He is a political activist . A thinker for people who don't think.

​@@gledatelj1979 On what do you base this comment? Have you ever read the Better Angels of Our Nature? If so, did you check the citations? Have you ever collected and analyzed data for a thesis project? Are you published in a reputable journal? Show us the fountain of your wisdom. (Without pulling your pants down!)

Pinker is a midwit. If he had even an ounce of genuine intellect he would know that the reason there aren't more deaths by homicide is simply due to much, much more advanced medical technology. In the inner cities in the US there is currently incomparably more violence than in the past - and with much more powerful weapons. There is just a corresponding level of medical care that mitigates this.

Well said.

@@_sol.invictus__ Thank you!

Just as a personal comment, I do not agree with this part; "On the other hand, a portion of the population has no internal monologue, and they still seem to organize and convey their thoughts as well as anyone else." People lacking an internal monologue tend to be followers of someone who can be their inner voice.

@@danielpaulson8838 Your comment raises some questions. 1. Are you somebody without an internal monologue who relies on others to guide you through life? 2. Have you discussed this with others for whom this is the case? 3. Can you share links to any research or interviews that inform the opinion you have put forth? 4. If the answer to any of these questions in, "No," do you simply _assume_ that that lacking an inner monologue is some kind of handicap, requiring external aid? I ask these questions because, despite reading several articles and interviews on this topic, I can't find any data (not even anecdotal evidence) that addresses the claim you have put forth.

I’m not really sure that’s true. Jobs and Gates weren’t striving for wealth, they wanted to change the world. Rockefeller was actually quite passionate about kerosene being the most economical way to keep people warm. Robert Woodruff of Coca-Cola gave away a fortune because he wanted to see Atlanta prosper. I’m sure you’re right about many; money is neither righteous nor evil- but we are.

You're not completely wrong, McKenzie Bezos is having a difficult time actually getting rid of the money she got from the divorce because how much is in the fund actually generates on its own @@fbcpraise

Amazing - very un-American🙃

Sounds fair - your forebears invented it.

I've often thought that logical reasoning and philosophy should be compulsory secondary school subjects, and one foreign language too.

@@bellakrinkle9381

Probably has lots to do with it being written 2000 yrs ago by humans, right?

maybe because life and humans are complex which I think you know already but somehow expect simple one-dimensional answers for everything. Science tells us light is both a wave and a particle which is an explicit paradox you do not blink an eye. However, morality a much more complex issue you expect simple answers, simple books, and a simple God. most of these paradoxes are resolved by context with a little effort. The violence and laws in the bible are really just a reflection of our true nature. The real issue most people have with the bible is that we want to decide what is good and evil for ourselves we do not like to be told what to do and gods are supposed to serve us not the other way around. which the bible concedes, in the first few pages. The fact that you even discuss the issue of morality is a biblical concept and worldview because for most of human history and in most civilizations morality was not even a concept anyone cared about.

Bible was written by pagans and polytheists that practiced brutality, rape culture, pedophilia, etc. Christianity is modern day polytheism

​@@midnightwatchman1what on earth are you talking about??? Morality has been addressed by all cultures, in one form or another. The confucians and Daoists would have though that the Israelites were immoral savages if they had read their book. The fact that morality is relative to the culture doesn't mean that you are right in thinking you own the truth to absolute morality or something like that. And please don't compare the "conflict" in quantum mechanics to the conflict of having to reconcile "turning the other cheek" with "hang their heads against the sun"

@@jeremyserwer2586 Yes because they just made stuff up because they wanted to control their people with scary religion.

