10 ms·

Twenty Questions with Steven Pinker

99 points by imartin2k 9y ago

epberry 9y ago
> The Beats are boring. Hear hear. I was always confused about what they offered. Every generation has some pushback against mainstream culture but the best movements are accompanied by something greater. I never got the feeling there was a larger cause with the Beats - maybe that was the whole point.
- cpsempek 9y ago
  there are many aspects of the beat movement, and i think many of them get muddied or hidden by the more publicized, overt statements of drug use and and sexual freedom. But, paired with a post-world war II era, its more clear why these are the more prominently remembered themes, as they are the exact antithesis to the prevailing american lifestyle at the time. The “something greater” is a revolution of how we think about sexuality, personhood, and basic human rights. While not necessarily the driving force, the beats were a loud voice among the crowd proselytizing basic human rights, specifically for example gay rights.
  - epberry 9y ago
    Interesting - I did not know about their history with gay rights.
calebm 9y ago
Surprisingly terse interview - lovely:)
betaby 9y ago
For what he is famous for? I've read his 'The language instinct' and found it boring and unconvincing.
- VMG 9y ago
  He is a very prolific writer. Try "The Blank Slate" and "Better Angels of our Nature".
  - rusk 9y ago
    “How the mind works” probably one of his most well known. I’ve also recently picked up “Sense of style...” which as a reformed grammar troll I’m very much looking forward to reading!
  - oligopoly 9y ago
    Or better yet read Nassim Taleb's criticism on Pinker's books.
    - rusk 9y ago
      Hm sounds interesting though Taleb himself not immune to critique ...
    - VMG 9y ago
      I did - also very interesting!
- panglott 9y ago
  "The Language Instinct" is almost 25 years old, and it has not fared well IMO, although linguistics is a multidisciplinary/multiparadigmatic field with lots of disagreement. That book was the result of cognitive psychology trying to grapple with Chomsky and generative grammar when they were at the height, and a dominant paradigm within linguistics. But the tide has been shifting away from Chomsky ever since. So the discussion of universal grammar, or the innateness of creole grammars, looks much weaker today. An "interactional instinct" seems like a much better account of the forces at play in human language acquisition. https://www.scribd.com/document/60713747/Interactional-Instinct https://www.scribd.com/document/60713747/Interactional-Insti... "The Blank Slate" repulsed me by criticizing Boasian anthropology for its rejection of biological explanations for behavior while ignoring the deeply racist context of early 20th century science. The biological explanations that people like Boasian anthropologists were arguing against were pure scientific racism, the premise that the social behavior of "primitive" peoples was a consequence of their biological inferiority, during a time when biology had (for example) not definitely repudiated Lamarckism. "The Sense of Style", however, looks like quite a good book.
a_bonobo 9y ago
>It’s easy to see why Nietzsche sociopathic ravings would have inspired so many repugnant movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including fascism, Nazism, Bolshevism, the Ayn Randian fringe of libertarianism, and the American alt-Right and neo-Nazi movements today I can't square that with the Nietzsche I read, the one who hated anti-semitism and who was against nationalism and for a unified Europe. See this random point in 475: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=hQ6FDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&dq=the+european+man+and+the+destruction+of+nations&source=bl&ots=oaaubgHwma&sig=eRToVDITL3XCgXxh8vqViQaDd6s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGhNi8z7TZAhXHpJQKHa7hABYQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&&f=false https://books.google.com.au/books?id=hQ6FDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA96&lp... But that's what makes Nietzsche so interesting I guess, you can find contradictory positions everywhere.
- gadders 9y ago
  >>It’s easy to see why Nietzsche sociopathic ravings would have inspired so many repugnant movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including fascism, Nazism, Bolshevism, the Ayn Randian fringe of libertarianism, and the American alt-Right and neo-Nazi movements today One of those things is not like the others.
  - rusk 9y ago
    Presumaby you mean Bolshevism but that really depends on your parameters for evaluation. Presumably the author in this case wasn’t talking about economic principles ...
    - gadders 9y ago
      Actually, I was trying to defend Ayn Rand-style libertarianism, but it just goes to show how people's perspective differs.
      - edpazu 9y ago
        One should never miss an opportunity to paint libertarians and Nazis with the same brush. /s
Numberwang 9y ago
Damn you Pinker. Now I have another 33 books or so to read...
truculation 9y ago
>Economic inequality [...] is both highly moralized (right-thinking people agree it’s the root of all evil) No way. Even if all the money and stuff were ideally distributed our troubles wouldn't be over. Resentment and envy would find other fish to fry!
- caio1982 9y ago
  Inequality can be seen in two ways: extreme poverty versus absurdly rich upper class way of living in the same area (hello brazilians), and mostly everyone at least being self maintainable (say, your average european) even though your perception about others — the envy you talk about — is more of a psychological trap than an actual necessity in your life.
  - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
    Inequality means stagnation of outcomes. You don't just want diversity for ethical reasons - not everyone cares about that anyway - but because by denying talented individuals the opportunity to develop, you're sabotaging future prosperity. Of course you can argue that as long as you have enough talent this doesn't matter. But invention and innovation are wildcards, and you can't always create gamechanging developments to order. If access to environments and resources that develop talent is heavily rationed, you're more likely to get a non-linear collapse in output than a linear decrease.
    - panglott 9y ago
