Podcasts about johnstone family professor

Patreon: https://bit.ly/3v8OhY7 Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He is also host of Sean Carroll's Mindscape, a terrific show (that influenced the birth of Robinson's Podcast) about science, society, philosophy, culture, arts, and ideas. Daniel Dennett is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Tufts University, where he was co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy. He is one of the most recognized philosophers today, and has made major contributions to the philosophy of mind and biology, among other areas, and is known as one of the Four Horsemen of Atheism. Steven Pinker is Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is an experimental cognitive psychologist, prominent public intellectual, and best-selling author who writes on language, mind, and human nature. This is Sean's third appearance on the show. He was one of the guests—along with David Albert of Columbia University—on episode 106, which covers the Many-Worlds theory of quantum mechanics, entropy and Boltzmann Brains, and the fine-tuned universe. He was also on episode 118 with Slavoj Žižek on quantum physics, the multiverse, time travel, and a whole lot more. This is Dan's second appearance on the show, as on episode 194 he and Robinson spoke about consciousness, free will, and the evolution of minds. Finally, Steve is returning for another centennial episode, as he and Robinson discussed rationality, enlightenment, and free speech on episode 100. But in this episode of Robinson's Podcast (the two hundredth!), Sean, Dan, Steve, and Robinson discuss artificial intelligence, large language models, and whether or not they threaten democracy or even civilization itself, parapsychology and the laws of physics, panpsychism and consciousness, some of the philosophical lessons of Darwinian thought, and the relationship between science and philosophy. Dan's latest book is I've Been Thinking (W. W. Norton, 2023), Steve's latest book is Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (Penguin, 2022), and Sean's next book, Quanta and Fields: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe (Penguin, 2024), will be coming out on May 14, 2024.  Sean's Website: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com Sean's Twitter: https://twitter.com/seanmcarroll Quanta and Fields (The Biggest Ideas in the Universe): https://a.co/d/gfMDLQo Sean's Paper on QFT and Supervenience: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.07884.pdf I've Been Thinking: https://a.co/d/ahMEC0G Steven's Website: https://stevenpinker.com Steven's Twitter: https://twitter.com/sapinker Rationality: https://a.co/d/9N2uFyr Robinson's Podcast #106 - David Albert & Sean Carroll: Quantum Theory, Boltzmann Brains, & The Fine-Tuned Universe: https://youtu.be/U6ZtmGIhIhU Robinson's Podcast #118 - Slavoj Žižek & Sean Carroll: Quantum Physics, the Multiverse, and Time Travel Robinson's Podcast #194 - Daniel Dennett: Consciousness, Free Will, and the Evolution of Minds: https://youtu.be/9bZcBh0qtKo OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 00:59 Introduction 6:11 Will Large Language Models End Civilization? 13:42 Are Large Language Models a Threat to Democracy? 22:53 Could AI Destroy the Job Market?  28:14 On Parapsychology and the Violation of Physics 40:23 The Parable of the Bathtub 01:03:45 Physical Causation and the Law of Sufficient Reason 01:09:23 On Emergence and Real Patterns 01:14:48 Is Consciousness an Illusion? 01:27:13 The Darwinian Lesson 01:31:50 Does Physics Show that the Universe is Conscious? 1:44:36 What is Philosophy? Robinson's Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.  --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robinson-erhardt/support

In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Harvard Divinity School visiting scholar Rabbi David Wolpe, MIT PhD student Talia Khan, and Harvard professor Steven Pinker about the new reality for Jews in higher education.Since Simchas Torah, the hostile discourse regarding Israel has become something that no Jewish student can ignore. Jewish families have been asking: Is it even worth it to send our sons and daughters to these colleges? In this episode we discuss:Is it better for Jews to change the system from within, or without?What has changed about the Jewish experience at American colleges since Oct. 7?What is the way forward regarding free speech and Jewish rights on campus?Tune in to hear a conversation about how we might work toward a reimagined and refocused higher education.Interview with David Wolpe begins at 4:27.Interview with Talia Khan begins at 29:30.Interview with Steven Pinker begins at 1:05:12.Named The Most Influential Rabbi in America by Newsweek and one of the 50 Most Influential Jews in the World by The Jerusalem Post, David Wolpe is a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School and the Max Webb Rabbi Emeritus of Sinai Temple, a Conservative shul in Los Angeles. Rabbi Wolpe previously taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, Hunter College, and UCLA. He is the author of eight books, including the national bestseller Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times. His new book is titled David, the Divided Heart.Talia Khan is an MIT graduate student in mechanical engineering, the president of the MIT Israel Alliance, and a Fulbright Brazil alumna.Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He conducts research on language, cognition, and social relations, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time and The Atlantic, and is the author of twelve books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Stuff of Thought, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters.References:“On the Hatred of Jews” by David J. WolpeIsrael: An Echo of Eternity by Abraham Joshua Heschel O Jerusalem! by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre “When Calls for Jewish Genocide Can Cost a University Its Government Funding” by Michael A. Helfand“A five-point plan to save Harvard from itself” by Steven PinkerThe Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan HaidtThe Canceling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott The Constitution of Knowledge by Jonathan Rauch