Pñ

Great Retreat (Serbia) of October 1915: _The retreat took the remnants of the army together with the King, hundreds of thousands of civilian refugees as well as war prisoners, across some of the roughest terrains in Europe in the middle of winter, enduring harsh weather, treacherous roads, and enemy raids. Between November 1915 and January 1916, during the journey across the mountains, 77,455 soldiers and 160,000 civilians froze, starved to death, died of disease or were killed by enemies._ Serbian soldiers 77,455 dead 77,278 missing Serbian civilians 160,000 dead Habsburg POWs 47,000 dead So I'm guessing Pinker thinks that baseline level of population disruption more than 100 years ago is hard to surpass. That's just one march, from one country, in a war that spanned the world. _Estimates of the total number of deaths in the Syrian Civil War, by opposition activist groups, vary between 503,064 and about 613,407 as of March 2023._ You watched the Syrian Civil War on your cell phone. Chances of the afflicted finding refuge: high. You did not watch the Serbian Great Retreat on CNN. Nobody did. Much smaller population (circa 4.3 million). Chances of the afflicted finding refuge if you didn't survive the march: low. I doubt this calamity was much covered at all in its true horror until long after the fact. What you don't know until far too late can't hurt you. Half the point of the book was to factor out availability bias. There's a human tendency to believe we're living in end times. But it's objectively not true. What is true is that the sword hanging over us is far more deadly than ever before. So the risks are worse, but the reality is better. Risks are hypotheticals until they actually happen. I'm sure that book came out before the main event of the Ukraine crisis. The disruption in the Ukraine is horrific. But many Ukrainian refugees drove to Poland, where many found modern housing and employment, or they climbed on board modern jet aircraft and flew to Canada (which already had a large Ukrainian community). If they flew Air Canada, they suffered the small packets of peanuts and the overpriced airline pillows. The Serbian refugees trudged in winter through frigid, snow-clogged alpine mountain passes with insufficient clothing and all too soon, no food at all. Not all plights are created equal. Concerning Syria and Ukraine, one common factor is Putin trying to roll back time to the glory days of the Stalinist 1950s, and largely succeeding. Trump is also a fan of the 1950s, which he recalls fondly. He hasn't yet succeeded in rolling America back to the dark ages, but he's still trying. Trump is old, and Putin is no spring chicken, either. I personally classify both as transient flashbacks from a bygone era, but I totally understand if others chose to view them as symptoms of present malaise.

@@afterthesmash I started reading Doctor Zhivago and was a bit amazed at the targeting of civilians even then. There are all kinds of "non-war" disruptions to agriculture and fuel production that also kill people. In the Indian wars the way the US generals thought to end it was to cut off the food supplies which meant killing the buffaloes. The people starving to death probably weren't counted. Thank you for such a nicely answered answer though the topic wasn't nice.

Bashir Assad: "It's not my problem Idlib starves"

@@teslashark on a human level I don't understand it. It's like Madeline Albright not having problems with children dying in Iraq. Like all the people drowning in Mediterranean near Italy, do they count as casualties?

huh?

I think anyone who dedicates any significant time and effort to the study of human well-being _must_ eventually study the local, regional, and global impact(s) of religion, especially if one genuinely wants to _improve_ the quality of life for as many people as possible. After all, in very broad terms, there are many things Religion does right...and many things Religion does _wrong._ If we can objectively catalog which is which, then it would go a long way to streamlining the journey to better future. Yeah? As for the origin and comparison of languages, it is _indeed_ fascinating! Evolution of Vocabulary: Caesar, Kaiser, and Czar are all derived from the same Greek root word.

Unfortunately it is on the readers. And they are a bigger issue.

The writers of the Bible had a sense of humour, mastery of irony? Just like Jane Austen eh?

@daydays12 if you allow the Bible to be and not add your preconceptions, it is full of humour and irony.

What an absolutely pointless schoolboy comment.

@@wowjef I have been wondering about this for a very long time. More than two decades, at least.

@@NSOcarth ​ It is because of the complexity of their ideas. 'I adhered scrupulously to the precept of that brilliant theoretical physicist L. Boltzmann, according to whom matters of elegance ought to be left to the tailor and to the cobbler'. - Albert Einsten, Preface to 'Relativity-The Special and General Theory', 1916, Paraphrased as: If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

All the more reason to leave it behind...no good reason to still run our lives based on bronze age rules.

The mohel era?

the bible is still one of the most profound works ever delivered in this earth. As for the "savage hebrews" the biased view is just mind boggling. I could think off the top of my head of at least 10 examples of moral horrors of the very modern 20th/21th centuries that would utterly shock any ancient hebrew at any time in history. You and your culture are the last sources I'd use for a decent morality. I'd pick ancient hebrews any day of the week.

Yes! I think we need to pull back from the thinking that there is only one Utopia. As David Graeber once said, “Utopias? Sure. The more the merrier.”

Scaling locally is still scaling.

@@kalonicamcquesten692 Probably too easy for hostile forces to take over if energy is concentrated in one spot. Wherever there's the human fallibility of desire at the expense of others there will be the potential for hostile forces. Man cannot create a utopia. After millennia of attempts there are still bad apples in the bunch and there's no indication anywhere that we will one day be able to live without any bad apples.

nobody remotely concious mentions wind on anything... its beyond a joke

"Scalable" here means "usable". Wind, hydro, and solar are only feasible in specific geographies during specific times of the day. Any locality that would want to depend on them would require massive power storage (battery banks) and any locality that cannot generate energy that way would require very expensive transmission to receive that power. Also remember that we don't have any more in the carbon budget to spend. Any solution we pursue should be focused on having the smallest carbon footprint possible to manufacture, transport, and install. I believe we should be looking at nuclear micro-reactors which would have a much smaller physical footprint than renewables, can run constantly, are easy to manufacture and install, and could be distributed around the country for grid resiliency.

