and the rest of the quote"...The search for relief from the uneasiness is what is real in Israel. Nationalism has no comparable reality." - Saul Bellow
@@jljones6343 "The search for relief from the uneasiness is what is real in Israel. Nationalism has no comparable reality. To say, as George Steiner says, that Zionism was created by Jewish nationalists who drew their inspiration from Bismarck and followed a Prussian model can’t be right. The Jews did not become nationalistic because they drew strength from their worship of anything resembling Germanic Blut und Eisen but because they alone, amongst the peoples of the earth, had not established a natural right to exist unquestioned in the lands of their birth. This right is still clearly not granted them, not even in the liberal West."
If Pinker thinks democracy & freedom of speech are not intuitive to humans, I suggest reading “Hierarchy in the Forest” by Christopher Boehm. Boehm argues that throughout the great majority of our evolution as humans we lived in small hunter-gatherer bands that were essentially egalitarian, and made most group decisions by consensus, with all adults entitled to opine. Those tendencies remain deep in our genes. Unfortunately, civilization required much larger populations than can decide by consensus, and therefore a central authority. But we’ve always chaffed under such authority. It took another 5000 (mostly tumultuous) years for us to tinker our way back to democracy and free speech that can work for a large society. How long such a society can endure remains an open question.
How did Boehm arrive at the conclusion that prehistoric small hunter-gatherer bands lived in egalitarian, consensus driven groups? We definitely don’t have any written records of this. If anything, we have archaeological records of the exact opposite- burial sites where it’s obvious that some people were buried in a much more elaborate fashion than the rest, indicating they were leaders.
@@youtubeuser4645 There is widespread disagreement about socialism, but also abortion, women's rights, sexuality, food regulations, trade and business regulations, and many more issues that objective descriptions of reality won't resolve because they have existed for millennia despite passionate claims of truth and reality.
I guess the problem is, there are no repercussions. In a tribe of 100, if you deceive someone, everyone learns it and if you do it more often you will be punished or kicked out. Nowadays it's rather a legitimate job to spread misinformation in marketing, as an influencer, or in state propaganda or even news agencies. There are no repercussions. If you are kicked out of one channel, there are hundreds waiting.
I do agree that lies are becoming a very normal part of public discourse. That said, lies have a very funny way to running into the physical realities of the universe.
Because apart from a very few, countable on your finger things, there’s nothing as such that exists as pure objective reality. Anyone who prides himself too much about being a completely non attached, unaffected unbiased objective spectator to the TRUTHS of life then good luck to you, you’re god, leave us mere mortals with the limiting subjective perspective we’re born with and die with, a few deviations notwithstanding.
At 30:50, he claims that women have no "urge to dominate" (in contrast to men). Granted, the female style of domination is different from the male one, but his statement is ignorant and pandering. If women have no urge to dominate then why, among most married couples, can the wife arrange the appearance of a room in the house with no fear of blowback from the husband, but not vice versa?
Maybe he means women have the urge to dominate men's affections/emotions, while men have the urge to dominate many people's resources. Physical aggression versus emotional aggression.
Excellent discussion. I'd love to hear more reasonable, intelligent, and nuanced conversations like this rather than the angry, fearful, hateful garbage to which we are constantly exposed.
Hear! Hear! Unfortunately, by dint of being much easier to generate, "angry, fearful, hateful garbage" is more plentiful AND is more click-propagated. More people want to experience heightened emotions than to have their intellects challenged.
I agree. I greatly enjoy these long form conversations by intelligent people. But how does one engage with the political hyperbole and indoctrination that now passes for education?
Brillant statement. People who lack both, don't know the difference between each one. At least you must have one, to know which of the two you have not.
It is not just that. A lot of so-called smart people hate not questioning, but hate being wrong. As a result, they want to have confirmation bias based on what they initially heard, stick to the belief, and oppose any rebuttal that comes their way.