This is a summary of a report on trends in violence since the dawn of humanity: from the hunter-gatherer period to the present day.[1] The full report is available at this Substack and as a preprint on SSRN.[2] Phil did 95% of the work on the report. Expert reviewers provided the following comments on our report.“Thomson and Halstead have provided an admirably thorough and fair assessment of this difficult and emotionally fraught empirical question. I don't agree with all of their conclusions, but this will surely be the standard reference for this issue for years to come.”Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University“This work uses an impressively comprehensive survey of ethnographic and archeological data on military mortality in historically and archeologically known small-scale societies in an effort to pin down the scale of the killing in the pre-agricultural world. This will be a useful [...] The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: October 2nd, 2023 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QH2sECmmbLWbMXLhJ/violence-before-agriculture --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Violence Before Agriculture, published by John G. Halstead on October 2, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This is a summary of a report on trends in violence since the dawn of humanity: from the hunter-gatherer period to the present day. The full report is available at this Substack and as a preprint on SSRN. Phil did 95% of the work on the report. Expert reviewers provided the following comments on our report. "Thomson and Halstead have provided an admirably thorough and fair assessment of this difficult and emotionally fraught empirical question. I don't agree with all of their conclusions, but this will surely be the standard reference for this issue for years to come." Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University "This work uses an impressively comprehensive survey of ethnographic and archeological data on military mortality in historically and archeologically known small-scale societies in an effort to pin down the scale of the killing in the pre-agricultural world. This will be a useful addition to the literature. It is an admirably cautious assessment of the war mortality data, which are exceptionally fragile; and the conclusions it draws about killing rates prior to the Holocene are probably as good as we are likely to get for the time being." Paul Roscoe, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Maine Epistemic status We think our estimates here move understanding of prehistoric violence forward by rigorously focussing on the pre-agricultural period and attempting to be as comprehensive as possible with the available evidence. However, data in the relevant fields of ethnography and archeology is unusually shaky, so we would not be surprised if it turned out that some of the underlying data turns out to be wrong. We are especially unsure about our method for estimating actual violent mortality rates from the measured, observable rates in the raw archeology data. One of us (Phil) has a masters in anthropology. Neither of us have any expertise in archeology. Guide for the reader If you are interested in this study simply as a reference for likely rates/patterns of violence in the pre-agricultural world, all our main results and conclusions are presented in the Summary. The rest of the study explores the evidence in more depth and explains how we put our results together. We first cover the ethnographic evidence, then the archeological evidence. The study ends with a more speculative discussion of our findings and their possible implications. Acknowledgments We would like to thank the following expert reviewers for their extensive and insightful comments and suggestions, which have helped to make this report substantially better. Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University Robert Kelly, Professor of Archeology at the University of Wyoming Paul Roscoe, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Maine We would also like to thank Prof. Hisashi Nakao, Prof. Douglas Fry, Prof. Nelson Graburn, and Holden Karnofsky for commenting, responding to queries and sharing materials. Around 11,000 years ago plants and animals began to be domesticated, a process which would completely transform the lifeways of our species. Human societies all over the world came to depend almost entirely on farming. Before this transformative period of history, everyone was a hunter-gatherer. For about 96% of the approximately 300,000 years since Homo sapiens evolved, we relied on wild plants and animals for food. Our question is: what do we know about how violent these pre-agricultural people were? In 2011 Steven Pinker published The Better Angels of Our Nature. According to Pinker, prehistoric small-scale societies were generally extremely violent by comparison with modern stat...

To kick-off the second season of Data Malarkey, Sam Knowles talks to one of the all-time greats of academic psychology – Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. An experimental psychologist interested in all aspects of language, mind, and human nature, Steve is one of the most important public intellectuals – and best-selling authors – of the past 30 years. He came to global attention with his 1994 book, The Language Instinct, and followed that three years later with How The Mind Works.   In the 2000s, Steve's interests – and popular-science best sellers – have flexed and grown to cover nature and nurture, human progress, violence (or otherwise) in society, and most recently, rationality. Many listeners will be familiar with The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of our Nature, Enlightenment Now, and – most recently – Rationality. A less well-known but important work is Steve's 2014 book The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, and what it has to say about the Curse of Knowledge.   Garlanded by media, national and international associations, and academic institutions around the world, Steve is generally agreed to be one of the world's leading thinkers and most influential writers. He is that rarest of creatures – a serious, practicing academic who writes with great clarity for both his peers and an intelligent lay audience. Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 18 May 2023.   Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.   Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.   Voice over by Samantha Boffin.   Steve spends his time reading, teaching, and writing – totally immersing himself when it comes to books. And when he's not doing that, he's walking, hiking, cycling, travelling and talking with his wife, the novelist and philosopher, Rebecca Goldstein. He also has a passion – and a real skill – for photography, a passion developed from his early-career research in visual cognition and his love of visual aesthetics.   This episode covers so much in just 45 minutes, from why the world is rather less violent than the news cycle might suggest to the replicability crisis in psychology; from our faulty belief that a sample will be representative of a population, to underpowered psychological research using too few experimental subjects. More than once, Steve refers to Amos Tversky's 1971 paper in Psychological Bulletin, “Belief in the law of small numbers”. As Steve points out: “He did warn us. We should have listened!” For those unfamiliar with this seminal, overlooked paper – here it is.   And while we're very much in the wheelhouse of an academic psychologist at the height of his profession, at all times Steve avoids the Curse of Knowledge, which he defines as “the difficulty in imagining what it's like for some else not to know something that you know”. As the Curse of Knowledge is a repeated target of Sam's in his data storytelling training, host and guest wig out about the Curse, which Steve also characterises as a lack of Theory of Mind. Other topics covered in this episode include: what insight is and how to move from data to insight; the very real power of analogy (like the solar system for atomic structure) in driving breakthrough innovation and understanding; the dangers (and shortcomings) of AI. While Steve suspects the dangers have been overstated, he's all for minimising deep fakes – on news in particular – and fraud.  EXTERNAL LINKS Steve's home page – https://stevenpinker.com Photos by Steven Pinker – http://stevepinker.com The Harvard Department of Psychology page for Steve – https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/steven-pinker   To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes to answer 12 questions, and we'll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.  

