Ep. 5 Steven Pinker on Wokeness, Progress, and How Harvard Has Changed

Steven Pinker is the guest on the latest episode of We The 66. He defended his thesis in "Enlightenment Now" and shared how progress isn't linear, which might explain the backsliding in various areas. He also discussed wokeness, free speech, and how Harvard his changed. He continues to defend the Enlightenment and argues that our elite institutions have ushered in a culture of self-censorship, coming at the expense of truth and progress. He also shared more about his friendship with Bill Gates, his visit to the World Economic Forum, among other things, and how science has become politicized.

[@talhendel4693]

Pinker is fantastic.

[@martindbp]

Amazing human

[@williamlenihan7536]

Pinker’s common sense, clear intellect and lack of double-talk is refreshing. What he says about university life changing is very clearly understood. Administrations and other parties many times feed the weaknesses, the fears and bias instead of empowering students to mature, to develop a freedom from the sometime nonsense of pop culture, to have humour in their lives, to feel deeply, to study and read deeply. Student life has changed, degraded unnecessarily. The easy ‘A’ has lowered the academic standard, degraded the diploma and has called into question the value of the intellectual world, a world many students only touch, if that.

[@yoss364]

Love theis interview, I highly support interviewing scientists, especially those that are "controversial"

[@WeThe66]

thank you... we agree!!

[@rocanews]

Curb Your Enlightenment

[@EmperorsNewWardrobe]

Meaning what exactly?

[@photographyandthecreativeyou]

Pinker always adds clarity to a subject. Thanks for this!

[@WeThe66]

Thank you for listening!

[@KK-----]

great stuff

[@EmperorsNewWardrobe]

29:31 some interesting reflections on the news. Great interview, guys!

[@WeThe66]

thank you for listening!

[@EmperorsNewWardrobe]

@@WeThe66out of interest, how did you get hold of Steven? I plan to contact him one day regarding a project I’m working on, and I have an idea of how to reach him, but am also wondering how you made it happen. Of course, I don’t want you say anything that might jeopardise you or him! So no worries if not!

[@chrisocony]

Stephen Pinker was very influential on me and changing and enriching my worldview based on The Better Angels of our Nature and Enlightenment Now.

[@EmperorsNewWardrobe]

Stephen?

[@HelliarCOH]

Thank you for doing this! Looking forward to watching. Pinker is one of the best rational commentators out there.

[@user-fd5gq2ey6w]

Being an Atheist Jew, hence a materialist he would have to, at least, be rational. NO?

[@us-Bahn]

The generalized perception that a Harvard grad is a safer hire gives employers a CYA guarantee that they made the wise choice.

[@christopherwalton1373]

Some ideas are so stupid that only an intellectual could come up with

[@Traderbear]

Awesome talk and it was 4:20 at the end 😎

[@user-pe4xf6hd5q]

Many thanks

[@ahmetdogan5685]

Steven Pinker is a sweet thinker.

[@Forheavenssake1ify]

Postmodernism philosophy underlies the anti science, anti liberal arguments on both sides. For example, a focus on qualitative analysis over quantitative (the proven data of climate change). Subjective analysis allows for denying reality.

[@benb6527]

Postmodernism is a movement in art, not politics or philosophy. Post-structuralism is the intellectual / philosophical movement. Postcolonialism is a political bastardization of both

[@Anaximander9]

Economically and technologically, things are incredibly better now than in the past. At the same time, socially and culturally, we are seeing a steep decline; things were far better 50 years ago than now. How far will we fall before our culture recovers is an open question; hopefully before our civilization completely collapses.

[@aiseachange9334]

Great interview! We do need to be better educated in statistics and cognitive biases.

[@WeThe66]

Thank you and I totally agree. Made me wonder which views of mine I need to rethink…

[@tompeargin8319]

The climate change dilemma is simple to evaluate, if you look at the big picture, and prioritize options available. World population has nearly quadrupled in the last 70 years, and this growth has been made possible through burning fossil hydrocarbons. Each human alive today, and those alive in future, will make decisions based on their own self interest, as is our nature, and each human will alive will generate additional CO2. It is not feasible to expect to reverse the trajectory of carbon addition to the atmosphere, we can only slow it down. so the logical actions to prioritize are those that mitigate inevitable future warming as best we can. But those are not the actions we hear about. Net zero and all the other strategies focus on putting off the inevitable. When you face reality in this way, it is easy to see that the things we should put at the top of our list should be3 planning on engineering solutions for sea level rise, and planning for shifting weather patterns affecting food production. Slowing the rate of carbon emissions is important, but forcing the time frame entails many unavoidable consequences. Planning for the inevitable makes much more sense if you are a practical, logical person. Unfortunately, as a species, we are not that logical, or practical.