That's exactly the opposite of what the really intelligent people I know do, in my experience. What you've said, however, reflects almost exactly the kind of talk I've heard all my life from people of little education who resent other people's good fortune in having acquired degrees in higher education. FYI, people who are really intelligent are aware of their own confirmation bias, and are constantly on the alert for it. This is because real intelligence harbors a desire not just for real knowledge, but also for wisdom. The need for confirmation bias only gets in the way of acquiring both knowledge and wisdom. And so, btw, does the ego's investment in being right at any cost, which is what you are talking about. I'll grant you, there are people in academia who have this problem with egotism, but that is nothing unusual, as there are such people in every field of endeavor and type of work. The egotistical need to be right at any cost, however, is not a sign of "being smart." It's indicative of a particular lack of emotional development. It shows an unfortunate lack of grounded autonomy, and of the kind of self confidence that is born from the experience of natural self-transcendence.
If you live in a country that has been through a dictatorship you know this isn't true. In my country the dictatorship ended 30 years ago and the criminals took most of their secrets to their graves, much of what happened is still unknown.
That may be true for secret conspiracies, but what about the non-secret ones? Currently here in New Zealand we have a conspiracy in which the government and the legacy news media are flat-out denying that the death rate is far higher than it should be, and ridiculing those who point this out, notwithstanding the fact that the government's own statistics department is quantifying the excess deaths on its official website. This news blanket is by definition a conspiracy. I can assure you that the vast majority of people who know it's a conspiracy are still alive.
@@minkz4097 You're obviously right. What an incredible belief to have that governement, and other actors, are not capable of conducting business in private... when it is virtually impossible to uncover info on most of their dealings!
"Cherryil Jackson is a non-binary gender non-conforming trans humanist bipoc lesbian who owns a cat cafe in the Bronx, our reporter Sanjidiv Manvipolocomonicka caught up with her after a harrowing experience involving her hobby of building tiny doll houses for transgendered squirrels to live in."
Second that. I used to be an NPR listener, but my local news station seemed to fall into a “progressives-only” club, giving free mic to anybody that fit that description.
Pinker's data-informed views often come as a breath of fresh air, but I think he is missing a big part of the AI puzzle. The threat isn't that AI will have undesirable human tendencies baked into its "DNA", it's that AI increases humans' capacity to express those tendencies by orders of magnitude. Some humans are violent psychopaths. But the availability of high-powered firearms allows those humans to do a lot more damage than they otherwise would. AI could have a similar effect. In other words, it's not the semantic misunderstanding of the input phrase "Eradicate cancer" that threatens the world, it's the plethora of actually malevolent potential inputs. Having said that, we don't really have a relevant data set to refer to on this topic, so we're all just speculating.
I think you are on the right track. The danger comes from people using AI not from AI itself. Where AI differs from the gun-metaphor is that it also can be used for good. Guns can only be used for bad (murder) or less bad (hunting), but not really good, unless using violence is characterized as necessary maybe. AI however can be used for generating misinformation but also recognizing misinformation.
Yes... AI is a tool or a weapon. It comes down to the desire/s of the individual/s that are in control of it using it for good or evil as with most technologies... It's not that AI won't have the ability to 'take over', it's that it won't have the desire... unless it has been programmed to of course. And that is the danger...
His data points are cherry picked, we are going through a human driven mass extinction that will directly affect stability, and reach a point where wars and conflict amplify over resources do to population grow and compute driven competition. Which is why A.I is a problem (it increasing the degrees of movement in strategy space, and movements at higher frequency, allowing deception to become a business model increases uncertainty of finding correction).
Can you also see how your's is a pessimistic view of A.I.? Safety will also be magnified by AI, not just the harmful traits of humans. So it inherently will be engineered for, designing in for the best safest outcome also.
Journalism always has had someone deciding what went to print, or for radio/tv - what the producer decided to air. That decision process can be described as bias.
Wait a minute… multiplying probabilities only works when the events are independent. Lawyers and conspiracy theories don’t always add details to a story at random and with things that are independent.
True. If events A and B are perfectly correlated than the probability of events A and B occurring is just the probability of one of them. If they are independent then the probability of A and B occurring is the product of their probabilities. If they are partially correlated it is somewhere in between. The point is that the probability of both occurring is always the same or lower, never higher then a single event occurring.