      There's a deeper argument here, too. Growing inequality is an indicator that the iron law of oligarchy is taking hold. The book "Why Nations Fail" divides societies into those with inclusive and extractive political and economic institutions. Inclusive institutions allow the benefits of productivity improvements to be shared broadly, while extractive institutions fear that the creative destruction of technological change will imperil the position and authority of the elites that benefit. There are some great stories in there about Tiberius and Elizabeth I banning technological innovations. https://panglott.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/books-why-nations-fail/ https://panglott.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/books-why-nations-...
duncanawoods 9y ago
I found Start The Week very good this week. Pinker appeared with Rob Riemen (philosopher, author of On Facism and Humanism) and Tali Sharot (neuroscientist, author of The Influential Mind.) I thought Pinker's progress argument was soundly defeated by Rieman. His counter-argument was that Pinker's arguments have the same hollowness of similar arguments before the WW1 and then again WW2. Pinker wants to claim things are getting better but it seems blind to how we can use our "progress" to bring forth previously unimaginable horror. The complacency of seeing progress solely in economic and scientific terms leaves the gate open for our basest natures to dominate. Such progress seems to have no predictive power for what we as a civilisation might sink to next. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rwszj http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rwszj
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  I enjoyed it but took exactly the opposite from it, I thought Rieman's argument was weak whereas Pinker's seemed more empirical. WW2 is interesting, Europe had been squabbling for a very long time before then, since then not very much. It's hard to imagine modern countries carpet bombing cities when technology offers us highly targeted weapons. As far as I can see the only fly in the ointment is the environmental destruction we have been going through, I see almost no evidence that we are going to deal with climate change in time to avoid a catastrophe.
  - duncanawoods 9y ago
    Interesting. I found the empiricism shallow. Its like Pinker is looking at a stock chart in a bubble and believing it will always go up. The issue is that the circumstances for next crash is not visible on the chart so no amount of ticks or chart analysis will reveals its future value. > when technology offers us highly targeted weapons So long as we can believe other humans are worthless, disgusting and categorise them as a disease worthy of eradication, every evil is on the table. I'm not sure we have progressed to make us less likely to do that. For example, are we even more vulnerable to combination of high and low tech to stir up hate? e.g. a social media led ideology that could lead crowds going house-to-house with machetes.
judah 9y ago
Side note: Pinker was in the news recently because Bill Gates says that Pinker's new book, Enlightenment Now, is Bill Gates' "favorite book of all time." [0] [0]: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enlightenment-Now https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enlightenment-Now
- AndrewOMartin 9y ago
  His previous favorite book of all time was also by Pinker.
dogma1138 9y ago
Pinker was on the Joe Rogan podcast recently if anyone is interested https://youtu.be/VUDAdOdF6Zg https://youtu.be/VUDAdOdF6Zg
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- somberi 9y ago
  And if you rather hear just the podcast - https://player.fm/series/the-joe-rogan-experience-142216/1073-steven-pinker https://player.fm/series/the-joe-rogan-experience-142216/107...
jfaucett 9y ago
I couldn't agree more with Pinker's answer to the most underrated author / thinker. Thomas Sowell has extremely unique insights and perspectives to offer on a plethora of topics, I actually learned better ways to think about data from some of his research. But whether you agree with his conclusions or not, you should definitely be aware of the arguments and the data he presents.
- kiliantics 9y ago
  Wow. I didn't read the interview but if Pinker is endorsing Uncle Tom Sowell as a great thinker, then Pinker has gone a lot farther down in my estimation than he had already lately gone. Thomas Sowell is a hack, essentially bought by conservative/libertarian interests to give them a less racist appearance. I really enjoyed reading about Pinker's work in linguistics but he has lately been making more of a name for himself in popularising ideas that I can't understand to be anything other than centrist propaganda. What is it with certain Canadian psychologists feeling the need to meddle outside their field of expertise and join the conservative side of the culture wars today?
  - jfaucett 9y ago
    > Thomas Sowell is a hack, essentially bought by conservative/libertarian interests to give them a less racist appearance. You can disagree with the guy's arguments and ideas but calling him a hack, an Uncle Tom, and bought out is just blatant defamatory lies. It certainly doesn't further productive discussion in any way about any of the claims he ever makes. Also Pinker is not endorsing Thomas Sowell, he was asked what author is the most underrated. For instance, if you asked me who I thought the most influential thinker of the 19th century is, I would say either Nietzsche or Marx, that doesn't mean I endorse everything they ever wrote or stood for.
  - jeffdavis 9y ago
    Did you actually read any of his books? Conquests and Cultures was very interesting.
    - 9y ago
Kaibeezy 9y ago
I’ve always rendered that PKD quote as: Reality is that which, when ‘I’ stop believing in it, ‘refuses’ to go away. Much better.
kapauldo 9y ago
Bloviate
fallingfrog 9y ago
Listening to Steven Pinker definitely makes me feel warm and fuzzy; he's an optimist and we need those. With that said though, I think that trying to show that things are better could lead to an incomplete understanding of the world as better is not only subjective, but a value judgement, and therefore can only be given within the framework of the currently accepted morals of the present day. If you substitute different for better, then you are more free to consider all the aspects of a change, not just the ones that present day society considers the most important. So you might instead conclude something like: Current society is safer than societies of the past, but also more closely monitored, and therefore less free. We haven't had a war of naked aggression between major world powers for a while now, but probably because the weapons we have available to us are far more apocalyptic in nature, and everyone is afraid to use them. We are rapidly improving our control over nature, but at the expense of depleting limited reserves of various minerals, and polluting the earth's ecosystem. I don't know that I would necessarily describe any of those developments as better.

