Welcome to the Steven Pinker Podcast Join us on a thought-provoking journey into the realm of evolutionary psychology. This is every psychonaut’s chance to explore the evolution of language, thought and scientific fundamentals that shape our understanding of the human mind. Professor Steven Pinker discusses the complex structures of cognitive psychology by addressing topics related to communication and common knowledge, language, and the paradigms of human nature.
To be the devils advocate, depending on where you live, things might actually be getting worse. Though still it's good to keep in mind big picture wise things generally are getting better.
All I got when I was a kid was doom and gloom. I never thought I would live this long based on the pessimism of the adults of my childhood. My life would have been so much better had I not worried so much and got the facts and evidence.
It sounds like the unspoken assumption of these objections is that "human nature" is identical to material processes and entirely explainable by material processes.
Having been born in 1960 and growing up in the 60s and 70s I can say for sure things have become far worse. And it has to do with a loss of cultural identity and living in a superior system of government. Which has now in the process of being destroyed.
Instead of chance, luck is a better word. Even a single heartbeat is a lottery and of probability of less than 1. In a lottery, you'll have to get the 1st number right, then the 2nd, then 3rd, etc before you win the lottery. So is a heartbeat, there's more than a dozen of numbers that will have to be right in sequence before a successful beat. Both becoming a billionaire and developing cancer require more numbers to be right, that's why you have fewer of them compared to a population. I know there's an English philosopher who's convinced everything is 100% luck, good or bad.
And the amount the sea level would actually rise would more than likely be insignificant based on the amount of water on land versus what is in the oceans.
Progressive people have an almost religious faith that we are moving in an uninterrupted progression from bad - small-minded, bigoted, etc - towards the good - cosmopolitan, rational, tolerant, open-minded, etc. while scientific and technological progress roughly follows such a course, there's little reason to suppose that human progress overall will necessarily be so linear. We are currently seeing a far right wing, authoritarian pushback to the social progress of recent decades. If the international neo-fascist movement gets it's way, much of the progress Pinker describes may be reversed.
Private ownership of assets has kept our species in thrall to barbarism for fifteen thousand years, and there is little prospect for human progress until this criminal political notion can be contained.
Even more difficult to remain positive with the immediacy of social sharing.. Gaza, Ukraine... I watch Democracy Now daily... and it's overwhelming... and I don't dare peek at Africa.
Dr Pinker: the problem with your argument is this, the universe is not neutral, the universe is out to kill us. So if in any day, all good people and bad people stay at home and there is no artificial action in the world at all, that means we are all going to die very soon, just from the random chaos that universe naturally generates. So when a person evaluate what kind of world that (s)he is in, that person has to compare the ratio of good news over bad news not to a arbitary historical standard (we all know history is horrible), but to a standard that will enable him/her to carry the life (s)he's having forward or even to improve it. In that sense, yes, we're living in a horrible time becuase the political, economic and scientific facts all line up to tell us: no, we cannot carry on to live like the way we are and the future live that we or our children are going to have are likely to be harder. The fact that this situation is created on the backdrop of most productive and progressive period of human history is a healthy and perhaps good perspective for historians and other acadamic thinkers to have. But to a common people see if this argument persuade you: why do you count a famine a year as bad? in 17xx country of y they had two...
Thank you for sharing this video. I humbly argue that when we are born, human nature as discussed in this video, does not yet exist in us as individuals. That we humans wholly learn and subsequently develop violent or peaceful ways, directly and indirectly from the cultures and environments in which we happen to grow up and come to understand as we mature. Something that is rarely, if ever considered in such a discussion. If we truly want to understand the question, "Are humans naturally violent or peaceful?", it seems to me more logical to consider that people not inherently predisposed to be a particular way, but how exactly people are taught and the existing environments in which we develop.