Steven Pinker is Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is an experimental cognitive psychologist who writes on language, mind, and human nature. In this episode—the hundredth of Robinson's Podcast (!)—Robinson and Steve talk about his recent book Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (Penguin, 2022), which is linked below. More particularly, they discuss rationality's evolutionary basis, how it is subverted by conspiratorial thinking and other dimensions of the “mythology mindset”, how it relates to enlightenment and human progress, and the state of free speech at Harvard and in the academic world at large. Rationality: https://a.co/d/9N2uFyr Steven's Website: https://stevenpinker.com Steven's Twitter: https://twitter.com/sapinker OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 00:58 Introduction 06:31 The Importance of Rationality 10:16 The Connection Between Language and Rationality  14:18 Rationality and Human Progress 20:09 The Evolution of Rationality and Irrationality 34:08 Conspiracy Theories and the Mythology Mindset 40:13 The Madness of Crowds 49:42 Free Speech, Enlightenment, and Rationality 55:55 Free Speech Versus Social Justice 01:03:03 Academic Freedom at Harvard Robinson's Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.  --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robinson-erhardt/support

This month, we are diving into the important and currently hot topic of artificial intelligence. Do we think rising platforms like ChatGPT are going to be running the world anytime soon? Does technology not only have the ability to be intelligent, but also rational? In this episode we get the pleasure of discussing these issues with Steven Pinker, an experimental cognitive psychologist and a popular writer on language, mind, and human nature. Listen to the conversation and find out what happens when an expert on the human mind sits down to discuss intelligence in machines with two data scientists! Our Guest: Dr. Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He conducts research on language, cognition, and social relations; writes for publications such as the New York Times, The Guardian, Time, and The Atlantic; and is the author of twelve books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Stuff of Thought, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters.

This episode with one of today's most influential thinkers will leave you thinking more.  Professor Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He is also an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's “World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time's “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.”  Professor Pinker talks about his research and the concepts he reveals in his best-selling books, which are surprising, enlightening, and inspiring. For instance, Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature reveals that violence is, in fact, in decline, and we are living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence. In Rationality, Pinker examines how humans can, on the one hand, develop COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year yet produce volumes of fake news daily. In The Blank Slate, he examines the origins of human nature and challenges the arguments of nature versus nurture. I also share Steven Pinker's concerns that opinion has been criminalized, and I appreciate his solutions to help curb negativity and single-minded perspectives. Pinker offers his views on what children should be taught so they can grow into critical thinkers. And this lover of science and facts, with an apparent gift for words, reveals how scientific curiosity and understanding can ultimately inspire and empower us all.   Some fantastic takeaways from the brilliant Steven Pinker. Alan Depencier, the Chief Marketing Officer of RBC, joins the show to share ideas on how brands can counter the negative side of social media.  To do so, they must understand their purpose, foster a culture that embraces it, and look at positive or negative feedback as an opportunity to improve. To learn more about Steven Pinker:  https://stevenpinker.com

Welcome to the Counterweight podcast, where we talk about how we can strive for a world in which freedom and reason are at the forefront of all human society. In this week's podcast, we speak with Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and author of 12 books, including The Language Instinct, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters. In the podcast, we discuss reason, rationality, enlightenment values, and their interplay with the polarisation that is affecting our communities today.

Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. So are humans innately rational or irrational? And why is it difficult for some people to be rational? Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University Steven Pinker joins William Shatner on this week's episode of 'I Don't Understand' to discuss how do we embrace rationality and why is it sometimes really hard to do.

Human beings routinely make terrible choices but humanity still achieves amazing things. How does this paradox work? And is it still working when technology seems to amplify the worst in us. In this episode, Politics on the Couch host Rafael Behr talks to Professor Steven Pinker about the constant struggle between evidence and emotion for control of the political agenda; whether truth and fact are winning the long war against superstition and falsehood, and why rationality always has the last word. Professor Steven Pinker is Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and the author of a number of highly acclaimed and prize-winning books about psychology, cognitive science, linguistics and history. His latest book Rationality: What it is; why it seems scarce; why it matters was published in September. https://stevenpinker.com/publications/rationality-what-it-why-it-seems-so-scarce-and-why-it-matters More about Steven Pinker: https://stevenpinker.com/biocv Other books by Steven Pinker mentioned in episode The Better Angels of our Nature https://stevenpinker.com/publications/better-angels-our-nature Enlightenment Now https://stevenpinker.com/publications/enlightenment-now-case-reason-science-humanism-and-progress A couple of references in this episode that might be useful as further reading. Michael Ignatieff's book Fire and Ashes, about a failed career in politics https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/27/michael-ignatieff-fire-ashes-review Jonathan Rauch's book The Constitution of Knowledge, about the crisis of trust in institutions https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/26/the-constitution-of-knowledge-review-jonathan-rauch-trump Politics on the Couch has been chosen by Feedspot as one of the Top 25 UK Psychology Podcasts and Top 25 Political Science Podcasts on the web. https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_psychology_podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/political_science_podcasts This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

