Steven Pinker
@sapinker
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Cognitive scientist at Harvard.
Boston, MA
Joined January 2010
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I collect ambiguous headlines. This one, on our President's health, is among the best.
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The wrong way for the elite universities to dig themselves out their reputational hole: restrict speech even more. Instead:
1. Clear & coherent free speech policy.
2. Institutional neutrality: Universities are forums, not protagonists.
3. Force prohibited: No more heckler's…
Tonight,
@Penn
President Liz Magill signaled that one of our nation's most prestigious institutions is willing to abandon its commitment to freedom of expression.
“For decades, under multiple Penn presidents and consistent with most universities, Penn’s policies have been guided…
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Agree with
@nickKristof
, and am ashamed to be at the same university as the endorsers of this fatuous and morally monstrous statement. Deliberately murdering civilians, and abducting women, children, and the elderly, are heinous war crimes. And this regime is avowedly racist,...
This statement by a bunch of Harvard student groups saying that Israel is "entirely responsible" and "the only one to blame" leaves me shaking my head. Sure, criticize Israeli policies, but excusing Hamas is so absurd it veers into self-caricature.
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It's Insane We're Having A 'Debate' Over Whether It's Acceptable To Assault A Journalist
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A final comment: I feel sorry for the signatories. Moralistic dudgeon is a shallow and corrosive indulgence, & policing the norms of your peer group a stunting of the intellect. Learning new ideas & rethinking conventional wisdom are deeper pleasures …
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Letter to the
@AmericanHumanist
Association from myself (AHA Humanist of the Year 2006) and Rebecca Goldstein (AHA Humanist of the Year 2011)
@platobooktour
protesting its withdrawal of Humanist of the Year award to
@richarddawkins
#richarddawkins
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An Open letter to the Harvard community from me and more than a hundred colleagues (so far):
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Elon Musk is absolutely right about this. Journalistic innumeracy is damaging in many ways, and editors should put an end to it.
It’s super messed up that a Tesla crash resulting in a broken ankle is front page news and the ~40,000 people who died in US auto accidents alone in past year get almost no coverage
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To prevent possibly catastrophic climate change we can't just bring C02 emissions to zero - we have to go negative, sucking the CO2 that's already there. The best tech is a billion years old: trees. Massive Reforestation could Slow Global Warming.
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Attackers of the free speech letter signed by Rowling, Chomsky et al miss the point: It’s not about us. It’s about the writers, scientists, & artists who are told ”NIce career you go there. Would be a real shame if something happened to it.”
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Sam Harris is among our farthest-ranging, deepest-probing, and most straight & open public intellectuals, engaging sincerely with ideas & people whether he agrees with them or not.
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Ever since I first taught psycholinguistics in 1980, I've been collecting lexically or syntactically ambiguous headlines. Today's NYP is one of the best: deliberate, but clever in working both ways.
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More than 350 of my fellow faculty
@Harvard
have delivered this open letter to the Harvard community this morning unequivocally denouncing the mass murder and kidnapping of noncombatants and rejecting the false equivalence between war crimes and self-defense.…
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It's not about the signatories. A common email (example from this morning): "I left academia because I didn't conform to ultraleft views. I was walking on eggshells to avoid being denounced. No one knew I (horror) held moderate views...
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The spring semester at Harvard has begun, and I will be posting my lectures from Psy 1: Introduction to Psychological Science. Here's the introductory lecture (still working on improving the video quality):
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Egregious: A math paper that tries to explain a fascinating fact (greater male variability) is censored. Again the academic left loses its mind: Ties equality to sameness, erodes credibility of academia, & vindicates right-wing paranoia. via
@QuilletteM
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Nuclear Power Can Save the World: My op-ed, posted a few minutes ago in the New York Times, with Joshua Goldstein and Staffan Qvist.
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Nothing is moving in this illusion
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The first presidential candidate who is versed in behavioral genetics.
According to twins studies between one-third and one-half of political alignment is linked to genetics; that is most of us are born somewhat wired to be liberal or conservative. If this is the case we need to build bridges as much as possible. It’s not just info or culture.
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The Left continues its slow suicide by intolerance, emboldening the right: Richard Dawkins deplatformed in Berkeley.
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Fewer babies & mothers dying; more kids educated; fewer starving, lynched, executed, oppressed, killed in wars; more w access to travel & culture... True, it's a value judgment to call this "progress." But something's fishy when affluent intellectuals deem all this "meaningless."
