> Pinker are quite clear: there are HUGE problems to be solved

That's... not the impression I get from reading Pinker. On the contrary, he has an infuriating habit of presenting "x is getting better" shortly after bashing a straw man version of the groups working hardest to make x better. Everyone from civil rights activists to software developers who worked on on the Millennium Bug were, in Pinker's eyes, committing the cardinal sin of Availability Bias rather than focusing on all those nice comforting trend lines pointing in the right direction.