Ryan reads today's daily meditation and talks to author Steven Pinker about his new book Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, the importance of pursuing effective altruism, the responsibility of institutions to protect the common good, and more.Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive psychologist and a popular writer on language, mind, and human nature. Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and his academic specializations are visual cognition and developmental linguistics. Pinker is also the author of eight books and was named in Time's "The 100 Most Influential People in the World Today" in 2004.List your product on AppSumo between September 15th - November 17th and the first 400 offers to go live will receive $1000, the next 2000 to list a product get $250. And everyone who lists gets entered to be one of 10 lucky winners of $10k! Go to https://appsumo.com/ryanholiday to list your product today and cash in on this amazing deal.KiwiCo believes in the power of kids and that small lessons today can mean big, world-changing ideas tomorrow. KiwiCo is a subscription service that delivers everything your kids will need to make, create and play. Get 30% off your first month plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code STOIC at kiwico.com.SimpliSafe just launched their new Wireless Outdoor Security Camera. Get the new SimpliSafe Wireless Outdoor Security Camera, visit https://simplisafe.com/stoic. What's more, SimpliSafe is celebrating this new camera by offering 20% off your entire new system and your first month of monitoring service FREE, when you enroll in Interactive Monitoring. Again that's https://simplisafe.com/stoic.Uprising Food have cracked the code on healthy bread. Only 2 net carbs per serving, 6 grams of protein and 9 grams of fiber. They cover paleo, to clean keto, to simple low carb, to high fiber, to dairy free to grain free lifestyle. Uprising Food is offering our listeners ten dollars off the starter bundle. that includes two superfood cubes and four pack of freedom chips to try! go to uprisingfood.com/stoic and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Professor Steven Pinker, Ph.D., is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of multiple bestselling books on cognitive science and psycholinguistics, including Enlightenment Now, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Rationality (forthcoming). He has also been named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today” and Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.”

What does the future hold? A reign of world peace with stunning medical breakthroughs conquering death, illness and disease? Or a world where human beings have destroyed the web of living things and put our own existence at risk by playing with science we don’t fully understand? Must we think in terms of these extremes to create a positive future or prevent disaster? Join a panel of brilliant optimists and pessimists to understand some of the amazing risks and opportunities that lie before us. Tim Flannery is an Australian scientist, activist, author and editor of over twenty books, former Chief Scientist at the federal Climate Commission, and currently leader of the independent Climate Council. Elizabeth Kolbert is an American environmental journalist and author. She is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of several books, including Field Notes from a Catastrophe and The Sixth Extinction: An unnatural history. Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist and one of the world’s foremost writers on language, mind, and human nature. He is currently Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and his most recent book is The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why violence has declined. Jaan Tallinn is a founding engineer of Skype and Kazaa, a co-founder of personalised medicine company MetaMed, and a co-founder of the Centre for Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge.

Dr. Steven Pinker is a Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He conducts research on a number of topics, including visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. His work has received a number of prestigious prizes, including the Troland Research Prize from the National Academy of Sciences. In addition to his impressive scholarly work, Dr. Pinker has also drawn attention as a public intellectual. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, and has written nine books, including the New York Time best sellers, The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now. In this podcast, we discuss humanism and his popular books, trends of declining violence, and the general state of moral psychology. Leave a tip at: https://www.patreon.com/moralscience Transcript available at: https://www.ambercazzell.com/post/msp-ep39-stevenpinker APA citation: Cazzell, A. R. (Host). (2020, September 8). The Arrow of Moral Progress with Steven Pinker [Audio Podcast]. Retrieved from https://www.ambercazzell.com/post/msp-ep39-StevenPinker

Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. He is the author of The Language Instinct (1994), How the Mind Works (1997), Words and Rules (2000), The Blank Slate (2002), The Stuff of Thought (2007), The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) and Enlightenment Now (2018). For more, visit: https://stevenpinker.com/. ************* Want to find HumanProgress.org elsewhere on the internet? Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/HumanProgress.org/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/HumanProgress/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/HumanProgressorg/ *************

"Uncertainty" would not exactly be the first word that comes to mind when one thinks of Steven Pinker's current position in the world. But that wasn't always the case. There was actually a stretch in Steve's early career in which he found himself in the throws of uncertainty and anxiety. In this conversation, we dig into a lot of Steve's early career experiences, as well as his process as a writer. One of the things that stood out to me in what Steve said was that from early on he had an overarching sense that he wanted to study human nature. But it wasn't always precisely clear to him what that entailed -- or at least there were a number of paths he could've taken to get there. Obviously, he did quite a bit right throughout the process, but it was nonetheless fascinating to see the bets he made that paid off and how he balanced his options while equivocating about what the right move was. In addition to the nature of humans and their societies, we also talked about important subjects like the content of Steve's closet (including his notable collection of cowboy boots) and his advice for sourcing potential mates through literary and philosophical correspondence. Steve's official title is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. You will recognize him from his books -- including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Sense of Style, and Enlightenment Now -- as well as whatever mean thing Nassim Taleb has most recently tweeted about him. Be sure to keep an eye out for his forthcoming book on the tools of rationality. More info at: https://www.codykommers.com/podcast