Use an ad blocker and you will not have to suffer the ads.

I agree with you in association with Intel.

"Insane " For a modicum of sanity install an ad blocker. I swear I'd have to cut my internet connection without one.

GOP should be in favor of nukes and realize the upside of climate change for them. But, no.

Yup. "humanity" simply is b e s t i a l i t y ! Words can hide so much . . . .

Is this the right place for that?

@@willmercury the Mandelbrot is pertinent to everything

My mathematician friend disagrees. In fact he says its just a curiosity and ideas that its somehow the key to the universe is just a pipe dream by people who dont really understand it.

I mean your trying to tie a huge host of super comlex things together in a very simple way. I dont think it wise.

Nano-thing... - Organism X is polyploid. - Organism X exhibits polyploidy. ('Poly' is a better prefix than 'multi' - 'poly' keeps the word wholly Greek. All best

💯

Someone had to say it.

@@thespiritofhegel3487 Sorry guys, your break is over, get back on the salesfloor as we have women's pumps at 20% off today.

The shallow side is yours. Networks tend to scale on the square. When you go from 2 billion people to 8 billion people in roughly 100 year (a factor of four), you would expect 16× as many problems. That's basic network allometry. You would also expect 16× as many solutions. Relative to the problems people cared about solving 100 years ago, the solutions have greatly outpaced the problems. Relative to the problems people care about now, the ratio is less convincing. But how is that supposed to work? Do you have a time machine up your sleeve I don't know about? Solutions lag behind problems. Is that a hard concept to master? If you don't get that, I suppose you would find Pinker shallow: he's looking backward and finding little evidence of solutions preceding problems. What a dim bulb indeed!

To expand on that thought, if things were physically constructed, they might scale linearly. But I've been informed by the noisiest flock of seagulls in human history that everything that matters in 2023 is socially constructed. On social networks, things scale on the square. Another factor here is that as you go back further in history, is the great frequency of atrocities that nobody even bothered to tot up. No-one had time for pushing beads. The survival algorithm was to grab your abacus and run like hell. The first time I encountered this rank BS was in the People's Church in Toronto in the early 1980s. I believe this was the first evangelical church in Toronto to televise it's Sunday services. I believe it also ran a private school on the side. They invited prominent guests such as Hal Lindsay. I saw a few of these, because I was rooming at the time with a devout member. One of these guys stood up there with the thesis that you could that end times were near because of the great proliferation of new diseases. This is right around the time that HIV became a thing, and might have dog-whistled some devout gay bashing. Why did we have so many new diseases in the early 1980s than in 1950? I'll give you one guess and it rhymes with x-ray. Yes, the advent of advanced medical diagnostic tools caused medicine to realize that many conditions previously lumped together (and treated rather badly as a result) were actually distinct conditions, each of which needed a different therapeutic course. What we now know about all the things in the world trying to kill us has expanded 10× if not 100×. The knowing of all this was hard work that occupied generations of human kind. But I suppose you would argue that by naming these things we created these things-conjured them up out of pure language. That would put you in the Hal Lindsay boat (though I'm not sure you would make good eschatological bedfellows). If you think that we created thousands of distinct cancer diagnoses merely by naming them, then all that hard work was regress not progress. I see your point. Very sophisticated. Not shallow at all. Worthless, but not shallow. That's the important thing.

@@afterthesmash Looks like I managed to get misunderstood in merely one sentence. I’ve never denied the intrinsic difficulty of problem solving in real time. I question the means by which one diagnose a problem. Given Pinker’s interpretative framework I really doubt a time machine would be of any help. He has the awareness of a goldfish when it comes to realizing what kind of metaphysical paradigm underlies every single aspect of his thought. He uses rationality and common sense like a child who’ve got an A in math and tries to lecture his classmates in English literature. He ignores he’s the product of a postmodern environment in which over access to information inflated his self-perceived knowledge. That’s the story of how one ends up reducing a deep human problem (political stability) to an engineering problem (cure diseases, preventing natural atrocities, physically surviving) His lack of awareness doubled with a poor knowledge of the human condition (he once suggested that easy access to entertainment is a step towards happiness) renders him utterly unable to appreciate the human intricacies underlying the development of moral and political philosophy in history. The sheer difficulty in translating an individual’s ideal into an ideal governance has a continuous and rich conceptual history since antiquity. It has evolved dialectically through history and cannot be bypassed in order to contextualize our current situation. A simple “bible bad, enlightment good” won’t do it. The contempt Pinker has for ancient thought prevents him from seriously studying those subjects (a very common issue in our day and age), blinding him irreversibly.

