The Darwin Debate: Steven Pinker, Jonathan Miller, Steve Jones and Meredith Small - BBC

[@Shridharlifeschooling]

I keep coming back to watch the slam dunk reply from pinker: 12:18 to 14:32 . And that's why I thought I would make a comment here so that I can find that portion quicker myself.

[@rorykamryn3923]

@Daxton Jace Yea, have been watching on Flixzone} for years myself :D

[@ilikethisnamebetter]

@@curtisjulian2652 Daxton, Rory and Curtis - you should contact Flixzone, maybe they'd offer you some sort of reward for these unsolicited recommendations. I'll not be using their services, however.

[@adamwho9801]

I think Pinker is doing a great job demonstrating his argument

[@charlesostrowski202]

God, I wish this would come back to television broadcasts.

[@ozhobanew6219]

It's impossible to imagine an major American TV network even doing a watered down version of this for 5 minutes.

[@ThePrimordialBeing]

it is indeed very sad, because of all this ridiculous christian religious media lobby and politics.

[@ozhobanew6219]

G4L4〈T1〈P4RTY Thank "god" we got youtube, right? lol.

[@ThePrimordialBeing]

Bowen Zhao well, it is of enormous help.

[@jezza10181]

That's partly the reason that you have some many problems with bunk like creationism..

[@michaelbeitler]

It is such a pleasure to listen to an intelligent conversation like this. Thank you BBC. I wish we had more of this in America.

[@michaelgorby]

Bredah Jake Actually, he's Canadian :)

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

Canada is in North America. The USA isn't pedantically, America.

[@clareomarfran]

Yes! This came up to try and I was a big fan of Jonathan Miller. I thought to just get the tenor of the conversation and ended up glued to it all the way. What intelligent, articulate people who were also polite and considerate of each other.

[@vbgthashit]

Steven pinker is a rock star ......brilliant mind he has got......genius even

[@M4xlos]

"What women _say_ they like or _say_ they do, and what they _actually_ do, are two different things" Oh we know that, sister. Believe me, we know that.

[@vbgthashit]

Imagine steve pinker and robert sapolsky having a chat at the same table, darn those are geniuses

[@MikeFuller-ok6ok]

They can express themselves so well without being boring.

[@bradhamilton8375]

Steve Pinker slapping Steve Jones around and around!!!

[@bme7491]

Pinker killed with stats.

[@TheFrygar]

Data is power

[@davidanderson9664]

Geniuses Pinker and Miller aren't spotted together much which is a shame - they're both excellent. And Dr. Miller is STILL ALIVE. He's like 200 years old now! Steven still rocks too. D.A., J.D., NYC

[@Observe411]

Pinker is a fucking Jedi, lol.

[@jmichaelmasseur]

Steven Pinker has my vote as the coolest scientist of our day, not to mention the easiest to listen too. Love how he puts Jones in his place over and again with immeasurable tact while displaying total respect.

[@nathanmahoney9365]

Steven Pinker is 30 IQ points above everyone else. He’s also got a charm and lack of pomposity absent in some of the other panel members.

[@Arareemote]

While a definite misevaluation of Jonathan Miller's intellect. I fear the remark may be true of the other two; at least by what was demonstrated here.

[@conillet]

Agreed.The other two male panelists ooze arrogance (Jones) and pomposity (Miller), probably as a desperate reaction to being outclassed intellectually.

[@Gobiniu]

Man, is it a pleasure to listean to Pinker...

[@34672rr]

+Gobiniu "Hamer's results were robustly replicated in 2012 in a large, comprehensive multi-center genetic linkage study of male sexual orientation conducted by several independent groups of researchers" So he was completely right, decades before (I think, judging from his hairstyle).

[@Correctrix]

I couldn't sleep last night, and ended up listening to hours of the audiobook, _The Better Angels of our Nature_. His words are pure gold. On this panel, he and Miller are the only hard-hitters. Jones, in particular, was virtually always wrong.

[@hyperthreaded]

With Pinker's articulateness I sometimes wonder whether it's spontaneous or prepared, or a mix of both. E.g. his very first statement here "...the fact that people would rather have sex than, say, bump foreheads or rub an elbow against a knee, surely is related to the fact that sex leads to reproduction whereas those other activities don't". Does he come up with those things on the fly, or were the questions rehearsed, or is it that he's made this exact statement 27 times before? I mean, normally you would at least expect him to make some more pauses between the words in order to give himself time to actually think up all those flowery (but still quite fitting and accurate) metaphors, allegories and rhetorical devices. If this is all spontaneous -- well, kudos.

[@King_of_carrot_flowers]

I think he's just freakishly intelligent. One of the most intelligent speakers I've ever heard. He can just roll off these incredibly eloquent statements on Twitter at high speed also.

[@TheOCTCD]

he came to do an unscripted talk at my college, and he summarised all of the work he has ever done in his career within 45 minutes in an off-the-cuff extended speech. it was like being caught in a tornado of pure information, he is something special. for me, he's beyond my envy, i can only admire him and feel awe.

