Steven Pinker: 'We don't throw virgins into volcanoes any more'

"In the week that I interview the cognitive psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker in his office at Harvard, police release the agonizing recordings of emergency calls made during the Sandy Hook school shootings. In Yemen, a suicide attack on the defense ministry kills more than 50 people. An American teacher is shot dead as he goes jogging in Libya. Several people are killed in riots between political factions in Thailand, and peacekeepers have to be dispatched to the Central African Republic.
In short, it's not hard to find anecdotes that seem to contradict a guiding principle behind much of Pinker's work -- which is that science and human reason are, slowly but unmistakably, making the world a better place..."

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/05/world/steven-pinker-interview/index.html