------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter SubscribeStar: https://www.subscribestar.com/the-dissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ------------------Follow me on--------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT Anchor (podcast): https://anchor.fm/thedissenter Dr. Steven Pinker is a Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time and The Atlantic, and is the author of ten books, including The Language Instinct, How The Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Stuff of Thought, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, and most recently, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. In this episode, we talk go through some of the main topics Dr. Pinker tackles in his work. We start by discussing a new hypothesis put forth by Joe Henrich and his collaborators, about the possible influence the Catholic Church had on the evolution of our WEIRD psychology and the Enlightenment ideas. We then talk about cultural evolution, morality from an evolutionary perspective, and human progress. We also address if our folk psychology tracks scientific findings on human behavior. We also talk about language, and AI. Finally, we go through two questions coming from a patron, about the cognitive niche hypothesis, and the WEIRD problem. -- Follow Dr. Pinker's work: Faculty page: http://bit.ly/2Nx4rC6 Website: http://bit.ly/3abIVMN ResearchGate profile: http://bit.ly/2RkTcxI Books on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2R02Er6 Twitter handle: @sapinker -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: KARIN LIETZCKE, ANN BLANCHETTE, PER HELGE LARSEN, LAU GUERREIRO, JERRY MULLER, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BERNARDO SEIXAS, HERBERT GINTIS, RUTGER VOS, RICARDO VLADIMIRO, BO WINEGARD, CRAIG HEALY, OLAF ALEX, PHILIP KURIAN, JONATHAN VISSER, DAVID DIAS, ANJAN KATTA, JAKOB KLINKBY, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, JOHN CONNORS, PAULINA BARREN, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, DAN DEMETRIOU, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ARTHUR KOH, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, MAX BEILBY, COLIN HOLBROOK, SUSAN PINKER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, PABLO SANTURBANO, SIMON COLUMBUS, PHIL KAVANAGH, JORGE ESPINHA, CORY CLARK, AND MARK BLYTH! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, ROSEY, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, IAN GILLIGAN, SERGIU CODREANU, LUIS CAYETANO, AND MATTHEW LAVENDER! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, MICHAL RUSIECKI!

Host Aroop Mukharji interviews Dr. Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, about his new book, "Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress" (Viking 2018) and beer and mixed nuts.

Harvard's Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, offers advice to students on choosing a field of study. Series: "Excerpts" [Humanities] [Education] [Show ID: 34038]

Harvard's Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, offers advice to students on choosing a field of study. Series: "Excerpts" [Humanities] [Education] [Show ID: 34038]

Language is the main channel in which human beings share the contents of their consciousness. It offers a window into human nature, revealing the hidden workings of our thoughts, our emotions, and our social relationships. In his lecture, Prof Steven Pinker will explore an example of each: everyday metaphor as a window into human cognition; swearing and taboo words as a window into human emotion; and indirect speech-veiled threats and bribes, polite requests, and sexual come-ons as a window into human relationships. Professor Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Until 2003, he taught in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and Slate, and is the author of seven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, and The Blank Slate.Recorded on 6 June 2008 at the University of Edinburgh's McEwan Hall.

Professor Steven Pinker delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity". Contrary to the popular impression view that we are living in extraordinarily violent times, rates of violence at all scales have been in decline over the course of history. This lecture explores how this decline could have happened despite the existence of a constant human nature. Steven Pinker is Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He conducts research on language and cognition, which has won prizes from the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the American Psychological Association, and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.Recorded on Wednesday 29 May 2013 at McEwan Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Steven Pinker is a cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. His new book "Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress" will be released in February 2018.

Steven Pinker is a cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. His new book "Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress" will be released in February 2018.

Why do humans engage in violence? Why do we cooperate in peace? How has violence changed over the course of human history? Are we living in unusually violent times? Steven Pinker presents evidence that violence has decreased over time because our peaceable motives have overridden our violent ones, and that media-driven illusions fool us into thinking that violence is constantly rising. Steven Pinker is a Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He is an experimental psychologist and one of the world’s foremost writers on language, mind, and human nature. He writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time and The Atlantic. Steven Pinker is the author of ten books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Stuff of Thought, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and most recently, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. LINKS: Steven Pinker's Survival Symposium video. The Survival Symposium video playlist on YouTube. About the Survival Symposium. "You may think the world is falling apart. Steven Pinker is here to tell you it isn't."    SUPPORT SCIENCE: Support Origin Stories and the science we talk about. Your donation will be doubled! The Leakey Foundation is a nonprofit organization with a mission to increase scientific research and public understanding of human origins, evolution, behavior, and survival. SPONSORED BY: Adept Word Management