What Stephen Pinker here alludes to is not merely a conjunction fallacy. If two of your neigbhours conspire to hide the arrival of your last amazon order from you, there is a reasonable high chance that they succeed (mostly because packages get lost all the time). If you believe that the post office is doing it with every package you order, there is both an extension in time and the number of people involved. Every interaction has the chance of going wrong not only logistically but also regarding the motivations of the people involved. It thus a lot more unlikely. Many c-theories ignore this entirely by excluding alternative explanations and concluding from "it is possible" to "therefore it is probable".
We all human❤ our nature and conditions are to be curious not skeptics? Trust others for good contemplative reasons. Good fortune to those, who could do just that.
Hypothesis: about topics that don't have immediate practical effects, people are not so much given to believing nonsense as they are to *saying* they believe nonsense.
Genuinely out-of-curiosity question: Why would people solely pay lip service to said nonsense, though? (I'm assuming person-on-the-street 'people', not FoxNews anchor type 'people')
Fantastic writer, one of our greatest public intellectuals. The Blank Slate, How the Mind Works, Enlightenment Now, Rationality are all tremendous contributions.
I like listening to Steven Pinker, I feel smarter listening to him speak, lol. I saw both of these men in person recently, at the "Dissident Dialogues" in Brooklyn, New York, on May 3-4th. I wonder if this interview was recorded there? Regardless, it was a pleasure to hear Mr. Pinker speak in real life.
As a person gives us more detail about Linda, we can reasonable increase our belief that they know Linda well and hence accurately know her profession. This type of causal connection can be implicit in questions about Linda even if not explicit in the test. “Is she a teller?” can be interpreted as “would you believe me if I said she was a teller?”. My answer depends on how well you know her.
Forgot to ask: 1. Why does the Harvard board of governors think that SKIN COLOR/GENDER is component to cognitive power?? 2. Why didn't Harvard's board of governors collectively resign over Claudine Gay's plagiarism and testimony before Congress??.
I REALLY want to hear a well reasoned explanation to #1. All you will ever get is "you're a racist/misogynist" or slavery or "systemic racism". Brilliant question that will go unanswered forever. '
@@jamesedward9306 "WELL REASONED" begins with principle. From Biology 101: Not one genome on the face of the Earth displays the so-called "race" marker. Thus, the term "race" is empty of meaning and exists only as a political expedient for those who do not care about objective reality. This also means that phrases like "critical race theory" (CRT) have a fallacious middle term. Therefore, CRT is not a theory. CRT is nothing more than a SLOGAN with political purpose, leveraging those who failed Biology 101. Furthermore, sloganeering like "systemic racism and reparations" not only ignores objective reality, as demonstrated by the foregoing, but ignores three easy to understand PRINCIPLES: 1. GUILT is no more than one generation deep. 2. RESPONSIBILITY is no more than one generation deep. 3. One's status as VICTIM is overcome in less than six months when THE PRINCIPLE of self determination is applied to productive ends. These PRINCIPLES are affirmed by Booker T. Washington who asked his fellow ex-slaves, in his time: "Why do you choose SLOTH over personal industry?". True then as it's true today. Finally, please consider this: Abstractions of invention, abstractions of innovation, simulacra whether simulations or dissimulations, and the 900lb gorilla... moral authority, the sum of all this (and much much more) are NOT FOUND in the skin, NOT FOUND in gender, NOT FOUND in sxxual praxis, but are prominently featured among those who pridefully exercise merit in their intellectual/cultural endeavors, demonstrating, therefore, WHY the science of Anthropology is bifurcated into two great fields of study... physical/cultural (never to breach that very significant boundary).
Plagerism? Do some research. Gays ouster was a concerted racist attack fomented by Bill Ackman. Pinker is right. People believe stupid things. There’s always more to a story than what is written.
It continues to amaze me that people talk about rationality without specifically talking about emotions. It's almost as if we want to pretend we can be completely logical and rational at some point in our future without emotions. Or at least without directly addressing them. Our desire for predictability, including the drive for more and better science, is an emotional drive. Until we can absorb emotion into the conversation we will always have a slightly skewed conversation about being human. And to no longer have any biases would not be human.