Or the religion of the self.

Because the central theme of the conversation is The BIBLE. You obviously need to learn about critical thinking.

@elizabethk3238 You don't know critical thinking." Ok Mrs tight cheeks. I've seen many talks by S. Pinker. I even have one of his books aka How the Brain Works. His main topic over the span of many years is how we are now in a better place than our ancestors. He compares us to those who lived in medieval times. Well, sure. I knew this when I was 13 years old. Thanks to our education system. I'm pushing the topic of ok, let's get over this wall already. It's too big a subject here but I am following the history of 1. God worship to 2. Divinely appointed king worship. 3. The Aristocracy 'worship' - I know this sounds odd but in a sense we still seem to need or want on a subconscious to be ruled by a higher class... nevermind a deity already. It's the 21st century. 4. The mercantile stage which gave us banks and all the stuff that comes with it and overtime undercut the previous stages. So now we are all still beholden to money and......still too many are still beholden to the God of the Bible. S. Pinker could step up to the plate like Peter Joseph or Jaques Fresco or even Noam Chomsky for God's sake to address the real elephant in the room like say how war and money go hand-in-hand. And this is just one of the many pathological behaviors that are running things....I recommend reading some of the literature regarding the state of things on the big scale which has gotten you I warrant under its thumb. Watch where you worship. Dip. Pip. And cheerio.

He was fooled when he said that.

and yet nobody claimed his prize

yes...I've got to the lunch bit and can't stand more...turning it off ..NOW

There are many more interpretations of Torah. If you say 70, that's another dogma pinker puts into the same bag. Torah and any other text us no different that any other story we make up. It has abundance of memetic historical layers and we can dissect them forever, not once making them either real or superior to anything nature can do through its cleverest species (plural).

And you don’t seem to be informed that the biggest existential problem facing mankind is not the collapse of our oceans from pollution but the question: to be? or not to be?

what.....

@@wasdwasdedsf You don't understand the question "to be or not to be"?

In what sense is considering humans to be a biological species mind narrowing and argumentative?

@@BlacksmithTWD the most important and obvious aspects , which are we are intellectually and morally bound. The idea that Pinker promotes is the these most fundamental aspects can be considered as no more than features of any other creature. No more fundamental that the behaviour of snails or sharks.

@@patricksee10 Biology is one of the hard sciences and as such a scientific model of reality, not a moral model of reality. I'm not sure what you mean with 'intellectually bound' but to be an intellectual requires the ability to read, are you excluding the vast amount of human beings who can't or couldn't read? Had Pinker stated something like that we were 'nothing more than a biological species' you might have had a point. When I say that a stop sign is an octagon, it doesn't negate the function of the sign nor does it propose an argument in favor or against stop signs, it merely describes it's shape. A short necked giraffe and a mute human being both lack the main characteristic of their species, and as such their chance of having fertile offspring is greatly reduced. Whithin the realm of biology there is no fundamental difference I can think of.

@@BlacksmithTWD a stop sign is nothing but paint on metal in different colours. That’s what it’s in physical objective terms. That stop sign has zero connection with motor vehicles stopping in a certain location or indeed any other meaning. The stop sign has no meaning of itself. Biology is not that. Biology is brimming with philosophy and morality

@@patricksee10 I guess you happen to apply quite a different dictionary when it comes to the word biology. Mine sais : "biology : the science of life or living matter in all its forms and phenomena, especially with reference to origin, growth, reproduction, structure, and behavior."

consensus is not the same thing as unanimity; you can have consensus without unanimity. It is true there are areas of science where there is neither consensus nor unanimity. Some of the social sciences are that way. It depends on the subject. There's pretty much consensus on Newton's laws of gravity as modified by Einstein being true. For example, there are possibilities that Dark Matter (among other unknowns) violates the conclusions of that consensus on gravity, but it's very unlikely.

What is the value of consensus in science? If observation conflicts with consensus, which do you go with?