[@nicholasdedless4881]

I've never been in a situation with even close to as much prestige as this talk or others Pinker has given but I've been on conference panels and similar kinds of venues and what I always do is try to anticipate the questions and points I most want to make and have a few rehearsed answers ready to go. Also, you do these things enough and you tend to get similar questions and have more or less predigested answers stored and ready to go.

[@TheOCTCD]

Well, my comment was nothing to do with his answers to questions, which were indeed fairly generic and easy to respond to. It was his summary of every topic he has ever published a book about that astounded me, he usually just talks about his latest book in depth so he said he found it a nice change to just riff off a list of topics he'd written on the back of a napkin.

[@LieslIncorporated]

I'd guess he has come up with most of his one-liners or concise summaries when teaching (and preparing for it) and honed them even more when writing.

[@bacchusaurelius]

Great talk. They all had something interesting to add, but Pinker is on another level. He could have carried the the conversation himself.

[@sbpillai1]

Pinker simply rocked!

[@jasonsebring3983]

This looks like it was filmed 40 years ago. Pinker is much less gray here if you've noticed along with the omission of epigenetics completely.

[@MartinInBC]

It was broadcast in 1998. It was interesting to look at the Wikipedia page of Dean Hamer to see the result of an issue that was open to question at the time of this broadcast and on which Pinker had read a more recent Hamer publication than the others - the X-chromosome 'gay gene', and whether the study had been refuted.

[@Naturalist1979]

People can still learn a lot from this discussion that happened 14 years ago. A shame that it has so few views. Great display of knowledge and insight by Steven Pinker.

[@francismel4782]

Pinker is on another level

[@MrJustinRobertson]

Agreed. Much lower than the others.

[@xsuploader]

@@MrJustinRobertson in what way exactly

[@KyleHarrington1986]

Great panel, but I just can't help thinking that Pinker stands head and shoulders above the rest.

[@34672rr]

+Mechanics 0f Thought EXACTLY! The guy is freakin brilliant, and in fact, Dean Hamer's hypothesis was found to be completely true. "Hamer's results were robustly replicated in 2012 in a large, comprehensive multi-center genetic linkage study of male sexual orientation conducted by several independent groups of researchers" Most of the time hypothesis like that are shot down over time, but Pinker was able to understand it enough to bet on it and double down when challenged. What a mind on that guy.

[@hamnchee]

+Mechanics 0f Thought I agree. He actually showed up armed with a solid body of research to cite on the subject. Everyone else was kind of shooting from the hip.

[@neilmcintosh5150]

Jonathan Miller is just as intelligent and intellectual. He's also a polymath.

[@34672rr]

Neil McIntosh nowhere near the eloquent communicator though. And thats in many ways a more important type of intelligence. Even highly intelligent people can be stifled by lack of communication skills Take renfroe proxmire, a brillian musician who can hardly burp a sentence out, so he has trouble expressing his ideas verbally. Doesnt matter much with music, but hell.never be a good teacher.

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

People go on and on about Stephen Fry being clever, now this guy Jonathan Miller, he really is clever!

[@weshard1]

Pinker is fucking brilliant!

[@frankdelvalle8078]

That’s no joke

[@USERNAMEfieldempty]

Johnny Miller!!! Yay! My all time number 1 smart guy!

[@MikeFuller-ok6ok]

I even like his sculptures, I have a photograph of some of them framed on my wall. I also have his quite original book of photographs 'Nowhere in Particular'.

[@hungnguyenquoc7963]

The part about dyslexia and how human society today effect our brain, which evolve in a very different environment, is amazing. The condition human live today is vastly different than 200k years ago when we become anatomically modern humans so there bound to be a lot of mismatch in the way our brain ( and our body) work and the way human society work to day. This is one of many mind-blowing moment since I start to follow steven pinker work. He one of my favourite author in the morden era.

[@devious2121]

They answer your question in the video. Talks start at 14:50 and it's answered during Steven Pinker's response.

[@LightlessDimension]

Evolutionary Psychology is unfortunately so fucking underrated, even though it is one of the most important and fundamental.

[@Slecker95]

Yes! A stimulating and polite intellectual discourse among intelligent people, this is why I love youtube. It's a shame this type of broadcast doesn't air on television as often as it deserves to be.

[@girlwriteswhat]

OMG, art. Revolutionary landscapes that are inhospitable but at a certain point became aesthetically pleasing? Um... I don't know, maybe as survival becomes less of a problem, we begin to see the unsurvivable as a challenge to be admired and surmounted? Duh. How is this not answerable by the combination of evolution and environment?

