#stephen pinker

King: submitted for the approval of the midnight society, i call this the tale of the Elon Musk [rising from bushes] eyyyy stephano king King: what are you doing here King: you know, we haven't really talked in years King: do you just come here whenever you're mentioned in the news? Musk: si!

Musk: i hava terrible news stephano king! Musk: my brother hea kicked offa da board offa burning man! King: wait you have a brother? Musk: si Musk: hisa name issa kimbal Barker: HA HA HA HA Poe: now clive the man can't help that Barker: HA HA HA KIMBAL Barker: pfffft

Barker: HA HA HA KIMBAL MUSK Barker: i bet your brother is real cool elon ha ha Musk: he issa justa like me except he also wear a big cowboy hat Barker: HA HA HA HA Barker: KIMBAL

King: why was your brother kicked off the burning man board? Musk: because he wassa in the epstein files King: oh Musk: itsa not fair! Musk: why they let him on the island anna not me???

Musk: whatta kimbal got that i donta got? Musk: maybe he a pedophile! King: i know you're just mad elon King: but in this instance King: i think you might be on to something

[on sex crime island] Jeffrey Epstein: ah yes ass a sop histicated mann of the olrd i like to surrrond myself w bea\=utiful things// like th er e aint nothin g lie a beaut//&iflll wnfmanabu Elon Musk [rising from bushes]: eeeeey giuseppe epstein Epstein: oh krist th is ashule again//=

Epstein: srry elon yuo hav to l.eaf Epstein: thiss isthe no m=usks club Musk: but you letta kimbal musk join! Epstein: yes thiss is t =he no MUSSKS club Epstein: were alllowd to haf one?/?//

Kimbal Musk: [sauntering up with a big cowboy hat] eyyyy mama mia pardna! Musk: ima straight-shootina spaghetti-slurpina hombre! John wayne! Clint Eastwood! Horse! Howdy, paisano! Epstein: i lik th=t hes so authe ntic=/

Kimbal Musk: eyyyy i'ma da real americano cowboy, paisano! Kimbal Musk: eyyyy i lova da open range! git alonga da little doggies eyyyyy! Kimbal Musk: ima so plumba tuckered out froma alla da ropin' anna wranglin' anna statutory rapin'

Epstein: yuo kow its a com=-mon misco nception that we jt doo statutory rape here on sex crime island><? Epstein: w e alcso dothe regular kind// Richard Dawkins: ha ha oh jeffrey you are the living end!

Richard Dawkins: as the world's smartest man, i love hanging out with a known pedophile on sex crime island Stephen Pinker: as a fellow smart, i agree! Jeffrey Epstein: ill tk some photoss to commemrate this epicc meetingof th= smarts Dawkins: absolutely, we will definitely want to document this!

Dawkins: as an evolutionary biologist im just saying it makes rational evolutionary sense to want to fuck children Pinker: absolutely, that's extremely rational Noam Chomsky: time to build some consensus on child fucking Kimbal Musk: eyyyyy high noon! tarnation! there's a snake inna my boot! eyyyy!

Epstein: i loveee surronuding mysefl wi the smartestt mind^s= Dawkins: I'M SO MAD Dawkins: SOME UPPITY WOMAN MADE A POST ON THE INTERNET>:C Dawkins: FUCKIN FEMOIDS Dawkins: I WILL MAKE THIS MY PERSONALITY FOREVER Dawkins: also did you know that muslims have a genetically smaller thinking bone

Hi anon!

There's a lot to say that would explain my issue with him, but in the interest of keeping this brief:

1. He is openly flirting with some extreme right-wing ideas

He is a conservative, defending the "we've never had it so good" position and the current status quo. Definitely not compatible with my view and based on some pretty shaky evidence, but that's his right I guess.

However, he has become almost Peterson-esque, with his objections against 'woke culture'. He has also recently appeared on a podcast promoting the views of scientific racism.

2. Ties to Epstein specifically

This is a shaky ground, of course. He *was* quoted as to say he actually really disliked him, but you would say that in the aftermath of things that came to light, wouldn't you.

His name appears on the list of people who had taken Epstein's private jet famously nicknamed "the Lolita Express" and he also helped his defence by bringing in his expertise as a linguist.

Again, of course he denies any accusations of something improper going on. But as I am not a journalist and this is my personal blog, I can say that I think some of the arguments of evolutionary psychology - Pinker's pet field - can be used to justify the awful things Epstein and the people in his circle have been accused of...

3. He writes books about philosophy and history without having any respect for the fields

I do not doubt he is a great linguist/cognitive scientist. The issue with him (and people like him) is that because he is brilliant in his field, he seems to rather arrogantly assume that he can confidently throw in historical evidence in his books or discuss complex philosophical ideas without being sufficiently trained or even well-read in either of those disciplines. (Side note but I hate this trend. I am yet to see the opposite happening - you don't get many historians confidently publishing books on neuroscience based on having read 3 books and seeing a brain in a jar once. Just sayin'.)