[@martindbp]

Or focus on accelerating technological progress to the point where we can overcome these problems. There are so many examples of us doing that historically, with crop yields, oil drilling, huge construction works to prevent flooding etc etc. The next step right now is to build climate control for this planet. It's not economical to pull CO2 out of the air right now but that doesn't mean it never will be, work over-capacity of solar and wind, and possibly fusion. We also have very simple and cheap solutions for lowering the temperature, but that are politically unpalatable for some reason. ("No, I don't want a technological fix, I want to tear down the socio economic system")

[@tompeargin8319]

@@martindbp I was with you until you said tear down the soci0 economic system. Change, perhaps, but destroy? That seems contrary to the ability to work cooperatively across countries and on a global scale, which I doubt will happen anyway. It's always tempting to hope for new technology to solve the problem of using fossil hydrocarbon for fuel, but it's unwise to count on it. For example, CO2 has doubled in the atmosphere within the last 80 years, but it is still only 4 parts per 10,000 now, and such a dilute processing stream will be very hard to address by any future technology. No, I think we are going to have to accept that humans will continue to dump carbon into the atmosphere for the next century, and if the greenhouse effect really turns out of be true (and it's not proven, no matter what the consensus of scientist say), we will be faced with mitigation rather than prevention. I just wish this topic would be addressed, even if it is not eminent. We are barking up the wrong tree, in my opinion, and even though birth rates are slowing dramatically, there will still be 9 billion people on the planet later in this century. It would be good to address a "what if" scenario with regard to failure in switching to another fuel source. That seems the likely outcome to me

[@missano3856]

​@@martindbpDon't overlook fission.

[@martindbp]

@@missano3856 Silly mistake, my apologies

[@user-fd5gq2ey6w]

What on earth was he doing with Pappa Schwab at the WEF?! I have met Steven personally, I just didn't know his public persona.

[@crispyslicker1038]

looks interesting will watch!

[@WeThe66]

Thank you!! 🌊🤝

[@buffalobill2874]

😊

[@Tony-ol4bt]

Look into excess deaths after covid.

[@Orvulum]

The one time endowment of fossil hydrocarbons, that is, concentrated, latent solar energy... It's the main reason that humanity was able to flourish to the degree that it has, with high net energy from fossil hydrocarbons facilitating unprecedented growth, an increase in aggregate living standards, and progress toward the realization of universal human rights. In the context of those factors, consider what might well occur on the down slope of the age of fossil hydrocarbons, with the much lower net energy that will be available from alternative energy sources, given the limits of current technology. How might that impending energy transition affect the growth trend? How might it affect human rights? And if the energy transition poses a threat to the progress that has been made, what can be done to prevent its reversal?

[@missano3856]

The one time endowment of the energy of ancient supernovas.

[@johnbones261]

Vaccine denial?

[@ALavin-en1kr]

Progress is due to the Evolution of the Equinoxes, see the film The Great Year. Pinker likely knows more about the tooth fairy than he does about the Precession of the Equinoxes. Evolution without a prototype to evolve to makes less sense than the tooth fairy, but it is still being pushed. It is good of Pinker to now deny the Blank Slate, having been the originator and chief proponent of it in the past. Seeing oneself starting off as a blank slate could not have been exactly helpful. Terrible things went on in The Dark Age but due to The Precession we are past that now. The remnant is still with us but we are moving away from it, there will be some backsliding, nevertheless the Precession is on track. If we can just get past the deification of matter: materialism, and begin to understand consciousness and mind and see humankind as a special creation, we will get past this worm’s eye view of reality. Youth will have something to again strive for. Materialism has just about ruined everything but we can pull back from it. People from elsewhere, Murdoch with his trash print empire etc. and their proselytizing are a problem. Americans on our own, no matter how benighted at times, at least we have some common sense. Let’s hope it holds up. Stop listening to so-called experts. There is more common sense in Medieval Philosophy and Ancient Greek philosophy about human nature than is in the gibberish propagated today by the current crop of Atheists.

[@user-fd5gq2ey6w]

I met Steven Pinker back in 2004, in Montreal where he was visiting his parents, Rose and Harry Pinker. He is a completely different person "in person". Shocked to learn that he is an Atheist Jew with extremely scarce knowledge of things spiritual. Does he not know that "Pearly Gates is a Catholic belief". He may be a good writer and possibly a good professor, but this interview reveals a part of him that was hard for me to comprehend. I have no problem with him being a materialist, but ignorance of spirituality is hard to swallow! I learned the term "awokism" in the interview. Thank you!

[@gonx9906]

I think that knowing what a religion is, is more than enough to move through the world today.

[@TreeofHelll]

You can't call out academic intellectuals for being ignorant in a particular topic. I bet he also knows null about nuclear physics.

[@jamesrrr37657]

2 in the Pinker, 1 in the stinker

[@WeThe66]

🥸