[@jamesroach8841]

I agree. An incurable Romantic myself, I also know that whatever pleasure I take in forbidding and inhospitable landscapes is attributable to my comfortable inexperience of them. I like the look of them, but under no circumstances am I ever going there. Furthermore, I think that the kind of people who actually do go there, and climb mountains, or fly to the moon or whatever, lack imagination. I get enough of an adrenaline rush merely looking at pictures of places that no one but an exotic bacterium makes a home in.

[@suppertime4125]

James Roach It is unimaginable: the lack of imagination in he who wondered what was over the mountain, ventured there and painted it, dissected it, or sampled it, so that we, the imaginative, didn't have to bother.

[@annafreitag9498]

+karen straughan Problem is, those things can partly be explained by evolutionary theory, but evolutionary theory will never fully explain satisfactorily what is all connected with certain ideas within theories of art and literature, let alone if these theories are valid. There is simply a point where you can well explain the crude basics of why we might have such a desire, but you will come at a point where evolutionary theory is simply not fit anymore to explain the complexity that goes along with it. Everyone who thinks this has probably never taken an art/literature/sociology class whatsoever. There are, as Steven Pinker said, biological bases for what can occure within culture but there are developments within the history of art and literature for example that can't be fully explained by biology at all. Biology is a basis for why things are possible at all, but culture is its own phenomenon that requires a distinct analysis. Surely you can explain why it is biologically possible for us to like certain landscapes, but you won't explain the shifts between certain predominant artistic devices, epochs and styles the shift from classicism to romanticism, the emergence of modernism etc.

[@34672rr]

+karen straughan All nature is beautiful to us. I don't think it's right to single out inhospitable landscapes as opposed to others.

[@hamnchee]

+karen straughan Interesting point.

[@prithvidev7766]

I absolutely agree that there is a biological basis for appreciating beauty. All complex-brained organisms, to an extent, can appreciate a sanguine sunrise or sunset!

[@girlwriteswhat]

I wonder if the woman on the panel, when she talks about the possible propensity for women to desire multiple partners, is talking about concealed ovulation? I've seen many people describe concealed ovulation as a strategy on the part of women's biology to essentially exploit "beta bucks and alpha fucks"--that is, to marry the high-earning accountant while having babies with the pool boy. While this situation is, IMO, facilitated by concealed ovulation, I don't think this is the reason concealed ovulation exists in human females. If we are to consider the U of Tennessee researcher who demonstrated by a mathematical model the first hominid "sexual revolution", which mirrors the consortship behaviors of subordinate male baboons and chimpanzees with their favored females, concealed ovulation may have occurred while we were still primarily a tournament species (like the chimp and baboon). THIS researcher posited that millions of years ago our hominid grandmothers began opting for "good fathers" rather than the "best genes". In baboon society, some females also make this choice. A subordinate male will typically make overtures by helping a female with her offspring, sharing food, being affectionate, lavishing attention and investment on her and her young. She rewards him with sex to keep his attention and investment, BUT, the obviousness of estrus prevents her from providing him with many reproductive opportunities. When she's in estrus, the dominant male engages in mate-guarding. Some baboon females have demonstrated a wide variety of strategies to circumvent this mate-guarding instinct on the part of the dominant male--distractions, attrition, diversions, etc. However, this female would need apply none of these strategies to exercise her choice if her ovulation was concealed. The idea that sex is a thing that should be done in private is something of a human universal, unlike pretty much any other species. If the first monogamous couples were, essentially, individuals cheating on the alpha male (and if the price for being caught was getting your block knocked off), would this not facilitate a universal or near universal understanding of sex as something that should not be done out in the open where anyone and everyone can see? Female sexual crypsis (concealed fertility) would only have assisted in the transition of our hominid ancestors from tournament to a unique brand of egalitarian monogamy. Unlike other monogamous social animals, there are no prohibitions on subordinate members of the group mating (as with wolves or marmosets, where only the dominant pair have mating rights, and all others' celibacy is aggressively policed). I'm actually of the opinion that many of the "signs" some researchers use to "prove" that we're inherently polygamous are actually the very things that propelled us from a tournament model toward what our most successful societies have employed for a long time (egalitarian monogamy). Concealed ovulation may not be a result of female cuckolding behaviors (though it does facilitate them), but the result of the initial success of egalitarian monogamy and the female prioritization of "fatherly investment" in offspring. If polyandry were a norm, men's testicles would be HUGE. I'm sorry, but they would. When you look at promiscuous animals where male intra-sexual competition is non-violent (as compared with tournament models like Mountain Gorillas), you find ginormous testicles and high sperm counts. Human males are nothing special in this regard. Given concealed ovulation, the fact that human groups do not expel males at maturity (so there is always the danger of female infidelity by opportunity), if females had a propensity to the kind of polyandry (concurrent, as opposed to serial), men's testicles would be as big as their heads. But they're not. Because humans are not inherently polyandrous--we came from a polygynous tournament species, and our sexualities evolved to facilitate egalitarian monogamy. Incidentally, some 43% of college aged men in the US have had a coercive sexual experience inflicted on them. Half of those experiences were coercive or forced completed sexual intercourse. 95% of the reports indicate a female perpetrator. When feminists talk about college women and the "rape epidemic" they use "scary stats" like 1 in 5 or 1 in 4 college women have been victims of sexual assault. The number for men sexually assaulted by women is nearly 1 in 2, and the number of completed rapes by women on men is 1 in 5. The very fact that few people even know about this, let alone care, only reinforces Steven Pinker's point--that women are more likely to care about quality in a sexual partner, and men about quantity. While I won't tell any man that he should not be traumatized by his experience of rape at the hands of a woman, the fact that men seem more capable of "shrugging off" being raped by Alice the Goon than women are to do the same when their ass is groped by Ron Jeremy's uglier cousin tells me that women are MUCH more choosy than men when it comes to sexual partners.