99 points by imartin2k 9y ago

> The Beats are boring. Hear hear. I was always confused about what they offered. Every generation has some pushback against mainstream culture but the best movements are accompanied by something greater. I never got the feeling there was a larger cause with the Beats - maybe that was the whole point.

cpsempek 9y ago
there are many aspects of the beat movement, and i think many of them get muddied or hidden by the more publicized, overt statements of drug use and and sexual freedom. But, paired with a post-world war II era, its more clear why these are the more prominently remembered themes, as they are the exact antithesis to the prevailing american lifestyle at the time. The “something greater” is a revolution of how we think about sexuality, personhood, and basic human rights. While not necessarily the driving force, the beats were a loud voice among the crowd proselytizing basic human rights, specifically for example gay rights.
- epberry 9y ago
  Interesting - I did not know about their history with gay rights.

calebm 9y ago

Surprisingly terse interview - lovely:)

betaby 9y ago

For what he is famous for? I've read his 'The language instinct' and found it boring and unconvincing.

VMG 9y ago
He is a very prolific writer. Try "The Blank Slate" and "Better Angels of our Nature".
- rusk 9y ago
  “How the mind works” probably one of his most well known. I’ve also recently picked up “Sense of style...” which as a reformed grammar troll I’m very much looking forward to reading!
- oligopoly 9y ago
  Or better yet read Nassim Taleb's criticism on Pinker's books.
  - rusk 9y ago
    Hm sounds interesting though Taleb himself not immune to critique ...
  - VMG 9y ago
    I did - also very interesting!
panglott 9y ago
"The Language Instinct" is almost 25 years old, and it has not fared well IMO, although linguistics is a multidisciplinary/multiparadigmatic field with lots of disagreement. That book was the result of cognitive psychology trying to grapple with Chomsky and generative grammar when they were at the height, and a dominant paradigm within linguistics. But the tide has been shifting away from Chomsky ever since. So the discussion of universal grammar, or the innateness of creole grammars, looks much weaker today. An "interactional instinct" seems like a much better account of the forces at play in human language acquisition. https://www.scribd.com/document/60713747/Interactional-Instinct https://www.scribd.com/document/60713747/Interactional-Insti... "The Blank Slate" repulsed me by criticizing Boasian anthropology for its rejection of biological explanations for behavior while ignoring the deeply racist context of early 20th century science. The biological explanations that people like Boasian anthropologists were arguing against were pure scientific racism, the premise that the social behavior of "primitive" peoples was a consequence of their biological inferiority, during a time when biology had (for example) not definitely repudiated Lamarckism. "The Sense of Style", however, looks like quite a good book.