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Why hasn't this made headlines? 1/2 the world is now middle class or richer. I & others have highlighted the fall in extreme poverty (down 75% in 30 years) but this is just as important- & completely ignored by the media & intelligentsia. via
@BrookingsInst
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Thomas Sowell, going strong at 93, is among the most brilliant thinkers I know (which doesn't mean I agree w him on everything). Particularly insightful on distributed knowledge; intellectual foundations of L vs R ideology; theories of human nature; ...
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… and ultimately better for the world. Our natural state is ignorance, fallibility, & self-deception. Progress comes only from broaching & evaluating ideas, including those that feel unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
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A typical essay by Scott Alexander is deeper, better reasoned, better referenced, more original, and wittier than 99% of the opinion pieces in MSM. It's sad that the NYT can see him only through the lens of their standard political & cultural obsessions.
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Part of a growing realization that journalism currently has a negativity bias which not only causes depression and anxiety, and turns people off from the news, but creates an inaccurate understanding of the world, with baleful consequences such as fatalism & radicalism.
Good news is rare these days, and every glittering ounce of it should be cherished and hoarded and worshipped and fondled like a priceless diamond - Hunter S. Thompson.
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Thomas Sowell is among the most brilliant & original thinkers I've read. Excellent new profile by Coleman Hughes
@coldxman
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We are technically in perhaps the worst governance crisis in US history. The commander-in-chief, in control of the military & executive, rejects election results, sows distrust of the system, & refuses to commit to cede power. Yet it doesn't feel that way: more farce than coup.
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I'm pleased to announce my next book, ENLIGHTENMENT NOW, coming 2/27/2018. Learn more & pre-order here:
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I was a fan of Effective Altruism (almost taught a course on it at Harvard) together w other rational efforts (evidence-based medicine, data-driven policing, randomista econ). But it became cultish. Happy to donate to save the most lives in Africa, but not to pay techies to fret…
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Any solution to climate change that does the math will see that growing emissions from poor nations will swamp savings from developed ones. Only solution is tech:abundant cheap clean energy, both storage of renewables and 4th gen and small modular nuclear.
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1. Reverse-engineer what you read. If it feels like good writing, what makes it good? If it’s awful, why?
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Seventeen years after I wrote The Blank Slate, the dogma remains strong: NYT op-ed claims boys are socialized to be rougher than girls, despite cross-cultural universality, presence in other species, sensitivity to prenatal testosterone, adult punishment..
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Most people think the world is getting worse. They're wrong. The history of progress in 5 charts. Our World In Data
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Interview in The Times (UK) on why I signed the letter on justice and open debate in Harper’s.
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Opposing D.E.I. Does Not Mean Opposing Diversity. "Universities can welcome students from all walks of life without unlawfully censoring speech. They can respond to campus sexual violence without violating students’ rights to due process. They can diversify the student body…
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Saturation coverage of rampage killers gives them exactly what they seek. Every day as many Americans are killed in homicides as in a mass shooting. Legal scholar Adam Lankford proposes: Stop encouraging mass killers by making them celebrities.
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This is what happens when you abandon nuclear power: Japan Races to Build New Coal-Burning Power Plants, Despite the Climate Risks
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In virtually every country that has closed nuclear plants, clean electricity has been replaced with dirty power.
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The Blank Slate is cracking: With polygenic scores corroborating twin & adoption studies in showing IQ is in good part heritable, even schools & left-leaning mags are walkiing back the tabula rasa.
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Among the biggest climate blunders of the century: Germany's shutdown of nuclear, predictably replaced by coal).
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Contrary to media impressions and event-driven stereotypes, life has been improving for African American men, a majority of whom are middle-class.
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Visual illusion of the month (nothing is actually moving).
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Analysis by
@TheFIREorg
is right on: Claudine Gay was technically correct that students can't be punished for political chants, but when Harvard et al. have no prior credible commitment to academic freedom, institutional neutrality, & viewpoint diversity, the born-again…
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Forget the honorary degrees & scientific bling. I've just received the greatest honor: a species of beetle has been named after me, Xixuthrus pinkeri, by the entomologist Andrey Zubov.
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"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear." - George Orwell (taken at BBC Broadcasting House).
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An ingenious new illusion (and a metaphor for Fox News).
This arrow by mathematician and sculptor Kokichi Sugihara can't point left. Here's how it works: It's 3D-printed with a bunch of curves our brains don't register.
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The Soviet-era joke has come true. A man in a train station hands out leaflets to passersby. The KGB arrests him—but they discover that the leaflets are blank pieces of paper. “What’s the meaning of this?” they demand. “What is there to write?” replies the man. “It’s obvious!”
Police in Nizhny Novgorod arrested a demonstrator today for protesting with a blank sign. Welcome to Russia in 2022.