You are correct. The Bible does not teach moral behavior. Nor do it’s authors. What is moral about mass genocide? Not only of the offensive humans but every other creature walking, crawling, swimming, and flying. What is moral about forcing a woman to marry her rapist? Or allowing Your most faithful follower to be tormented and tortured for years so that You can win a bet with your adversary? So God sent his only begotten son to pay for the sins of the people that He had created, knowing that he had created a flawed creature. I guess there is nothing a little human sacrifice won’t cure. Can you tell me why Satan is blamed for the evil that God created? The best part of the Bible is that it is a collection of myths and legends that has very few facts within the covers.

Also extremely simplistic. Your perspective is wrong: because they were raped they were seen as less valuable because no one would have wanted to marry them after that, and so to spare them an impoverished future the rapist was forced to marry her and provide for her. It wasn't a punishment of the woman but a punishment of the rapist. The story of Job was to work through how to understand suffering. It might seem that God is simply making a bet with Satan and that's it, but there's much more going on. Suffering is redemptive and can make us better people if we let God work in us. Try not to be too simplistic too

My favourite Bible story is Lot and his 2 daughters 😊

​@SP-ct2rj a punishment for the rapist 😅😅😅 forcing a woman to marry her rapist, yous are sick minded.

Great. Another simplistic approach. Did women have equal rights just 20 years ago? How about blacks and whites? Now imagine at a time when people thought the greatest empire ever was the size of Switzerland. Imagine a time before Roman law or Babylonian law. Most sound minded people wouldn't want to live then. Now see the law from that perspective.

there will always be false religion, and then true faith. your throwing out the good with the bad. it is not hate to confront evil. the bible is the source of morality and those who ignore it pay the price. this is proven by how evil america has become. we are in worse shape than ever before. this is what happens when you have a anything goes attitude. freedom without responsibility leads to anarchy. the bible is not horrifying, our behaviour is. your monologue is nonsense.

Anyone who can read the christian genocide manual, aka the bible, and not recoil in horror and revulsion at the gratuitously cruel atrocities committed or commanded by the brutal, barbaric, bloodthirsty god therein, has suspended all pity, empathy and compassion.

many people would just make it up. projecting agency is a human thing.

Talk about cherry-picking! 🤣

@@woodygilson3465 Yup, it's al a la-carte.

Even reading ONLY the new testament will not lead you to that conclusion. And reading the old testament will NOT lead you to that conclusion!

@@spitfireresearchinc.7972 "Even reading ONLY the new testament will not lead you to that conclusion. " As Hitch used to say : "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." However the contra evidence is clearly there: Just reading matthew 22 : 37-39 within the new testament already provides : "37 Jesus replied: "`Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' [2] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: `Love your neighbor as yourself.'" Perhaps you should try include an argument for your conclusions before posting them.

@@BlacksmithTWD there's plenty of damnation in the new testament- you can't just cherry pick the nice parts. In Matthew, Jesus is particularly hard on hypocrites, which is fair enough. Not that argument about the books people wrote about their imaginary friends is of much use either way.

He is a competent thinker whithin his field of expertise. There are many experts capable of being a competent thinker whithin their field of expertise but not so much outside.

The scientific consensus is very clear about this topic.

Their conclusions are based on the solid conclusions derived from the work of climate scientists.

@@NSOcarth "There Is No Climate Emergency, Say 500 Experts in Letter to the United Nations" That is typical social media garbage. You have not looked into that nonsense at all, have you? Virtually none of those that signed that garbage are climate experts. A 2021 report by Cornell University found that 99.9% of more than 88,000 climate change studies agree that humans have accelerated the phenomenon, largely due to carbon emissions. That, my friend, is the real scientific consensus of actual experts! Stay on social media, if you want to slowly turn into a demented idiot.

@@NSOcarth Part 2: The two main Dutch actors behind the declaration are Guus Berkhout, a retired geophysicist who has worked for OIL GIANT SHELL, and journalist Marcel Crok. Both have been accused of receiving money from FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES to finance their climate-sceptic work. When looking closer at the list of signatories, there are precisely 1,107, including six people who are dead. Less than 1% of the names listed describe themselves as climatologists or climate scientists. Eight of the signatories are former or current employees of the OIL GIANT SHELL, while many other names have links to MINING COMPANIES. One of the signatories is Ivar Giaever, a joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1973 for work on superconductors. However, he has never published any work on climate science. According to an independent 2019 count of the declaration's signatories, 21% were engineers, many linked to the FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY. Others were LOBBYISTS, and some even worked as fishermen or airline pilots.

@@NSOcarth Ok If you say so. I guess the tens of thousands of climatologists are wrong and these “experts” know better. Lmao