I don't think we live in terrible times. I do live in the same world as everyone else last I checked, so instead of blaming everything and the kitchen sink... Shouldn't we be blaming the difference between me and the undefined group of people that can suffer from incorrect bias? And is it even a fair philosophy, if I stub my toe today or I stub it 50 years ago, is not going to change how much it hurt and right now I feel like Pinker world view is that because the world is better, people aren't allowed to feel bad when they suffer. It's not like we live in an utopia... Countries like USA and UK is going through a bit of a dark age, as small groups is benefitting from the suffering of the majority.
1st realize there is a class system. 2nd it only gets better for some. 3rd more social wars as time goes on. 3:06 and some of them joined the sudo slave or lower class of the society. 4:11 I have both optomist and pesomist. 5:05 bad news traveling faster than good rule. 6:42 trends. Sexual war rekindled and birth gaps and polarization. 7:51 death age going down for some. Health is getting worse for some. 9:39 Data for birth gap. The population will cap around 10.7 billion before the drop. Pyramids like social programs and services that need population growth. Taxes, inflation, ect. That comes with such. 12:20 Biases you can track in law and incarceration. Statistics for male vs female for sentences for the same crimes and over 200$ or 2,000$ limits.
Thats all good and all, but that paints rather wide picture, I mean, if my particular life is in the dumbster for reasons i have no control of, why would i care if generally we are living better than ever? I agree that news show distorted view but I believe many people still live bad, just a gut feeling
Steven Pinker gets so close. Yes, we ARE doing better than we allow ourselves to think. But that only triggers if we realize it. And in that Pinker seems blissfully unaware of how bubbled he is as to WHY the people of the West cannot allow themselves to SEE that indeed we're not so bad, the times aren't so bad. The times remain worse than Pinker can realize since it's the exact ways we "teach" and the fact that "education" is far left more than leaning, all making it so we're addicted to ripping ourselves, the west through outdated white, male and capitalist guilt complexes and now decades of DEEP virtue signaling to these ideas and demo groups. So there is a direct blockage to us seeing we're actually living in good times by the Left, the very people who "run" just about all of culture. I don't see how Pinker can for decades now only give this catch 22 from hell lip service at best. Must be the blue bubble university life where he can see and hear the absurdity but somehow stay in that same Left and world and fail to see it's that very world that keeps us all from evolving, realizing we're despite all the atrocities as good or better than most, and that we can realize that now and enjoy each other and life more. But NO, and Pinker, do you see why no? No because of the very education system you remain a part of (and i do hear you trying to make these points but you never fully seem to get it, that YES, you're right we're not so evil and we should enjoy less violent times and all of it as you point out IS better.....but then why can you not see what is RIGHT in front of you everyday? You know the vibe on campus better than many boomers who i can understand why they don't "get it," but you Pinker, and Haidt.....you guys KNOW the "blank slate" as modern times thinks of it isn't true, why don't you insist people and feminism learns about that? Why don't you explicitly EXPLAIN to your Lefty fellows on campus that it is THEIR very maudlin vapid way of "teaching" through outdated guilt complexes and woke BS that causes our great inability to realize we're not so bad? At what point, Mr Pinker, do you see this divide and that YOU are perfectly situated to actually say the right things that need to be said to the people that need to hear them. I don't know if your wife wouldn't like what you have to say so you don't, but i doubt that. What is it, Steven? What keeps guys like you and JonHaidt from being more forthright about this? Do you not see the connection of what and where you are leading directly to this? And that YOU guys could change things, are best situated to? So SAY SOMETHING even if you might get fired if it's important enough, you're both well off enough and old enough to handle it OK. But think about actually explaining to this modern self hating culture exactly the perspective we all NEED to move forward better together? Don't you get it? These ways you say it every few years but you don't say it with force and challenging your institution and the way your fellows teach, you say it in that bubble, a few people agree kinda but then it's just back again. No, Pinker. You need to explicitly explain to them that THEY and the active way they teach IS THE ISSUE. Peace
There is also optimism bias. A small percentage of people control wealth and power. They, using technology, are about to step on our throats. You are ignoring unreported crimes, and attitudes that Seth Stephens Davidowltz summarized as "Everybody Lies", using data. Having worked in government as a statistician, Statistics is often misused, often by highly degreed scientists and engineers.