I found out that the people who are most proud about being rational are those who can't control emotions such as rage and jealousy. They don't think of them as emotions. Other kind of emotions they consider them as weakness.
I believe rationally is meant to be a way of observing facts without emotional influence. Whether it can actually happen or not, I don’t know, but we obviously think we are capable of it, men especially think they have this ability. But, it’s a worthy exercise
First of all: I like this discussion I do have a few remarks, though. Point I disagree with. Democracy: Choose the leader that fits your group best (that's the statement in the discussion, no?) -> versus Choose the leader that can run the country best, in your view Those are 2 different things. In the USA you have indeed only 2 parties. Here in Europe people regularly vote strategically, voting for a party that doesn’t suit their needs the best way, but will ensure that the other end of the isle doesn’t become the bigger party. So that’s a short-term deviation from your long-term vision for the country. Which means you vote for the leader that can run the country better than the alternatives. Not the one that would suit your group best. It's called "compromise", I believe... One could extrapolate that to "short-term best interest", but then you are deviating from your own group, into possibly a smaller group, etc. etc. So, by your deviation from your own best interest into the next-best interest, you áre setting aside your purely selfish perspective. And I am pretty sure that many people don't even háve their own best interest in mind when voting, but the policies and perspectives that suit their country best. For me it's hard to rhyme that with the 2-party vision of "fits my group best". You really áre voting for what suits your country best. And that's a véry extrapolated self-interest. But maybe I'm wrong? Israel: Genocide is not only the deliberate killing of a massive group, it is also about displacement and starvation. For now, the displacement happening is bigger than the 750.000 who were forced to leave in 1948. Now we are talking about more than a million. Is it a genocide? I don't know. If Israel rebuilds Gaza and gives all these people back their land and their homes, then it is not. But how big of a chance is there Nethanyahu will do that? For now the question is open on whether or not he is displacing a whole population. The signs are not good: Ever since Nethanyahu started to build his wall and confiscate the lands of Palestinians (around 2003), it has turned into an Apartheidstate. One can deny it and say Palestinians still have some rights, but in practice they don’t. They are at the whims of Israel. Which is a very bad position to be in. The best comparison presumably is the waiting time at the border controls from Gaza (in the past) to the waiting time at the “homelands” in South Africa. Both were designed to check and humiliate, while the only reason people wanted to pass them, was either to go to work or to pass to another secured district. Which is Apartheid. Maybe it’s just my own bias (I’ve been watching this for 30+ years now), but even the excuses used for the border controls are the same: security measures after “terrorist attacks”. Which are essentially freaked out people blowing themselves up, not unlike many of the mass shootings in the USA, more often than not incited by some crazy ideology or conspiracy. Which brings me full circle: thank you for provoking some thoughts! 💙💛❤
@@foop9 I just want to see how he interacts with opposing viewpoints. He's probably in a particular sphere so seeing him out of that sphere would be interesting.
I genuinely believe that with the pandemic he just decided to lay low. Kinda hard to convince people that the statistical reality is the world is actually getting better when there's a pandemic on. Had to wait for it to calm down.
@@Sam-d7m8w i don't think he would do too well, in many areas he is a sloppy thinker with obvious biases that eh doesn't own . he made his career taking on biological blank slatists - that is pretty easy. There is an economist on youtube who does like a 2 hour breakdown of Pinker's shaky claims about inequality, poverty and progress.
@@emilianosintarias7337 Some of his individual books have more material than can be covered in 2 hours. He made his career doing a lot more than that. You don't sound very familiar with him.
What confounds me is how someone can be a "strong leader" and yet incredibly weak by almost any measure. Often they cannot tolerate criticism; typically they lack a sense of humor (in particular, cannot laugh at themselves); they cannot admit when they're wrong; they require constant validation from sycophants -- the list goes on and on.
