Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur "Steve" Pinkeris 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...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth18 September 1954
CountryCanada
violence human-nature problem
With violence, as with so many other concerns, human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution.
violence world violent
We really are creatures of a violent world, biologically speaking - watching violence and learning about it is one of our cognitive drives.
technology humanity violence
Technology, ideology, and social and cultural changes periodically throw out new forms of violence for humanity to contend with.
news violence
All of the violence that doesn't occur doesn't get reported on the news.
self empathy violence
Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control.
men numbers violence
As women are empowered, violence can come down, for a number of reasons. By all measures, men are the more violent gender.
large number occasion people vent
It got ugly. People used this as an occasion to vent a large number of grievances.
casualties indelible left relative scale strikes
The 9/11 strikes left an indelible impact on our minds, but in relative terms, the scale of casualties actually wasn't all that high.
carried foreign human repeatedly though witnessed
Though as a psychologist I like to think that nothing human is foreign to me, I admit to having been repeatedly flabbergasted by the insouciance, and sometimes relish, with which our ancestors carried out and witnessed unspeakable cruelties.
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Today there are movements in the arts to reintroduce beauty and narrative and melody and other basic human pleasures. And they are considered radical extremists!
careful changes enemies far
To make changes you have to make some enemies, but you also have to be careful not too make too many enemies. He made far too many enemies.
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A hostility to modernity is shared by ideologies that have nothing else in common - a nostalgia for moral clarity, small-town intimacy, family values, primitive communism, ecological sustainability, communitarian solidarity, or harmonies with the rhythms of nature.
close distant falling hear massacre taken
We know about every massacre that has taken place close to the present, but the ones in the distant past are like trees falling in the forest with no one to hear them.
best literacy phenomenon printing reforms
I think it may not be a coincidence that the rise of printing and book publication and literacy and the phenomenon of best sellers all preceded the humanitarian reforms of the Enlightenment.