As you can probably guess from the name of this blog, my biggest issue is with his take on the Enlightenment. In his recent book 'Enlightenment Now', he builds the case his view that in the 18th century, philosophers 'divorced from religion' [x] 'embraced the concept of reason' [x] and we are now basically living in paradise thanks to it.

Academics who write on the enlightenment spend years studying the literature of the time, and definitely avoid any such grant statements. First of all, a lot of the thoughts were strongly influenced by religion, so the idea of "religion and vibes" vs. "reason" is a giant oversimplification at best.

(Not to mention that Hume, one of the key figures of the enlightenment, famously stated “Reason Is and Ought Only to Be the Slave of the Passions". Not very "facts don't care about your feelings, is it?)

Another issue is with what you would call methodology if you are being charitable. It just becomes obvious that he is not well-read in the area. My favourite passage from Peter Harrison article sums it up perfectly (and rather hilariously):

Go read the article if you are interested! It's a short read, and the academic vitriol is both palpable and absolutely delicious.

I don't really have the space to go into it, but his book The Better Angels of Our Nature has then faced similar criticism by actual historians of his rather problematic use of historical evidence.

“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.” —John Maynard Keynes

Not an editorial cartoon again. Still less timely than needed for that. The theme of this image is the way we were and will be trump or no trump. It shows the billionaires who “own” the millionaires on the field who “entertain” the…

In Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, published earlier this year, Steven Pinker argues that the human race has never had it so good as a result of values he attributes to the European Enlightenment of the 18th century. He berates those who focus on what is wrong with the world’s current condition as pessimists who only help to incite regressive reactionaries.

Instead, he glorifies the dominant neoliberal, technocratic approach to solving the world’s problems as the only one that has worked in the past and will continue to lead humanity on its current triumphant path.

His book has incited strong reactions, both positive and negative. On one hand, Bill Gates has, for example, effervesced that “It’s my new favorite book of all time.” On the other hand, Pinker has been fiercely excoriated by a wide range of leading thinkers for writing a simplistic, incoherent paean to the dominant world order. John Gray, in the New Statesman, calls it “embarrassing” and “feeble”; David Bell, writing in The Nation, sees it as “a dogmatic book that offers an oversimplified, excessively optimistic vision of human history”; and George Monbiot, in The Guardian, laments the “poor scholarship” and “motivated reasoning” that “insults the Enlightenment principles he claims to defend.” (Full disclosure: Monbiot recommends my book, The Patterning Instinct, instead.)

In light of all this, you might ask, what is left to add? Having read his book carefully, I believe it’s crucially important to take Pinker to task for some dangerously erroneous arguments he makes.

Pinker is, after all, an intellectual darling of the most powerful echelons of global society. He spoke to the world’s elite this year at the World’s Economic Forum in Davos on the perils of what he calls “political correctness,” and has been named one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” Since his work offers an intellectual rationale for many in the elite to continue practices that imperil humanity, it needs to be met with a detailed and rigorous response.

Besides, I agree with much of what Pinker has to say. His book is stocked with seventy-five charts and graphs that provide incontrovertible evidence for centuries of progress on many fronts that should matter to all of us: an inexorable decline in violence of all sorts along with equally impressive increases in health, longevity, education, and human rights. It’s precisely because of the validity of much of Pinker’s narrative that the flaws in his argument are so dangerous. They’re concealed under such a smooth layer of data and eloquence that they need to be carefully unraveled. That’s why my response to Pinker is to meet him on his own turf: in each section, like him, I rest my case on hard data exemplified in a graph. 

This discussion is particularly needed because progress is, in my view, one of the most important concepts of our time. I see myself, in common parlance, as a progressive. Progress is what I, and others I’m close to, care about passionately.

Rather than ceding this idea to the coterie of neoliberal technocrats who constitute Pinker’s primary audience, I believe we should hold it in our steady gaze, celebrate it where it exists, understand its true causes, and most importantly, ensure that it continues in a form that future generations on this earth can enjoy.

I had a really good few hours studying yesterday. :) I was reading a text about which forces have led to an overall reduction of violence within our species for my seminar on violence. 

You know when the text is just so well-written and interesting and thought-provoking and intellectually stimulating and you feel really lucky to be reading it for uni? It was that kind of text. And the beautiful, warm sunlight helped, too.

Racist assumptions, ethnolinguistic assumptions of inferiority or superiority, are as old as mankind. Racism, as a label for such beliefs in popular use, is barely a century old. Modern divisions based on race are only slightly older, popularized by Charles Darwin’s contemporaries. But we can and should recognize ideas that are as old as history.

Whether that is Aristotle’s designation of some men as having the soul of slaves, or the Spanish declaration in the sixteenth century that the conquered peoples of the Americas were “men without reason,” and therefore requiring governance, or the view of the Abbasids that the Umayyads must be overthrown because they believed the Arabs were a racial caste apart (the same reason the African slave trade persists to the modern day on the fringes of the Islamic world), this view has always been with us.