a_bonobo 9y ago

>It’s easy to see why Nietzsche sociopathic ravings would have inspired so many repugnant movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including fascism, Nazism, Bolshevism, the Ayn Randian fringe of libertarianism, and the American alt-Right and neo-Nazi movements today I can't square that with the Nietzsche I read, the one who hated anti-semitism and who was against nationalism and for a unified Europe. See this random point in 475: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=hQ6FDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&dq=the+european+man+and+the+destruction+of+nations&source=bl&ots=oaaubgHwma&sig=eRToVDITL3XCgXxh8vqViQaDd6s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGhNi8z7TZAhXHpJQKHa7hABYQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&&f=false https://books.google.com.au/books?id=hQ6FDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA96&lp... But that's what makes Nietzsche so interesting I guess, you can find contradictory positions everywhere.

gadders 9y ago
>>It’s easy to see why Nietzsche sociopathic ravings would have inspired so many repugnant movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including fascism, Nazism, Bolshevism, the Ayn Randian fringe of libertarianism, and the American alt-Right and neo-Nazi movements today One of those things is not like the others.
- rusk 9y ago
  Presumaby you mean Bolshevism but that really depends on your parameters for evaluation. Presumably the author in this case wasn’t talking about economic principles ...
  - gadders 9y ago
    Actually, I was trying to defend Ayn Rand-style libertarianism, but it just goes to show how people's perspective differs.
    - edpazu 9y ago
      One should never miss an opportunity to paint libertarians and Nazis with the same brush. /s

Numberwang 9y ago

Damn you Pinker. Now I have another 33 books or so to read...

truculation 9y ago

>Economic inequality [...] is both highly moralized (right-thinking people agree it’s the root of all evil) No way. Even if all the money and stuff were ideally distributed our troubles wouldn't be over. Resentment and envy would find other fish to fry!

caio1982 9y ago
Inequality can be seen in two ways: extreme poverty versus absurdly rich upper class way of living in the same area (hello brazilians), and mostly everyone at least being self maintainable (say, your average european) even though your perception about others — the envy you talk about — is more of a psychological trap than an actual necessity in your life.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  Inequality means stagnation of outcomes. You don't just want diversity for ethical reasons - not everyone cares about that anyway - but because by denying talented individuals the opportunity to develop, you're sabotaging future prosperity. Of course you can argue that as long as you have enough talent this doesn't matter. But invention and innovation are wildcards, and you can't always create gamechanging developments to order. If access to environments and resources that develop talent is heavily rationed, you're more likely to get a non-linear collapse in output than a linear decrease.
  - panglott 9y ago
    There's a deeper argument here, too. Growing inequality is an indicator that the iron law of oligarchy is taking hold. The book "Why Nations Fail" divides societies into those with inclusive and extractive political and economic institutions. Inclusive institutions allow the benefits of productivity improvements to be shared broadly, while extractive institutions fear that the creative destruction of technological change will imperil the position and authority of the elites that benefit. There are some great stories in there about Tiberius and Elizabeth I banning technological innovations. https://panglott.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/books-why-nations-fail/ https://panglott.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/books-why-nations-...

duncanawoods 9y ago

I found Start The Week very good this week. Pinker appeared with Rob Riemen (philosopher, author of On Facism and Humanism) and Tali Sharot (neuroscientist, author of The Influential Mind.) I thought Pinker's progress argument was soundly defeated by Rieman. His counter-argument was that Pinker's arguments have the same hollowness of similar arguments before the WW1 and then again WW2. Pinker wants to claim things are getting better but it seems blind to how we can use our "progress" to bring forth previously unimaginable horror. The complacency of seeing progress solely in economic and scientific terms leaves the gate open for our basest natures to dominate. Such progress seems to have no predictive power for what we as a civilisation might sink to next. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rwszj http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rwszj