[@ItsameAlex]

Hi there Karen

[@suppertime4125]

karen straughan As men appear, when highlighted, to shrug it off, as you say, women appeared to do so before. What you seem to accept, in suggesting that men aren't so bothered by the rape upon their person because they tend, more than women, to like it however they can get it, is that a handsome rapist (Ted Bundy, for example) was a far less harmful mass rapist and murderer than a squinty, sweaty and inelegant one (Ed Gein? I don't know). When there's some capital in appealing to an authority (demagogue or law enforcer), men may well end up much more like women in the desire to report rapes and receive a form of feedback that feels desirable. No one used to care much about women being raped, so they themselves either didn't care, or didn't care to say. They may have asked, as men may be asking themselves now, "What would be the point?" It's impossible to make the assumption that men aren't as deeply traumatised by rape as are women, though it is just as comfortable and unchallenged for feminists and comradely Leftist cuckoos to make precisely that assumption today as it was for Victorian society to dismiss contemporaneous rape of women as being of little emotional or moral consequence. Chauvinism evolved in this way, but not as much as some among us like to think. Men suffered just as much under the Victorian sensibility as women, yet it is simply the height of uncouthness to say so. Men were shot if they didn't go and die in wholesale warfare for what they were assured was the protection and freedom of their wives and children (and it was women who assured them most convincingly of their duty). Women were raped and told it was a legal and bearable component of marriage. Everyone can suffer from these constructs and divisions in one way or another. Men suffered to see the women suffer (whether they sensed it or not), and vice versa, and so on and so forth ad infinitum in a diffusion of ways. If it were true that men only suffer from rape technically and, potentially, physically, but not psychologically, then that can be equally true for women. What's good or bad for the goose is good or bad for the gander. Perhaps I should have referred to the biological categories of 'male' and 'female', as the terms 'man' and 'woman' are more garbled concepts nowadays than they ever were, but I can't be bothered going back and finding them.

[@girlwriteswhat]

Supper Time "No one used to care much about women being raped, so they themselves either didn't care, or didn't care to say. They may have asked, as men may be asking themselves now, "What would be the point?"" Rape [of women] used to be a capital crime. People cared so little about women getting raped that they used to execute men who raped women. Gotcha. Your Ted Bundy analogy is just... weird. The vast majority of rapists (outside of wartime) don't kill their victims. In fact, RAINN advises women to verbally and physically resist rapists because it is the best strategy for preventing an attempted rape from becoming a completed one, and because there is, in the vast majority of cases, a ceiling of violence above which a male perpetrator will not go. "If it were true that men only suffer from rape technically and, potentially, physically, but not psychologically, then that can be equally true for women. What's good or bad for the goose is good or bad for the gander." Yes, yes, and evolution stopped at the neck. And cultural attitudes have nothing to do with individual biological realities and the attitudes they engender, either. I also never said that men don't suffer psychologically from rape. But the reality is that their self-reported psychological trauma is, on average, much lower than what women victims report. In my opinion, the negative practical and material consequences today for men who are raped by women are MUCH higher than for women who are raped by men. There are almost no negative practical and material consequences for women--most women are on long term birth control, and they have access to abortion if they fall pregnant from a rape. Having been raped will not destroy a woman's ability to find a male partner, it will not cause an employer to toss her resume in the trash. Given the way the media portrays the rape of women, any huge stigma they feel is internal, not external. But boys raped by adult women at age 14 can be made to pay child support to their rapists out of their paper routes. A court ruling like that can completely derail a young man's life, his ability to access education, his ability to find a female partner, etc.

[@suppertime4125]

In the end, there's only getting of reality, not getting of people. The fact that, at some point in history, somewhere, rape may have been a capital crime, takes no account of the widespread acceptance of rape (in the absolute sense of sex forced on a person against his will). You may not have knowledge of specific law, but it was not illegal for a man to force sex on his wife (which was rape, despite not being recognised in statute). I won't say, "Gotcha," except in the form of saying, 'I won't say, "Gotcha," except in the form of saying, 'I won't say, "Gotcha," except in the form of saying, 'I won't That sentence became trapped in a loop, but you know what I mean. Your fault.