“Post-modernist” outcomes after decades of criticizing Western institutions and liberalism. (Kuznar 2008:78): 1-question reality and representation (it's all “fake”). All history, literature, religion is wrong/biased) Specifically, Universities teach qualitative analysis (opinions and feelings) outdoes quantitative analysis and numbers (votes) 2 make social media and documents the battleground by isolating text and language as “phenomena” (e.g. CRT) Everything (e.g. gender) is a “construct”. Over focusing on the construct of “power” creates “hegemony” 3-apply literary analysis, making words and images the weapons. E.g. CRT 4-deconstruct Enlightenment “metanarratives” by counter-storytelling. (cyber-espionage) promoting “progressive nihilism” 5 argue against method and evaluation (science) e.g.- lotions and potions are as valuable as vaccines.
Doesn’t seem to be much of a Free Press if it looks like the interviewer and interviewee are about to make out anytime now. It isn’t even a conversation, this is bromance, not journalism. This is intellectual self pleasuring masquerading as an academic discussion.
What does that mean? Who is "blindly" obedient to orthodoxy? What is orthodoxy? perhaps what you would regard as orthodoxy is the view most supported by the weight of evidence. I've noted that the most frequent objectors to the "mainstream", "orthodoxy" or "prevailing narrative" are those pushing theories without a convincing evidentiary basis.
@Ollies2CentsWardill homodoxy is "same same thinking", orthodoxy is homodoxy with enforcement. These are both anchored in the system 1 learning pathway (narrative & mimetics) and fall within the domain of social proof. This is the reason "science advances one funeral at a time". Widely held doesn't mean rigorously proven.
Each claim requires a proponderence of evidence. The more claims being made to support a hypothesis, the more evidence required. Also, evidence counter to each claim must be fairly considered. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
4 месяца назад+2
In my long life I have observed time and again that people read ONLY the papers that agree with their opinions or prejudices.😂
I'll watch, but I'll embarrass myself first by saying Pinker will say anyone who believes the opposite of what he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt to be true, is being stupid no matter how smart they are and how well thought out their positions. Classic. Let's see.
6 minutes: Pinker is apologizing for the cabal's rolling out of covid. NO CREDIBILITY Mr. Pinker (I'm a real doctor). Do I have to keep watching? OK, I'll give it a few more minutes. 14 MINUTES Warren Comish? vomit. this is a fake interview to piss me off no one not even a genius like Mr. Pinker believes what he is spewing. Fuck me
8 and a half. Now he's apologizing with obfuscation. DOES ANYONE THINK LEE HARVEY OSWALD HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE BULLETS THAT KILLED JFK? THEN WHAT HAPPENNED? YOU LIE, WE DON'T BELIEVE YOU.
Same here, except I won't watch. And let's up the ante: he'll say nothing threatening to or critical of any powerful person or institution, excuses all the way down.
I presume you have some examples of well thought out positions pinker dismisses? You didn't listen to the part where he asserted the value of free speech in challenging things that may turn out to be untrue? "Classic. Let's see." is a rather disingenuous sequence in itself.
And academics, imo, are some of the least smart ppl i know. They are cerebral, ‘educated’, and confident (sort of) but smart ppl are as susceptible to willful ignorance as the rest of us. - old lady from a family rife w academics.
He didn't say that. he said that conspiracy theories seem to prevail where wrong beliefs don't have an obvious impact on day to day life. For instance, one is more likely to believe Queen Liz was a reptile than think the cliff edge you'r heading toward is a CIA hologram.
If AI transforms inexpensive drones into cunning hunters, used by both sides in a conflict, and if defensive tech fail to keep pace with offensive tech, then ..?
Pinker is spot-on about the trivialized misuse of the word "genocide" in relation to the war in Gaza. Sadly, misguided people have been softening up the definition of genocide for at least a couple of decades, in all sorts of contexts - mainly I think because, as Pinker says, the absolute opprobrium of the idea, inviting unconditional condemnation, is something they want to co-opt for their own cause, whatever that is, and using the “nuclear option” of the G-word is a cheap and easy way to do it. There was a very ill-advised example in Canada in 2022 when Parliament voted to declare the (now thankfully defunct) residential school system to be an example of genocide (not just cultural genocide, but unqualified genocide) - as if the schools to which First Nations children were compulsorily sent for a century were not simply cruel, shoddy, and educationally inefficient (all of which they were), but as if killing the children who attended them were the institutions’ primary purpose.