I wish enough people were actually smart enough to really understand and internalize this. At least you present it better than most though, so that's something.
Nice presentation and yes, humanity in general has never had it so good....until it doesn't, such as is the case in Ukraine and Gaza right now. The past does not predict the future, particularly our rapidly accelerating climate crisis. Unfortunately one of the US political parties and its media minions are hell bent on keeping its base uninformed and skeptical of science. Until that is corrected, we are on increasingly thin ice.
In certain social nesting bird species instances of predation can bring a crowd. Just like gawkers at an auto accident. I've always suspected that it is an attempt to understand the threat and consequences.
How does this square with what's been going on with the Palestinians? It doesn't take a professor to figure out that life has gone from shitty colonial oppression to genocide.
Pinker's mistake is assuming that the trends that have brought us to these very good times will continue. You can't just look to the past to predict what will happen in the future. Environmental destruction, especially climate change, is a major threat that is getting closer and closer. We do live in very good times. All the evidence is that our kids will not be so fortunate.
It seems akin to getting drunk on the Titanic before the iceberg... and even though we are childless, we try to stay positive and work towards avoiding that collision for the sake of everyone, anyway, doomed or no. It is just our nature. 😊
If you read Enlighment now you will learn that this is exactly what he says. Progress is not magical, it's incremental, and trends could reverse precisely by not beeing aware of what makes things better or worse. There's also a chapter about climate that is not positive but proposes solutions that could arise.
All evidence is that the world is getting better, but it's sometimes 2 steps forward, one step back. China and Russia are about to fail as countries, and millions could potentially starve to death, but overall the rest of the world will do fine. And Pinker is not a futurist. He's not trying to predict the future, but suggests it will get better. It takes work and an incredible number of people are working to make the world a better place. Why not join them instead of moaning about the world?
Because if you're in the working class demographic like myself you've been systematically priced out of the so called American dream! I can no longer even afford a one bedroom apartment and will not even be able to retire. The pillars of prosperity, Affordable housing, Healthcare, and education are unavailable to tens of millions of Americans and Steven wouldn't know the first thing about that because he lives in an elite bubble and probably hasn't sat down with a working class person in decades! It's very sad that so many successful, educated Americans are completed dissociated from what their fellow Americans are experiencing. Go spend some time with people outside of your bubble and have conversation! Ya might learn something!
re: statistics in journalism. I've learned over time that many journalists cannot be trusted to correctly place a decimal point within three orders of magnitude of the correct location, and that the metric prefixes they use are rarely more than a random choice.
what Steven tried to explain was not we shouldn't trust balanced journalism. He pointed out that the duties of the media is to report about what happens at the moment. Progress cannot be explained of what happens now, that's why Steven wrote a massive book (The better angles of our nature) in which he explained the long term changes.
Government could be used to widely distribute the knowledge we gain, however everybody wants to hold these discoveries and capitalise on them instead of having humanity benefit. In this method deceit becomes the modus operandi. The truth will set us free...
I'm a fan of yours, but as someone who worked at the world's top press newsdesks in Britain, and now in coprorate affairs, I am wondering who is this journalist friend who told you we don't like statistics? Usually stats make headlines (!) and I'd routinely send stories back to the reporter to give me background proof points and data on trends for context. The reason you see less and less of this Steven is that the population expects its news for free, and creating quality news requires skilled professionals. It's been a race to the bottom as it was not viable to employ the staff who were doing all of this quality control. The public now has the junk outrage clickbait and non-stories that it deserves. Bad news has always dominated breaking news - 'good' news is found in long-form features and there are plenty of those if viewers care to look in a quality publication (and actually pay!!).