[@girlwriteswhat]

Supper Time There are some things you might not know about history and the law around marriage. Both men and women were entitled to a sex life within marriage. In the Middle Ages in Europe, one of the few grounds for divorce a woman could bring was if her husband couldn't, or wouldn't, have sex with her. Such an accused man would actually have to demonstrate before a panel of elder women that he could get and maintain an erection if he didn't want to be divorced. "Drop trou and testify!" But you wouldn't know anything about those laws, and how they worked in both directions. This attitude is also reflected in Sharia-based family law in Iran, where a man's impotence or withholding of sex is grounds for divorce--and in such a case, that man will be forced to pay out the entire remainder of the Mehrieh (bride gift--usually several years' average wages), plus monthly alimony, to his ex wife, on pain of prison. Quite the incentive to give your wife sex when she wants it, no? In 2010, a man in France was forced to pay the equivalent of $10,000USD to his ex wife for not providing her with enough sex during their marriage. This judgment was based on the legal understanding that marriage is a sexual relationship and that both parties have an expectation of sex when they enter into it. But I've never heard of a man suing his ex wife for not putting out enough, let alone winning. Please get some reality.

[@peanutgallery7753]

That Steve Jones guy seemed to have a bit of an attitude. Sneered a lot

[@peanutgallery7753]

Breda Jake Ha! I thought you meant Steven Pinker when you mentioned a barber. Which would have been heresy. But yes, would it kill Jones to button up his shirt?

[@neilmcintosh5150]

His lips are too small too.

[@ftumschk]

He has a naturally lopsided mouth. He can't help it.

[@stevee3403]

stroke? it is constant. looks neurological

[@giovanni9107]

From what year is this? Steven Pinker doesn't seem get old! o.0

[@aidananderson1697]

1998. He was 44 then, the age that I am now. He has fared much better then I. :(

[@HitomiAyumu]

Absolutely brilliant talk. I wish there was more of this.

[@csadler]

Unreal eh. I watched this and lapped it up like my cat on my leftover cereal milk at breakfast. I could listen to Pinker all day.

[@sekamenacerecords1]

I study biology & psychology and thought I would take the evolutionary biologists side on most things, but out of them all I have to admit Steven Pinker is incredibly impressive.

[@IslandArcConsulting]

Refreshing to listen to respectful exchanges on an interesting topic

[@MikeFuller-ok6ok]

Lol! If these people were having a discussion like this, sitting on a table I was sitting at, I would be very pleased to shut up and just listen to such a wonderful debate!

[@blisteredvision]

Did Melvyn Bragg always look like Michael Palin in character...

[@Gryffster]

Pinker holds his own within a stellar cast.

[@stevee3403]

Just finished the whole thing. Jones really didn't come off well. Everyone else was genial and polite. Jones smirked and huffed and puffed his way through his reactions to each speaker. Looked foolish. Everyone else was reasonable. Pinker was in a class by himself.

[@mlewsader]

Thank you for posting this, I'm always interested in what Dr. Miller and Mr. Pinker had to say to say. We miss your mind Dr. Miller, you have made a profound difference in our lives. PS: To Poliphilvs's comment about the Renaissance man. Jonathan Miller disliked being called or referred to as one. Note to fact that he felt we should all be as well-versed in our lives as he.

[@callingeuterpe]

I just love Steven Pinker's mind.

[@hitchadmirer]

What a pleasurable way to spend an hour. Mmmmm. Civilisation. It's lovely.

[@InvisiMan2006]

Pinker is a legend.

[@OfCourseGeorgeWins]

Some trolling proves effective. Some trolling doesn't. It's all relative, but the diversity of perspective that remains ever present.

[@kitredKitredson]

How nice to see a debate about Evolution which doesn't just have people screeching at one another. More of this, please, people in the past.

[@Stratahoovius]

Kevin Keegan is a lot smarter than I thought!

[@StaticLightbulb]

I can't decide what aspect of Steven is the most gorgeous and captivating; his intellect, his voice or his hair.

[@dexzero]

could anyone explain me what Steven Pinker says around the minute 17:00? about Dean Hammer ´s work, especifically when he says "it could be selected for, if the benefit that it brings to women is half the cost that it brings in men" and then something about fertility...english is not my native language, i might be hearing something wrong. Thanks a lot.

[@miket4450]

Steve Jones is incorrect in saying that because infant survival is 97% that human evolution cannot be occurring. What drives evolution is differential reproductive success. So even if all babies that are born survive to reproductive age, you could still get a shift in the frequency of particular alleles over time (the definition of microevolution) if they increased or decreased reproductive success.

[@MikeFuller-ok6ok]

It sounds like you really know your onions, miket.

[@staceymarie6895]

Check out Steve Jones' facial expressions when young handsome genius, Steve Pinker, dominates these older theories.

[@stevee3403]

ha! I'd like to be described that way! But yes, Pinker steals the show.