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Anyone quantifying the history of violence has had to deal with Mao's Great Leap Forward: How many 10s of millions killed? Criminal stupidity or deliberate genocide? Study w new data concludes: 'Mao killed 45 million in 4 years.'
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I'm a strong free speech guy, but tech's deplatforming of Trump seems justified. Even 1st amend jurisprud (lenient standard) excepts inciting imminent lawless action. POTUS w unique powers + violently disrupting democ governance are 2 bright lines, not top of a slippery slope
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Jordan Peterson should stop repeating the canards that morality must come from God and that 20th-Century tyrannies were atheistic. He needs to learn the concept "humanism." Fine analysis by Matt Johnson in
@QuilletteM
via
@QuilletteM
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I’m sure I’m not the only one who teared up a few moments ago, and last night during the Covid memorial ceremony. We have much to savor at this moment, but the greatest is that Donald Trump no longer has the nuclear codes.
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India is the worst country in the world for women? US 10th worst? A Thompson-Reuters "study" with these claims is based on anonymous subjective impressions, not data: a travesty of social science. Christina Hoff Sommers exposes the scandal. via
@YouTube
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Most important: The sheer number of cancellations (though not small) misses the point: it's the regime of intimidation that silences many more and warps our knowledge. It's like saying, "Criticizing that autocracy is based on anecdata, since it imprisons only a few journalists."
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Mao's Great Leap Forward 'killed 45 million in four years.' Anyone who was a student in the 70s remembers he was a campus hero: t-shirts, posters, Little Red Books everywhere. "Mao's China is a Utopia," I recall being told.
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We're Number 0! Harvard is named worst school for free speech — scoring zero out of possible 100 via
@nypost
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Dislike meritocracy? Consider the time-honored alternatives: nepotism, patronage, cronyism, inheritance, racial & ethnic discrimination. We dismantle it at our peril, says Adrian Wooldridge
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You can't make this stuff up: Philosopher James Flynn, of the eponymous Flynn Effect (rising IQ scores), and one of today's greatest liberal thinkers, wrote a book on free speech, and it was banned.
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Not just profs. This AM, from a worker: "I feel uncomf. expressing my thoughts, moderate as they are, to coworkers for fear of being labeled a bigot. I'm a moderate centrist & lib. in the trad. of Locke & Hume. Why can’t they accept me for revealing lib. enlightenment feelings?"
Bravo to this honesty. Since May I have gotten almost an email a day from a professor who fears speaking out against the modern distortion of progressivism would get them fired.
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I dislike Jordan Peterson's counter-Enlightenment wooliness (Christianity, Nietzsche, Jung, lobsters), but Caitlyn Flanagan explains his appeal in an era when the cultural Left seems to be trying to out-stupid the Right (impossible, but they're trying).
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During 7 decades in which our lives got longer, richer, safer, healthier, better educated, more peaceful, & more stimulating, news coverage got increasingly negative (graph from Enlightenment Now, data from Kalev Leetaru):
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Is one man's terrorist really another man's freedom fighter? (Do "freedom fighters" rape women & murder babies?) BBC, Reuters, other newsrooms tell reporters: Don't say "terrorism." Daniel King, copyeditor of
@MotherJones
, argues otherwise: "Terrorist" = "political violence ...…
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I'm honored to have written the foreword to Nobel Peace Laureate & Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos's new book Un Mensaje Optimista Para un Mundo en Crisis (an optimistic message for a world in crisis). via
@eltiempo
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Journalists & psychologists take note: Nature Human Behavior is no longer a peer-reviewed scientific journal but an enforcer of a political creed. I won't referee, publish, or cite (how do we know articles have been vetted for truth rather than political correctness)?
"Although academic freedom is fundamental, it is not unbounded"- this should send a shiver down the spine. Sure it's well-meaning, but vague wording throughout is open to abuse & could be used to shut down research anyone finds offensive for any reason.
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Visual illusion of the day: No actual motion in this display.
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Journalists should cover environmental successes, not just crises, to reinforce the idea that conservation & environmental protection measures can succeed, countering cynicism and fatalism.
Lake trout are reproducing again in Lake Erie, where native fish have long been considered extinct. Biologists and researchers have worked tirelessly over six decades to improve water quality and habitat in the area - this is a well-deserved reward for their efforts.
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The newest member of A.W.F.U.L. (Americans Who Figuratively Use "Literally"): Taylor Swift: ‘I was literally about to break’
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Jordan Peterson: how the left manufactured a folk devil
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Men and women’s preferences differ more in more developed and egalitarian countries, contra idea that diffs arise from “roles.” Hard lives force 2 sexes to focus on necessities; freedom allows diffs to be expressed.