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tonyedgecombe 9y ago
I enjoyed it but took exactly the opposite from it, I thought Rieman's argument was weak whereas Pinker's seemed more empirical. WW2 is interesting, Europe had been squabbling for a very long time before then, since then not very much. It's hard to imagine modern countries carpet bombing cities when technology offers us highly targeted weapons. As far as I can see the only fly in the ointment is the environmental destruction we have been going through, I see almost no evidence that we are going to deal with climate change in time to avoid a catastrophe.
- duncanawoods 9y ago
  Interesting. I found the empiricism shallow. Its like Pinker is looking at a stock chart in a bubble and believing it will always go up. The issue is that the circumstances for next crash is not visible on the chart so no amount of ticks or chart analysis will reveals its future value. > when technology offers us highly targeted weapons So long as we can believe other humans are worthless, disgusting and categorise them as a disease worthy of eradication, every evil is on the table. I'm not sure we have progressed to make us less likely to do that. For example, are we even more vulnerable to combination of high and low tech to stir up hate? e.g. a social media led ideology that could lead crowds going house-to-house with machetes.

judah 9y ago

Side note: Pinker was in the news recently because Bill Gates says that Pinker's new book, Enlightenment Now, is Bill Gates' "favorite book of all time." [0] [0]: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enlightenment-Now https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enlightenment-Now

AndrewOMartin 9y ago
His previous favorite book of all time was also by Pinker.

dogma1138 9y ago

Pinker was on the Joe Rogan podcast recently if anyone is interested https://youtu.be/VUDAdOdF6Zg https://youtu.be/VUDAdOdF6Zg

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
somberi 9y ago
And if you rather hear just the podcast - https://player.fm/series/the-joe-rogan-experience-142216/1073-steven-pinker https://player.fm/series/the-joe-rogan-experience-142216/107...

jfaucett 9y ago

I couldn't agree more with Pinker's answer to the most underrated author / thinker. Thomas Sowell has extremely unique insights and perspectives to offer on a plethora of topics, I actually learned better ways to think about data from some of his research. But whether you agree with his conclusions or not, you should definitely be aware of the arguments and the data he presents.

kiliantics 9y ago
Wow. I didn't read the interview but if Pinker is endorsing Uncle Tom Sowell as a great thinker, then Pinker has gone a lot farther down in my estimation than he had already lately gone. Thomas Sowell is a hack, essentially bought by conservative/libertarian interests to give them a less racist appearance. I really enjoyed reading about Pinker's work in linguistics but he has lately been making more of a name for himself in popularising ideas that I can't understand to be anything other than centrist propaganda. What is it with certain Canadian psychologists feeling the need to meddle outside their field of expertise and join the conservative side of the culture wars today?
- jfaucett 9y ago
  > Thomas Sowell is a hack, essentially bought by conservative/libertarian interests to give them a less racist appearance. You can disagree with the guy's arguments and ideas but calling him a hack, an Uncle Tom, and bought out is just blatant defamatory lies. It certainly doesn't further productive discussion in any way about any of the claims he ever makes. Also Pinker is not endorsing Thomas Sowell, he was asked what author is the most underrated. For instance, if you asked me who I thought the most influential thinker of the 19th century is, I would say either Nietzsche or Marx, that doesn't mean I endorse everything they ever wrote or stood for.
- jeffdavis 9y ago
  Did you actually read any of his books? Conquests and Cultures was very interesting.
  - 9y ago

Kaibeezy 9y ago

I’ve always rendered that PKD quote as: Reality is that which, when ‘I’ stop believing in it, ‘refuses’ to go away. Much better.

kapauldo 9y ago

Bloviate

fallingfrog 9y ago

Listening to Steven Pinker definitely makes me feel warm and fuzzy; he's an optimist and we need those. With that said though, I think that trying to show that things are better could lead to an incomplete understanding of the world as better is not only subjective, but a value judgement, and therefore can only be given within the framework of the currently accepted morals of the present day. If you substitute different for better, then you are more free to consider all the aspects of a change, not just the ones that present day society considers the most important. So you might instead conclude something like: Current society is safer than societies of the past, but also more closely monitored, and therefore less free. We haven't had a war of naked aggression between major world powers for a while now, but probably because the weapons we have available to us are far more apocalyptic in nature, and everyone is afraid to use them. We are rapidly improving our control over nature, but at the expense of depleting limited reserves of various minerals, and polluting the earth's ecosystem. I don't know that I would necessarily describe any of those developments as better.