
Twenty Questions with Steven Pinker - imartin2k
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/twenty-questions-steven-pinker/
======
a_bonobo
>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&lp...](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)

But that's what makes Nietzsche so interesting I guess, you can find
contradictory positions everywhere.

~~~
whistlerbrk
Seriously, I like Steven Pinker, but I find this view naive. Here is a video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti9zdpLlXf0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti9zdpLlXf0)
called "How Hollywood Gets Nietzsche Wrong".

I haven't read the source texts yet (Twilight of the Idols e.g.) but my
understanding is that his main goal was to ask people to not-systematize and
live the lives of others or wholly subscribe to someone else's philosophy but
to live life as a self-creative act in which we are the authors of what gives
our lives meaning and purpose. I don't see anything offensive about that.

~~~
youalreadyknow
This is the milquetoast interpretation of Nietzsche to make him digestible for
the mainstream.

~~~
nwah1
Yea, he wished suffering on his friends, to forge them into beings worthy of
respect. Etc. He did have an aggressive and elitist perspective. Ayn Rand's
views are a decent comparison.

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duncanawoods
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)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _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_

In _The Better Angels of Our Nature_ [1], Pinker posits a single measure of
progress: the population-adjusted frequency of violence. He then proceeds to
argue, on very long time horizons ( _e.g._ thousands of years), that this
metric has almost monotonically declined. The horrors of the twentieth
century, in his eyes, are balanced by the larger population. (There is
disagreement regarding his pre-historic data [2].)

TL; DR If population keeps rising with technological ability, _ceteris
paribus_ , the average person will be better off tomorrow than today. Even if
ever-more terrible things happen from time to time.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature)

[2]
[https://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/sites/fasn/files/Pinker's%20Lis...](https://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/sites/fasn/files/Pinker's%20List%20-%20Exaggerating%20Prehistoric%20War%20Mortality%20\(2013\).pdf)

~~~
oxymoron
I think that Better Angels makes a stronger case from a qualitative point of
view than it does from the quantitative point of view. Taleb and others have
criticized Pinker’s statistical analysis quite convincingly, but the
historical narrative still stands: looking at the human cruelty throughout
history, it’s hard to deny that there are many violent practices that are now
taboo, and that we seem to have broken out of the hobbesian trap.

~~~
benbreen
The _overall_ historical narrative that he presents, about specific factors
like capital punishment and infant mortality, is generally valid. But Pinker's
use of historical evidence is at least as flawed as the issues with his
statistics. _Better Angels_ literally appears to be based on a group of
research assistants, without archival training, being let loose in a library
and tasked with cataloguing all examples of violence and mortality throughout
history.

This leads to an obvious sample bias and to Pinker basing the bulk of his
argument on some truly questionable, non-peer reviewed secondary sources. It
is frankly the kind of approach that would get called out if done by an
undergraduate history major.

And I say that as someone who thinks Pinker is a fantastic writer, and who is
sympathetic to much of the argument of _Better Angels._ But it's hard for me
not to see some level of condescension in Pinker's approach to doing
historical analysis. What he does in that book is akin to me (if you couldn't
already guess, an historian) trying to write a pop linguistics book by reading
a bunch of library books on the subject and chatting with the linguistics
professors who have offices down the hall from me.

~~~
oxymoron
I stand corrected, and appreciate hearing your perspective. It does have a
different structural feel to it compared to works I’ve read by respected
modern day historians (which isn’t that many), so I think I can see what
you’re getting at.

------
epberry
> 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
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
Interesting - I did not know about their history with gay rights.

------
jfaucett
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.

------
dogma1138
Pinker was on the Joe Rogan podcast recently if anyone is interested
[https://youtu.be/VUDAdOdF6Zg](https://youtu.be/VUDAdOdF6Zg)

~~~
somberi
And if you rather hear just the podcast - [https://player.fm/series/the-joe-
rogan-experience-142216/107...](https://player.fm/series/the-joe-rogan-
experience-142216/1073-steven-pinker)

------
truculation
_> 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!

~~~
joshuahedlund
He also says "it’s not clear that inequality (as opposed to poverty) is a
moral abomination, or that reducing it is progress," so it may be unclear
exactly what he means by the first statement.

~~~
neolefty
Is he talking about _extreme_ inequality, or inequality in general?

~~~
danielam
My guess is both, i.e., inequality as such is not a problem, whereas poverty
is. Frankfurt makes a similar distinction in "On Inequality". One way to
distinguish the two is to observe that it is possible to have a society in
which everyone is equally poor and thus one in which inequality does not
exist. Conversely, observe that the difference in material wealth between the
upper middle class and the billionaire class poses no problems where wealth
itself is concerned. Both classes are very well off.

Now, there may be problems that are more likely to occur when economic
inequality obtains given the power that money can afford people in practice.
But _as such_ , inequality itself not the root of these problems and not the
ultimate problem itself.

------
fallingfrog
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_.

------
judah
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
His previous favorite book of all time was also by Pinker.

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

------
calebm
Surprisingly terse interview - lovely:)

------
Kaibeezy
I’ve always rendered that PKD quote as:

 _Reality is that which, when ‘I’ stop believing in it, ‘refuses’ to go away._

Much better.

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

~~~
VMG
He is a very prolific writer. Try "The Blank Slate" and "Better Angels of our
Nature".

~~~
oligopoly
Or better yet read Nassim Taleb's criticism on Pinker's books.

~~~
rusk
Hm sounds interesting though Taleb himself not immune to critique ...