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Tragedy in the blogosphere: One of the best is being taken down. Scott Alexander (not his real name) explains: NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog | Slate Star Codex
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An example of the mockery the AHA has brought up on itself: Woke humanists have become as dogmatic as religious fundamentalists via
@mailplus
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Excellent analysis by Bari Weiss of the "Intellectual Dark Web." I can confirm Joe Rogan & Dave Rubin's reach: More strangers recognize me from their shows than MSM appearances. Weiss identifies the promise (enriching debate) & danger (legitimizing kooks).
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On the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, we should savor and protect the Long Peace that has followed.
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DEI Statements are one of the rituals turning academia into a national laughingstock. They are compelled speech, and either weed out independent thinkers or force them to be liars. (Grads & postdocs on the market ask my advice on how best to game them.) "DEI Statements Stir…
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Active-shooter drills in schools: useless, terrifying to children, a waste of time and mental health.. Another fiasco resulting from the innumeracy of the supposedly educated, e.g. journalists & education administrators,
@ErikaChristakis
nails it.
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Pleased (and surprised) to see that I have surpassed half a million followers on Twitter.
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The most informative (and beautiful) image of a brain I've ever seen.
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I detest the ideas of Steve Bannon (Enlightenment Now is a 500-page refutation) but it was a mistake for the New Yorker to have disinvited him - David Remnick should have eviscerated him, not martyrized him.
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Academia continues to make itself a laughingstock, as anthropologists censor a panel on sex because discussing the issue could cause "harm."
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Are you frustrated with the stale ideologies and mutual demonization of the Left and Right? Here's a manifesto for Radical Centrism, Liberal-tarianism, Bold Moderation, an Open Society, smart regulation, and a liberal democratic capitalist welfare state.
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Why isn’t this a major headline?
The WHO says that malaria deaths fell to the lowest level ever recorded last year. The mortality rate has dropped by almost 60% in the last two decades, from 24.7 per 100,000 people in 2000 to 10.1 per 100,000 in 2019.
Source:
@WHO
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Do the math: To stave off climate change, wind and solar power can’t provide enough energy to radically reduce carbon emissions—but nuclear power can. via
@WSJ
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Climate is too serious to indulge in apocalyptic exaggeration, which only leads to paralysis and helplessness.
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First astrology, now “energy healing” and other Paltrovian quackery: The New York Times has become strangely sympathetic to pseudoscience.
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A major moment in modern intellectual life:
A statement signed by 150 people incl. Bill T. Jones, Wynton Marsalis, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Noam Chomsky, J.K. Rowling, Margaret Atwood, and Salman Rushdie expresses concern over the illiberal trend intensified by our national reckoning.
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Bill Maher makes an important & often forgotten point (and uses my term "progressophobia," with attribution).
If you think America is more racist now than ever, more sexist than before women could vote and more homophobic than when blow jobs were a felony, you have
#Progressophobia
and you should adjust your mask because its covering your eyes.
#BY
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I'm often compared to Peterson--Canadian psychologist, Harvard prof, P in-C, takes evolution seriously--but our styles and philosophies couldn't be more different. We'll explore them in a dialogue at some point soon.
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You may think the world is falling apart. Steven Pinker is here to tell you it isn't. via
@voxdotcom
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...and thought scientific study rather than emotions of the day should decide policies."
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The trouble with libertarianism (and socialism, and ethno-nationalism, and all political ideologies): they fantasize about the ideal society, rather than letting empirical reality be their guide. via
@NiskanenCenter
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The Southern Poverty Law Center’s New Enemy: Americans Who Accept Biology. (Actually, not new: For decades they've been vicious thought-police that try to smear scientists who study heritability.)
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All 23 of my lectures in Harvard University's PSY 1, Introduction to Psychological Science, are available for watching here.
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A decade ago Dinesh D’Souza repeatedly invited me to debate him on God. I'm glad I declined, & didn't help publicize a mendacious fanatic who's gone off the deep end. David Frum laments the downward spiral of US intellectual conservatism.
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Waitress at Southern lunch counter: We don't serve colored people. Gregory: I don't eat colored people. Can you bring me a piece of chicken?
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An Open Letter to the media from crime experts regarding rampage shooters: Don't Name Them, Don't Show Them.
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Virginia Woolf? Snob! Richard Wright? Sexist! Dostoyevsky? Anti-Semite! Judging yesterday’s writers by today’s sensibilities (Bad person!) means being oblivious to history, human nature, art, and moral progress.
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