[@mug9591]

Forgive me for not understanding but could someone explain to me what does Steven Pinker mean by “a set of neural mechanisms” when defining culture 11:25?

[@InsistentlyInterdisciplinary]

He is making the point that human culture itself arises from the human mind, itself a product of the human brain. All of which are subject to evolutionary pressures.

[@mug9591]

Ahh, gotcha.

[@JosephStern]

As for Pinker's mental health, I think it's now safe to leave that question to the reader, aided by the highly instructive comparison between his spoken words and your written words.

[@wildmansamurai3663]

Pinker is the man

[@Alfakkin]

he absolutly is...brilliant mind and able to express it

[@wildmansamurai3663]

Joe Schmoe Ignorance.

[@joeschmoe1193]

Ignorance is your failure to learn anything other than what BS poses for science these days and the failure to think abstractly.

[@wildmansamurai3663]

Joe Schmoe You're ignorant,. End of story. Atheism is reality.. Deal with it.

[@joeschmoe1193]

Atheism is a belief nothing more. Bug off shithead. I can roll in muck just like you ignorant atheist pig.

[@cuevarap]

How fluid & rationally elucidating can a conversation be when bigots aren't involved. Thanks for this download.

[@abjeffre]

This was so good, what a debate!!

[@JosephStern]

An appeal to authority is a statement of roughly the form, "P is true because X says so." An appeal to one's own authority would be "P is true because I say so." This is logically equivalent to just "P is true", or "P".

[@VANEPS7]

We have a saying in this country. "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." It is most fitting.

[@b1con411]

YASSS Pinker SLAY

[@JosephStern]

This gets straight to the key point. Why would I, or anyone else here, have cause to question or accordingly to defend, Pinker's professional competence? Not even his severest academic critics have done that. Polymath7 was correct that Pinker has a number of highly exercised academic detractors, but they simply think he's got the details wrong. Not one of them has questioned his fitness to be published in their journals or to offer public comment on their field, much less his mental stability.

[@JosephStern]

There's no need to apologize. Everyone makes mistakes.

[@Wrightley]

Why aren't there government funded, televised debates of this caliber, weekly?

[@JosephStern]

Appealing to one's own authority? I've never heard of that before. How is that supposed to work? Offering concrete data in defense against constant charges of idiocy isn't the same thing as appealing to authority, however insecure those data may make you feel. What other response to such a charge could possibly be effective?

[@MarkLucasProductions]

Thank goodness you posted this message. There are so many thoughtless and unintelligent people who just 'suppose' that science is not about discovery and learning and that it's just a big conspiracy to get people to follow the devil into Hell, but you seem to be someone who actually 'knows' this to be the case. Such knowledge is obviously priceless and must be used for good. Please tell how you have been spared from religious brainwashing and made able to see the truth so clearly.

[@Crazyrat84]

I would like to add: He seems like he would be a gentle lover.

[@MrJustinRobertson]

Surprised to see that many people thought that Pinker was impressive in this 'debate'. I thought he, and Meredith Small, were hopeless. I suspect that Steve Jones and Jonathan Miller regret agreeing to take part. As for Melvyn Bragg, why the BBC persist with him I have no idea. The quickest way to improve the debate would be to quietly usher him from the room.

[@avszefst749]

Pinker was the only one who knew anything.

[@TheParadox_]

*3:45** "…men may desire younger women …research shows that couples are made up of individuals that are about three years apart."* -"Younger" doesnt nessesserily mean younger than the age of the male partner. It could simply mean that men prefer youth. If a 20 year old male couples with a 23 year old female although there exists a 3 year age difference the female is still youthful / younger in terms of average life span. *3:53**"…women may want men of higher status or a lot of money but pretty much we end up with who loves us…"* -I couldn't disagree more! That statement alone almost disqualifies her from the discussion. "Love" is not quantifiable. Also the idea of marriage on the basis of "love" is a quite a recent concept and is not a universal idea even today. Marriage traditionally was an exchange of male labor/resources in exchange for access to female reproduction and or family-related wealth.

[@TheParadox_]

***** *"She was dispelling the common misconception that men ultimately desire 'younger' women"* -3:40 Prof. Small starts by saying "…what humans do and what they say are two different things." She isn't "dispelling" a conception that men desire younger women. She is saying that although they may desire younger women, a younger women isn't necessarily who they reproduce with. *"And by 'younger', the misconception is much younger, like earliest fertile age."* -Again that men desire "younger" women isn't being refuted. To say it is a "misconception" on the basis of Prof. Smalls analysis in this clip is inaccurate. *"She didn't clarify that she meant the average couple of a few years apart must be of an older male and a younger female, but it could likely be the other way around."* -I agree which is why the example i gave in my original post was of a younger male (age 20) and an older female (age 23). *"You conveniently left out the bit where she said "we end up with who loves us OR who WANTS us..." So "love" is clearly a factor today"* -I am not certain how love "clearly" being a factor in reproduction is derived from this statement. This doesn't refute my original comment in any way. You just transcribed her statement without explaining the xyz of it. That she says "who wants us" still doesn't change my point in any way. It doesn't magically change the fact that love still cannot be quantified. Even considering the the idea of wanting someone alone in this context is ambiguous and subjective.