DescriptionProduct DescriptionThe author of the explosive Atlantic cover story “What ISIS Really Wants” has written the definitive, electrifying account of the strategy, psychology, and theology driving the Islamic State. Tens of thousands of men and women have left comfortable, privileged lives to join the Islamic State and kill for it. To them, its violence is beautiful and holy, and the caliphate a fulfillment of prophecy and the only place on earth where they can live and die as Muslims. The Way of the Strangers is an intimate journey into the minds of the Islamic State's true believers. From the streets of Cairo to the mosques of London, Graeme Wood interviews supporters, recruiters, and sympathizers of the group. We meet an Egyptian tailor who once made bespoke suits for Paul Newman and now wants to live, finally, under Shariah; a Japanese convert who believes that the eradication of borders—one of the Islamic State's proudest achievements—is a religious imperative; and a charming, garrulous Australian preacher who translates the group's sermons and threats into English and is accused of recruiting for the organization. We also learn about a prodigy of Islamic rhetoric, now stripped of the citizenship of the nation of his birth and determined to see it drenched in blood. Wood speaks with non–Islamic State Muslim scholars and jihadists, and explores the group's idiosyncratic, coherent approach to Islam. The Islamic State is bent on murder and apocalypse, but its followers find meaning and fellowship in its utopian dream. Its first caliph, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, has declared that he is the sole legitimate authority for Muslims worldwide. The theology, law, and emotional appeal of the Islamic State are key to understanding it—and predicting what its followers will do next. Through character study and analysis, Wood provides a clear-eyed look at a movement that has inspired so many people to abandon or uproot their families. Many seek death—and they will be the terror threat of the next decade, as they strike back against the countries fighting their caliphate. Just as Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower informed our understanding of Al Qaida, Graeme Wood's The Way of the Strangers will shape how we see a new generation of terrorists. Praise for The Way of the Strangers “Readers are taken on a global journey to meet the frothing fans of ISIS. . . . Wood wants to know these people, to get in their skin, to understand how they see the world. Unlike most journalists writing about Islam today, there is no partisan axe to grind here, no hidden agenda to subtly advance.” —New Republic “The best way to defeat the Islamic State is to understand it. And to do that, the best place to start is [ The Way of the Strangers]. . . . A series of gripping, fascinating portraits. . . . Wood has the talented journalist's skill for interview and observation. He's an astute psychologist and a good writer to boot. . . . It's a great read. But more importantly, Wood's book reveals truths about ISIS that are hiding in plain sight—but that our leaders make themselves willfully ignorant of. They ought to read his book, too.” —The Week “[Graeme Wood] shows, convincingly, that the stifling and abhorrent practices of the Islamic State are rooted in Islam itself—not mainstream Islam, but in scriptures and practices that have persisted for centuries. . . . The Islamic State, such as it is, is a dangerous place, and Wood's book amounts to a tour around its far edges.” —Dexter Filkins, The New York Times Book Review ReviewPraise for The Way of the Strangers “Readers are taken on a global journey to meet the frothing fans of ISIS. . . . [Graeme] Wood wants to know these people, to get in their skin, to understand how they see the world. Unlike most journalists writing about Islam today, there is no partisan axe to grind here, no hidden agenda to subtly advance. . . . To these troubled men, Islam is not an opiate of the masses; it is a euphoric, reality-bending, and ultimately self-annihilating psychedelic.” —New Republic “[Graeme Wood] shows, convincingly, that the stifling and abhorrent practices of the Islamic State are rooted in Islam itself—not mainstream Islam, but in scriptures and practices that have persisted for centuries. . . . The Islamic State, such as it is, is a dangerous place, and Wood's book amounts to a tour around its far edges.” —Dexter Filkins, The New York Times Book Review “Worthy of Joseph Conrad . . . In a field where there has admittedly been little competition, [Wood's] book ranks as the funniest yet written on Islamic State. As in many a British sitcom, the comedy mostly emerges from the disequilibrium between the scale of his characters' pretensions and ambitions and the banality of their day-to-day lives. . . . Gripping, sobering and revelatory.” —New Statesman (UK) “The best way to defeat the Islamic State is to understand it. And to do that, the best place to start is [ The Way of the Strangers]. . . . A series of gripping, fascinating portraits. . . . Wood has the talented journalist's skill for interview and observation. He's an astute psychologist and a good writer to boot. . . . It's a great read. But more importantly, Wood's book reveals truths about ISIS that are hiding in plain sight—but that our leaders make themselves willfully ignorant of. They ought to read his book, too.” —The Week “Indispensable and gripping . . . From Mosul to Melbourne, from Cairo to Tokyo, from London to Oslo, from Connecticut to California, Graeme Wood's quest to understand the Islamic State is a round-the-world journey to the end of the night. As individuals, the men he encounters are misfits, even losers. But their millenarian Islamist ideology makes them the most dangerous people on the planet.” —Niall Ferguson, senior fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, author of The War of the World “Over the course of its short life, the Islamic State has inspired millions, thousands of whom have rallied to its cause in search of a glorious death. But why? Are its devotees nothing more than sadists and two-bit mafiosi for whom religion is a fig leaf and who will fade away in the face of military defeat? In this essential book, Graeme Wood draws on more than a decade of reporting to demolish these and other comforting deceptions. The Islamic State's devotees are true believers indeed, and their nightmarish vision will haunt our world for decades to come, regardless of what happens on the battlefield.” —Reihan Salam, executive editor, National Review “Graeme Wood is America's foremost interpreter of ISIS as a world-historical phenomenon. In The Way of the Strangers, he has given us the definitive work to date on the origins, plans, and meaning of the world's most dangerous terrorist organization. Wood is a fearless, relentlessly curious, and magnetically interesting writer who takes us on an intellectual and theological journey to the darkest places on the planet, yet he manages to do this without despairing for our collective future. This book is a triumph of journalism.” —Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief, The Atlantic Praise for Graeme Wood's “What ISIS Really Wants” “An intelligent and detailed account of the ideology that animates the Islamic State.” —Fareed Zakaria, CNN, author of The Post-American World “One of the most important essays this year.” —David Brooks, The New York Times, author of The Road to Character “Fascinating, terrifying, occasionally blackly humorous.” —Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature “Mr. Wood's piece is bracing because it is fearless. . . . It is going to change the debate.” —Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal, author of What I Saw at the Revolution “A rare, genuine must-read . . . I felt challenged, even provoked, through it all.” —Shadi Hamid, the Brookings Institution, author of Islamic ExceptionalismAbout the AuthorGraeme Wood is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has written for The New Republic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg Businessweek, The American Scholar, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and many other publications. He was the 2014–2015 Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and he teaches in the political science department at Yale University.