No he really isn't. It isn't much of a war, and about a zillion independent bodies have determined gazans to be de facto israeli subjects. In a court of law, based on the yugoslav tribunals, intent would be found very easily just by blocking an entire civilian population from fleeing, while starving them, while bombarding the general area. That shouldn't even be a partisan claim, you can be a zionist and recognize that.
Interesting that the two of them could have a discussion about the the threat to democracy and not have any mention of a U.S. president trying to put the number one opposition candidate in jail.
I thought the same thing when they mentioned the misinformation in the 2016 elections and the "stop the steal" being an outright lie. Yet completely failed to mention how the FBI worked directly with the large social media corporations to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop, claiming it was Russian misinformation, yet it was just admitted in a court of law by the prosecution in his case. You can be technically correct and choose to omit certain events to avoid being dishonest, but doing so does not mean you're being honest.
There is a sense in which Pinker is a "bean counter" saying that the current Gaza situation is much less important compared to the Syrian conflict, since less people were killed. This would be fine if you believe that all lives are equal. I hate to say this, but there should be a recognition that there is a notion of *culture* being preserved, like the last of a species. We hope that, eventually, displaced Syrians would recognise and rehabilitate their culture(s) in a way which was more stable and tolerant. Elsewhere in this discussion the topic of population reduction was briefly mentioned, it would be great if Pinker could turn his mind to that, since I think it is necessary. But what I'm trying to say is that the world needs to preserve culture. And by implication, all living species that have struggled to make it this far to now, especially insects, plants, corals, things at the base of our ecosystems. I guess I'm advocating preserving what we have for a long time, I'm a "conservative" in the sense of conservation, but not against change, as long as it can conserve "diversity". Because diversity means creativity. It means choice. Options.
Hmm. Diversity, options. Except when powerful people are pulling an operation like crown viros recently. Then censorship to the max is OK with him. When will Pinker ever say something about it? Or what will he say in the middle of the next big op? Pinker is a choir boy who does not sing off-script when powerful interests are involved.
@Ollies2CentsWardill If you give a timestamp for his censorship comments, I'll give a listen. Even if he's saying the right things now, the test is what he was saying during the critical time when qualified scientific and medical opinion was being banned. And still now, yt scrubs channels that contradict the cdc.
I understand the normative axioms of probability (Kolmogorov, Cox, etc.). I understand that 'conjoining' the probability of two events is done by multiplying them (necessarily leading to a smaller number/lower probability). However, let's consider the concept of evidence, particularly the concept of a 'preponderance of evidence'. Is evidence thought to be no longer a matter of probability but of certainty (P=1)? So, in the case of Linda the bank teller, it would be probable (not less likely) that she is a feminist than not a feminist given her other evidenced traits. Those traits may not have a bearing on whether she's a bank teller (or not) but they may have a bearing on whether she is feminist, volunteered for a 'social justice' cause, voted Democrat, etc. That is it could 'add weight' to making some conclusion actually more probable ... but not necessarily 'any' conclusion (eg. she likes cilantro). I think Judea Pearl's work in Bayesian nets/conditional probability tried to fix this problem with frequentist probability. I'm not an expert but he showed that not only did more occurrences (i.e. evidence) increases the probability for an event, event's could increase the probability of other events. For example, having more symptoms related to some illness increases the likelihood for diagnosis, they don't consecutively decrease it b/c your less likely due to how probability are conjoined. Having more traits can increase the likely hood that you have some other trait due to a causal structure; in this example some illness having caused the symptoms. Each symptom adds to the probability of a diagnosis due to a causal structure. Going back to the Linda, if we've have enough evidence to believe with high certainty that she is politically and socially significantly left of center, then this should be cause to believe she is more likely to have further leftist traits than not. Just like once we've got enough evidence to believe there's an infections it increases the lieklihood that we'll find a raised white blood cell count justifying a blood test. What am I am I missing here?
Maybe your missing understanding his simple point and how it kinda relates to Occam's Razor. So your point about adding evidence to a theory is different.