[@TheParadox_]

***** *"I think part of what she meant by emphasizing the three-year average difference in couple's age, was to make the point that men are not purely desiring much younger women who are just fertile."* -This does not change my argument. Her claim is that words and actions are often inconsistent - that this pertains to the stated male desire for younger females not being consistent with actual behavior. To support this claim she references research that couples are made up of individuals that are about three years apart. My argument is that the research she referenced as recited concluding a three year age difference is not inconsistent with the idea that men desire younger women. Btw: The case that a male desires a "much" younger female isn't presented in this discussion. That is your own convenient qualifier. *"Nothing in what she says suggests that men do not or cannot couple with older women. So your initial interpretation was wrong."* -My example of a younger male and older female was an alternative interpretation of the research referenced by Small not an interpretation of what Small stated. To conclude my interpretation to be "wrong" one would need to present the actual referenced research and state were i was wrong. *"She could have been more clear of what she meant. However, I'm willing to bet…"* -From here on because the rest of your argument is speculative and subjective, has no grounding in evidence or fact, does not bear personal significance to the discussion and therefore not worth acknowledging.

[@nicholasdedless4881]

There is strong evidence, PInker summarizes it in one of his books, that men MOST desire women in their late teens or early twenties who have a body type consistent with never having been pregnant. I.e., a body type most likely to yield lots of future offspring and unlikely to be carrying another man's child. Of course as the song goes for most of us: you can't always get what you want.

[@HitomiAyumu]

The Paradox I dont think you understand what quatify means. Even as a convenient metaphore, it doesnt fit this context.

[@TheParadox_]

+HitomiAyumu _“I dont think you understand what quatify means.”_ -An attempt to criticize someones misunderstanding of a word while misspelling said word in question = fail. Try harder!

[@nblumer]

The problem with Pinker is he tries to sneak in evolutionary biology as possible explanations whenever he can and although he obviously acknowledges its limitations. he is over-diagnosing. It does have a big role in human health, and sexual selection but his attempt to have it explain our language, morality and cultural capacities have largely failed.

[@JosephStern]

Alright. When you're the second to use a term within a single conversation, and your sense differs radically from the sense used first, it is customary to point out the distinction rather than to try to make hay of it in a debate.

[@downinmylights]

Contrasting opinions dealt with in such a charming and reasonable manner (although they all agree that evolution is a fact). I really liked the outcomes and nature of this discussion. It also opened me to the wealth of information inside Steven Pinker's brain. I liked him before but it was great to see him in this free flowing debate.

[@JosephStern]

More to the point, I never said diversity isn't a feature --- even perhaps a necessary or essential feature --- of the public discourse. I simply said that it is not necessarily in itself a goal toward which we ought to strive to shape the discourse. Likewise, diversity of belief is probably a necessary feature of sociality, but that doesn't mean it's good for some people to believe in astrology, some in crystal healing, some in Maori mythology, etc.

[@jenslyn87]

Yes, ofc, baggage :-) You can watch Pinker's talk about nature/nurture 'The Blank Slate' right here on KZbin; it's a condensed version of his book of the same name. There, the argument is more spelled out and I think he finds some very compelling reasons to say that, probably, there's a bit more on the slate than many of us care to admit. But that's my take on the argument:-)

[@JosephStern]

Well, which of the above were you doing at the time? Or was it all of them?

[@JosephStern]

If diversity in the public discourse is a desirable thing in itself, then we all ought to be encouraging people to get into astrology, crystal healing, new age metaphysics, Maori mythology, etc. Diversity is not an important goal of discourse. Self-betterment, the extension of knowledge, the deepening of insight, the improvement of our condition --- that's what we need it to be about. I'm virtually certain that at some level, you agree with this assertion, despite your position here.

[@PrateekLala]

12:17-14:31 - Steve Jones comments on the evolutionary underpinnings of step-relationships, then gets completely owned by Steven Pinker. Brilliant.

[@JosephStern]

I'm just an interested layman in this area, here to consider various points of view and learn what I can. Why should I think myself qualified to pass a kind of judgement on this seemingly decent and well-respected academic that not even his professional colleagues would? Rather than superfluously defending Pinker's competence, I was simply challenging Polymath7 to show the rest of us why his judgement in this matter should supersede that of Pinker's professional peers. Is that so unreasonable?

[@2061526]

Who ever answer this first is the brightest of all, What movie is this quote belongs to? "who is your daddy and what does he do?"

