I'm a bit of a Pinker fanboy, but his counter-criticism of Taleb is very well-written and hits on every point Taleb makes.
"Taleb shows no signs of having read Better Angels with the slightest attention to its content. Instead he
has merged it in his mind with claims by various fools and knaves whom he believes he has bettered in
the past. The confusion begins with his remarkable claim that the thesis in Better Angels is “identical” to
Ben Bernanke’s theory of a moderation in the stock market. Identical! This alone should warn readers
that for all of Taleb’s prescience about the financial crisis, accurate attribution and careful analysis of
other people’s ideas are not his strong suits."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Dm2ZYeA6U , "Statistics of Violence as Special Case of Fat Tails", there's been a ton of commentary on this back and forth, but not one of them thinks "Pinker is correct" if you've been paying attention. I need to start collecting resources related to this.