Pinker is just rationalizing his somewhat ungrounded optimism while judging other's biases. A rather overrated intellectual, so it seems to me (and his most famous Russian proponent Ekaterina Shulman happens to exhibit exact same flaws).
32:22 “Bringing about multiple simultaneous goals is what intelligence is. If you single-mindedly pursue one goal at the expense of everything else, that is idiocy.”
Automation isn't the same as Artificial Intelligence. Cars have much more advanced technology now then they had 30 years ago. Also, would cars be more expensive after taking inflation into account?
Car prices would also fall if people repaired and continued to drive their vehicles until the utility is gone. Fact is, people are obsessed with new cars and forever having car payments so the demand is artificially high. The same argument can be made for phones. Stop consuming as much and consumers will gain some power. Consume a ton and compete with each other while prices increase.
"The simple minded and the uninformed can be easily lead astray. Those who cannot connect the dots, look the other way. People believe what they want to believe when it makes no sense at all". John Mellencamp.
Anyone that has done computer programming at all knows that making a mistake when giving instructions to a computer is always going to be a problem because we can't know all of the implications of our instructions.
As someone who worked as a software engineer for decades, and has some technical knowledge of the current AI systems, I think Pinker and others misunderstand the nature of these systems. LLMs are NOT engineered. There is a tiny amount of computer code that defines an inscrutable layered matrix of floating point numbers, a training algorithm (backpropagation/gradient descent), and a few other things. The neural net is then "trained" or "grown", similar to a human brain. All of its intelligence and understanding is abstracted into a giant set of floating point numbers. The complexity of this seems irreducible, and, thus, our comprehension of how it works may be an intractable problem (see Wolfram on irreducible complexity of complex systems). This means we have no way of plausibly guaranteeing any kind of behavioral output of these systems, and we simply do not know what we are going to get as we scale them and different new properties emerge.
Your statement doesn't capture the nature of evolution. Those who had an innate impulse or ability to derive reward (such as "joy") from the right things were able to survive. The tuning of reward levers (what gives you joy) is a result of evolutionary processes hence grounded in reality.
@@danielpaulson8838 the "joy over truth" part is wrong, at least in the evolutionary, long term context you mentioned. If you fail to see that you don't understand evolution .
@@Eng_Simoes people feel joy over fake things not the truth What do you think makes theists? People who prefer reality? We evolved, are still evolving as are animals out there today being driven by pleasure or pain. You wish to argue something I don't know what. How's about you going away?
Some of the problem with presumably intelligent people are that they might still have problems with basic math. In Norwegian I would call it tallskrekk (being afraid of numbers). Arguments that requires understanding the extremely advanced mathematical operations plus and minus are not understood. That is where being against nuclear power is. It is strongly irrational. There is basically no way we can decarbonise without nuclear power. The numbers does not add up.
People with his smarts don't want to go through all of the necessary crap (fundraising nonstop, FEC requirements, giving up your weekends to attend boring "local events", d 43:42 ealing with dullard, obnoxious constituents, etc.)
The decrease in democracy follows international politics. Democracy is regularly halted when countries are under existential foreign threats. Russia, Iran, etc are unlikely to move to democracy when they are under existential threats.
Another superb discussion with Steven. I could listen to him for hours - it is music for the soul. An intellect well applied. He represents the good side of Harvard - "myside bias", doom-mongering, pathologizing, and unreflective group think in general are otherwise rather prevalent at august institutions of higher learning these days.
In the first 90 seconds, this guy is bringing up conspiracy theories. People have been trained to immediately dismiss all conspiracy theories despite human history being chock full of people conspiring to commit crimes.