June 3 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Pinker has also taught at Stanford and MIT. His research on vision, language, and social relations has won prizes from the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and the American Psychological Association. This interview aired on Bloomberg Radio.

My guest today is Steven Pinker, a Canadian-born American cognitive scientist, psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. He covers phenomena that have traditionally not been looked at scientifically such as: visual perception, war and peace, and differences in writing styles. He has authored numerous books with his most recent being, “The Sense of Style.” The topics are his books The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century and Blank Slate. In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss: Evolution Natural selection War statistics Cognitive science Evolutionary psychology Jump in! --- I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Michael Covel interviews Steven Pinker. Steven is a Canadian-born American cognitive scientist, psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. He covers phenomena that have traditionally not been looked at scientifically such as: visual perception, war and peace, and differences in writing styles. He has authored numerous books with his most recent being, “The Sense of Style.”Steven knew he was an atheist from the age of 13. He never had a big revelation because God was never a real part of his consciousness. However, his religious awareness as a young man helped to guide his career into using science, and science only in his research. He puts science as the decider of “what is.”Michael asks, “How has human behavior been shaped by evolution.” Steven based his book, “The Blank Slate” around the idea that humans aren’t born with a blank slate. He says that to have the ability to analyze speech and comprehend speech you have to have something there at birth. If the mind has a built in structure, where did it come from? Steven argues it comes from evolution and natural selection. He uses a combination of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology to back up his theories. He also covers why there has been so much controversy surrounding the idea that we are not born with a blank slate and why our common sense so often clashes with our political conviction. One reason he offers is because many think the idea of equality means that we should be indistinguishable, essentially like clones. He argues that fairness should not be based on sameness.Michael goes back to the blank slate concept and asks, “Are we born good or bad? And explain what you have learned throughout your career about the evolution of language.” Steven says we have some good and some bad. The brain is massively complex and layered. There is so much going on in the brain when someone speaks and when someone listens and retains the information. Eggs and sperm have about 70 mutations. That is how we have natural selection that makes someone run faster, see better, think faster, etc.Next, Michael and Steven dive into the history of violence, where it came from and where we stand today. Steven says you can’t get an accurate view of violence from the news. They find the worst violence and promote it. The rate of homicides have plummeted over the years. There are far less wars going on now than in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and so on. Since the end of WWII there has been a steady decline. Civil wars have still occurred but they are far less plentiful than they use to be and death rates are also less than they use to be. Steven’s next book, due to be published in 2017, is a defense of science, reason and humanism as a source of aiding in morality. In this episode of Trend Following Radio: Evolution Natural selection War statistics Cognitive science Evolutionary psychology

Jerry A. Coyne is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. He received a B.S. in Biology from the College of William and Mary and a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology at Harvard University. After a postdoctoral fellowship at The University of California at Davis, he took his first academic position as assistant professor in the Department of Zoology at The University of Maryland. In 1996 he joined the faculty of The University of Chicago and has been there ever since. Coyne’s work has been largely concerned with the genetics of species differences, aimed at understanding the evolutionary processes that produce new species. He has written 115 scientific papers and more than 130 popular articles, book reviews, and columns, as well as a scholarly book about his research area—Speciation, co-authored with H. Allen Orr—and a trade book about the evidence for evolution—Why Evolution is True, which was a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible. Coyne is a contributor The New York Times, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The Nation, USA Today, and other popular periodicals.Many people are confused about science—about what it is, how it is practiced, and why it is the most powerful method for understanding ourselves and the universe that our species has ever devised. In Faith vs. Fact, Coyne has written a wonderful primer on what it means to think scientifically, showing that the honest doubts of science are better—and more noble—than the false certainties of religion. This is a profound and lovely book. It should be required reading at every college on earth.—Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, The Moral Landscape, and Waking Up The distinguished geneticist Jerry Coyne trains his formidable intellectual firepower on religious faith, and it’s hard to see how any reasonable person can resist the conclusions of his superbly argued book. Though religion will live on in the minds of the unlettered, in educated circles faith is entering its death throes. Symptomatic of its terminal desperation are the ‘apophatic’ pretensions of ‘sophisticated theologians,’ for whose empty obscurantism Coyne reserves his most devastating sallies. Read this book and recommend it to two friends.—Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion The truth is not always halfway between two extremes: some propositions are flat wrong. In this timely and important book, Jerry Coyne expertly exposes the incoherence of the increasingly popular belief that you can have it both ways: that God (or something God-ish, God-like, or God-oid) sort-of exists; that miracles kind-of happen; and that the truthiness of dogma is somewhat-a-little-bit-more-or-less-who’s-to-say-it-isn’t like the truths of science and reason.—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University; author of The Better Angels of Our Nature

Morning Prayers service with speaker Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology, Harvard University, on Tuesday, September 30, 2014.

