, 183, 251, 252

Strauss, Leo, 491n118

Stuxnet worm, 304

Subbiah, Ilavenil, xix

subjectivity

hard problem of consciousness and, 425, 426–8, 488n43

reason and, 351–2, 390

Sudan, 72, 73, 89, 160, 161, 162

suicide, 277–80

age, cohort, and period analyses, 278, 279

cohorts and, 279–80, 476n74

decreasing rates of, 277–80, 279, 476n74

as “self-murder,” 278

sex differences in, 278, 279

Sweden’s high rate of, as urban myth, 264, 280

See also mental health and illness

Sullivan, James X., 116

Sultan, Wafa, 443

Summers, Lawrence, 67, 328, 461n8, 462nn62,65, 480n9, 490n106

Supreme Court, U.S., 212–13, 214–15, 374

sustainability, 127–9, 141

Sutherland, Rory, 135

Sweden

child mortality and, 55, 56

depression and, 282

emancipative values in, 225–7, 226, 227

fallacious pessimism and, 53

famine in, 68

happiness ranking of, 475n30

maternal mortality in, 57, 58

nuclear power and, 148

per capita income of, 86

populism and, 341

secularization and, 436, 437, 489n68

social spending in, 108

suicide rate in, 263–4, 280

traffic death rates in, 178

Swift, Jonathan, 74–5, 162

Switzerland, 271, 278–9, 279, 475n30, 489n68

Syed, Muhammad, 443

sympathy (benevolence, compassion), 11

cosmopolitanism and, 221

humanism and, 415

and infectious disease improvement, 67

the meaning of life and, 3–4

pessimism and expanding circle of, 49

for the poor, 107

and psychopathology, awareness of, 282

standard-of-living improvements and, 34

syphilis, 306, 401

Syria

civil war in, 49, 159, 160, 335

happiness ranking of, 475n30

terrorist deaths in, 193

Szilard, Leo, 308

Taiwan, 85, 85, 200

Taliban, 67, 240

Tan, Amy, 284

Taoism, 23, 204

taxes

carbon tax, 139, 145–6, 149

economic freedom compatible with, 365, 483nn39,42

libertarians and, 364–5

poverty mitigated by, 107, 115–16

Trump and, 335

Taylor, Paul, 340

Taylor, Theodore, 308

technology

advance of, and paradox of value, 82, 117, 332–3

and climate change, 143–5, 150, 153–4

and creation of wealth, 83, 94–5

delay in productivity growth due to, 330

dematerialization and, 135, 136, 332

democratization of platforms for, 332

demonetization and, 332–3

digital, Flynn effect and mastery of, 244

donated as foreign aid, 95

doomsday prophecies and, 293–4

for environmental protection, 124, 128–30, 132–6, 134–6

future advances in, 330–32

knowledge growth as exponentiated by, 233

mobile phones/smartphones, 94–5, 257, 331

nuclear power, 148–50

productivity dependent on, 328

science applied to, 82–3

Second Machine Age, 330–32

social embeddedness of, 302

technophilanthropists, 332

Trump and, 335

See also artificial intelligence (AI); consumer products; existential threats; Internet; safety; social media

teenagers

depression and, 476n74

drug use declining among, 184–5, 229

transgressive Web searches by, 218

Tegmark, Max, 308, 425

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 418

teleological systems, 21–2

telephone, 94–5, 257, 331

Terminator (films), 296

terrorism and terrorists, 191–8

Availability and Negativity biases, 42, 195, 302, 307, 404

bioterrorism, 300–302, 305, 306–7

civil wars as primary locations of, 193

cyber-sabotage, 300–302, 304–6, 335

historical trends, 193–5

media responses to curtail, 197–8

motives of killers, 196

nation-states’ reactions to, 197–8

nuclear terrorism, 197, 310–311, 313–14

number of potential competent, 302–5

objective assessment of threat, 195–7

panic as risk of, 191, 195, 197

right-wing American terrorism, 194, 196, 469n10

safety of society as enhancing threat of, 197, 198

success, lack of, 196–7, 198, 303–4, 404