[@JosephStern]

Intersubjectivity does not mean that there is an entity transcending the parts which can "regard" anything as positive. It simply means a tendency for groups of individuals to make highly correlated subjective judgements --- most often because the minds that do the judging have been constructed similarly via common descent. This isn't even relevant, since "the public discourse" is not a super-organism, but rather a limited set of activities engaged in by organisms.

[@JosephStern]

If being likened to old Titus is meant as an insult, it's one I can more than live with. :-)

[@OfCourseGeorgeWins]

I'll respond to both comments at once. My rhetoric here was probably somewhat unsporting, but I think I more than made my point about the importance of diversity of thought (Notice that I do not posit such diversity as a panacea or ultimate goal, but as a sort of tool). Also: I think decorum has its place, but so does the unfettered intermingling of ideas. It's all inherently relative and multifaceted. Anyway, I'm exhausted.

[@Alexiaden93]

Ranking in terms of value of arguments and comments in general: 1. Steven Pinker 2. Jonathan Miller 3. Meredith Small Disqualified for being a tart and calling biology uninteresting - Steve Jones.

[@gushiddink3222]

Because when the BBC play an intro with harpsichord, you know that Ant and Dec are not going to be the hosts.

[@JosephStern]

Fine; but none of that changes the fact that the public discourse cannot regard anything as positive or otherwise. Only we can. That's the way I meant it when I started that conversation, and I think you've known that all along.

[@DennisHodgson]

This is a proper debate.

[@sticknstonesbrkbones]

continued* I personally know of several such cases and this isn't isolated to either gender. The Kinsey report illustrates many other so called 'sexual dysfunctions.' In other words, when a species gets pleasure from sexual acts, who are without a biased opinion on what is morally correct, they will pursue that pleasure where ever, and when ever, they can get it. I believe, the true nature of man is to pursue sex everywhere in a bisexual manner, as long as he/she wasn't raised by a bias society.

[@Kitsua]

Now that was one classy debate. Good old Melvin.

[@MattWeismiller1994]

What song is being played during the intro?

[@KonijNx2]

How have I not heard of Steven Pinker before? What the fuck is my life?

[@OfCourseGeorgeWins]

I apologize for the period splice. I was joking before, but I actually am currently excessively multitasking.

[@nicholasdedless4881]

The older guy forget if its Jones or Miller talking at minute 8 is doing what people who argue against evolutionary explanations do all the time: demolishing a strawman. "it can't be all evolution it has to be social as well" No shit Sherlock! No one such as Pinker would claim otherwise. The problem is that we can barely even understand the evolutionary pressures let alone the social ones. And that there are some good mathematical models (e.g. kin selection Trivers model for sibling rivalry and reciprocal altruism) we can use to quantify the evolutionary pressures where as the social causes, while of course being very significant, we currently have no way to model.

[@mattyoungrev3]

Pinker's thinking is so clear. Reminds me of the Singer interview by Dawkins.

[@bkam351]

Why can't this be on TLC?

[@JosephStern]

That's a dodge: we weren't talking about an organism --- we were talking about the public discourse as an adaptive system. That kind of system clearly cannot see anything, or regard anything as positive.

[@NeonMansionOfficial]

i feel like the moderate did a disservice by passing one question from the gentle about "how far the evolutionary analysis could be taken to explain art .. or something" to Meredith. That question was clearly intended for Steven and I was very interested in his answer. Why interject a non participant in the line of thought purely for balance of panelists. they should be let on to finish the line of thought. any one else share this pet peeve of improper moderation?

[@suppertime4125]

***** Melvin Bragg interned at the BBC Department of Chairing Debates Badly (yes, it actually exists, probably), in which he was mentored to the highest standards of BBC-compliant ultra-Leftist and subjective bias by the fellow egotist Richard Dimbleby. BBC primogeniture protocols mean that Richard Dimbleby is left to tutor lesser BBC shills (midgets, BAMES, lesbians and women) who appear on Radio 4.

[@MrSidney9]

There is nothing wrong in using an evolutionary explanation over and over. If the explanation is sensible, you can't point out its flaws, and you can't provide a better one, then it has to be accepted. It doesn't matter how often the physicians use germ theory to explain a bodily malfunction. Does it?

[@JosephStern]

Unsurprisingly, you missed my point entirely. I'm not the least bit exercised about your point. My interjection was intended as a criticism of your decorum. For one example, your attack on Steven Pinker's basic professional competence would be an absurdly unwarranted deduction from his having gotten some offhand remark wrong in an unedited conversation, even if your point was conceded at the outset.

[@JosephStern]

Some people are genuinely so. Most who promote themselves as such are not. That's been my experience. In any event, it's a simple matter to clear up: just present some evidence that your attitude of superiority is warranted by signs of actual superiority (of achievement, etc.).

[@TreyGre7]

I'm so thankful to these non Steven Pinkers for highlighting the brilliance of Steven Pinker with their inadequacy.

[@JosephStern]

Think what you will. It's a data point to consider. I'm merely suggesting that calling one another idiots just isn't going to win either of us any points.