What does the future hold? A reign of world peace with stunning medical breakthroughs conquering death, illness and disease? Or a world where human beings have destroyed the web of living things and put our own existence at risk by playing with science we don’t fully understand? Must we think in terms of these extremes to create a positive future or prevent disaster? Join a panel of brilliant optimists and pessimists to understand some of the amazing risks and opportunities that lie before us.Tim Flannery is an Australian scientist, activist, author and editor of over twenty books, former Chief Scientist at the federal Climate Commission, and currently leader of the independent Climate Council.Elizabeth Kolbert is an American environmental journalist and author. She is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of several books, including Field Notes from a Catastrophe and The Sixth Extinction: An unnatural history.Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist and one of the world’s foremost writers on language, mind, and human nature. He is currently Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and his most recent book is The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why violence has declined.Jaan Tallinn is a founding engineer of Skype and Kazaa, a co-founder of personalised medicine company MetaMed, and a co-founder of the Centre for Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge.

STEVEN PINKER (https://www.edge.org/memberbio/steven_pinker) is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of ten books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and_ The Sense of Style_ (September). The Conversation: https://www.edge.org/conversation/steven_pinker-writing-in-the-21st-century

Language is the main channel in which human beings share the contents of their consciousness. It offers a window into human nature, revealing the hidden workings of our thoughts, our emotions, and our social relationships. In his lecture, Prof Steven Pinker will explore an example of each: everyday metaphor as a window into human cognition; swearing and taboo words as a window into human emotion; and indirect speech-veiled threats and bribes, polite requests, and sexual come-ons as a window into human relationships. Professor Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Until 2003, he taught in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and Slate, and is the author of seven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, and The Blank Slate.Recorded on 6 June 2008 at the University of Edinburgh's McEwan Hall.

Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker was the guest at the Kentucky Author Forum on Oct. 2, 2012, interviewed by NPR's Neal Conan. Pinker is a Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He conducts research on language and cognition and is the author of numerous books, including The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature, and most recently, The Better Angels of Our Nature. In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker examines human violence through the centuries. We’ve all had the experience of reading about a bloody war or shocking crime and asking, “What is the world coming to?” But we seldom ask, “How bad was the world in the past?” In the book, Pinker argues that violence in the past was actually much worse than now. Tribal warfare was nine times as deadly as war and genocide in the 20th century. The murder rate of Medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Slavery, sadistic punishments, and frivolous executions were unexceptionable features of life for millennia, then suddenly were targeted for abolition. Wars between developed countries have vanished, and even in the developing world, wars kill a fraction of the people they did a few decades ago. Rape, battering, hate crimes, deadly riots, child abuse, cruelty to animals—all substantially down. How could this have happened, if human nature has not changed? What led people to stop sacrificing children, stabbing each other at the dinner table, or burning cats and disemboweling criminals as forms of popular entertainment? The key to explaining the decline of violence, Pinker argues, is to understand the inner demons that incline us toward violence (such as revenge, sadism, and tribalism) and the better angels that steer us away. Thanks to the spread of government, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism, we increasingly control our impulses, empathize with others, bargain rather than plunder, debunk toxic ideologies, and deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence.

Professor Steven Pinker delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity".Contrary to the popular impression view that we are living in extraordinarily violent times, rates of violence at all scales have been in decline over the course of history. This lecture explores how this decline could have happened despite the existence of a constant human nature. Steven Pinker is Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He conducts research on language and cognition, which has won prizes from the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the American Psychological Association, and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.Recorded on Wednesday 29 May 2013 at McEwan Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Steven Pinker delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity". Contrary to the popular impression view that we are living in extraordinarily violent times, rates of violence at all scales have been in decline over the course of history. This lecture explores how this decline could have happened despite the existence of a constant human nature. Steven Pinker is Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He conducts research on language and cognition, which has won prizes from the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the American Psychological Association, and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. Recorded on Wednesday 29 May 2013 at McEwan Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

What is happening to the intellectual field called the humanities? Powerful political and corporate forces are encouraging, even demanding science and math-based curricula to prepare for a globalized and technological world; the astronomical rise in the cost of higher education has resulted in a drumbeat of complaints, some which question the value of the traditional liberal arts and humanities. And of course, and far more complexly, the emerging storage and communications systems of the digital age are transforming all fields of knowledge and all knowledge industries. How has and how will the humanities cope with these challenges? How have digital tools and systems already begun to transform humanistic education? How may they do so in the future? More broadly, is there a significant role for the humanities in our digital future? Our panelists will explore these and related questions in what is expected to be the first in a continuing series on this subject. Alison Bylerly is provost and executive vice president and professor of English at Middlebury College. Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and previously taught at MIT. He is the author of many essays and books including The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature and How the Mind Works.