"Conspiracy theory" is an infantile, gaslighting term weaponised against critics of mainstream narratives. Who talks of "conspiracy"? Is everything the so-called "conspiracy theorists" say in the realm of "theory" or might it be irrefutable fact? Ron Brookman, structural engineer, said this of WTC-7's destruction: ruclips.net/video/TM_l_4sJ-sY/видео.html "When I first looked at the films of Tower 7, I automatically assumed and concluded - pretty close, quickly - that it was a controlled demolition. I didn't think it was worth a lot of extra effort to dig into the various details of the building in order to refute that.” As a structural engineer, whose mind is unclouded and unintimidated by the 24/7 propaganda narrative, Ron Brookman was able to speak out using his professional expertise. The thing is you don't need to be a professional: destructions by fire and destructions by controlled demolition have zero in common, they are unconfusable ... moreover, as stated by Fire Protection Engineer, Scott Grainger, "Steel structural frame buildings, high-rise buildings, simply do not collapse due to fire. There has never been until 9/11 an experience where there was a high-rise building that was steel frame completely collapsed. ruclips.net/video/tmw9iql4e64/видео.html What neither the believers nor the disbelievers of the 9/11 narrative factor into their analysis is that those in power - from centuries of experience - have complete faith in the limitless elasticity of the Emperor’s New Clothes effect. It’s not as if they don’t know that destructions by fire and controlled demolition are fundamentally completely different kinds of destruction and there is no possibility of confusing one with the other, they know - but they also know: --- Most people - regardless of their expertise which should direct them otherwise - will either believe or at least accept fire as the cause --- A small minority - the derided “conspiracy theorists” - will recognise controlled demolition but this small minority is not powerful enough to cause problems in maintaining the fictional narrative … … and that is why they brazenly showcase WTC-7’s perfect implosion from seven vantage points and clearly script media personnel to allude to controlled demolition, eg, Brian Williams’, “Can you confirm it was No. 7 that just went in,” “to go in” being a term used in controlled implosions due to the buildings falling in on their own footprint. ruclips.net/video/Vgx8Uwo-Vxc/видео.html The secret to 9/11 isn't who was responsible but the nature of the alleged crime but I can't put links here. If you look up my name and substack you will find it.
Maybe listen more than 90 seconds before commenting. He says that conspiracies occur but conspiracies that require many people and many steps are not likely to remain hidden.
@karagi101 That's just speculation that is clearly not based on the evidence. Big conspiracies do remain hidden ... that is not exactly hidden more hidden in plain sight.
@@petraliverani1247 Name one big conspiracy that remained hidden for long. People talk. Mistakes are made. The bigger the conspiracy the more people and the greater the chances for mistakes.
I believe he isn't the victim. I believe a lot of people are victims of a longstanding and massive propaganda campaign with vast amounts of money behind it which has normalised lies about the history of Israel. There is a stated intention of genocide involved , it began long before the establishment of Israel and it is rooted in religious and racial hatred. To believe that Israel has genocidal intent requires an incredibly narrow microscope and a lack of appreciation of relevant facts and history.
@@MarcusN-kp1jn I was just thinking about that when I wrote the comment. Yes, I am, for sure victim of it..and I think that its one of our biggest blind spots, to point to others without checking-up on ourselves. At least I am aware of it unlike him at that moment.
I would think that a reasonable definition of "not smart" would be belief in conspiracy theories. I have been a physicist for over 50 years, and have always thought the highest indication of intelligence is to understand where the border between what you know and what you don't know lies. Then, it is ok to explore the area you don't know, but you must always be aware that you don't know any of the things you are thinking about. I don't know if this is a matter of training or differences in personality, but this constant awareness of the edges of knowledge is always with me. And going for stories about the world that you like the most seem patently dumb! I have always said that the most charming thing about nature is that she doesn't care what you believe or want; It is your idea to dig the truth out of nature. I think all of life is like that. If you have a preferred outcome on a topic, you probably shouldn't research it because of the risk of bias.
Very well said. I haven't asked everyone, but extrapolating from my personal experience, I believe that 99% of people on this planet do not apply this wisdom principle. The reason? The human brain does not work that way.
One of the problems with smart people is they are better at rationalising false views until they get what sounds like a logical reason to believe them. Dumber people come up with less convincing reasons but are also easier to fool, whether by others or themselves. The necessary skill is critical thinking and being prepared to change your mind and admit to mistakes. Everyone has beliefs which are wrong but I like to think I'm not wedded to any of them to the point I wouldn't change my mind if I received new data which was from a more knowledgable source or capable of verification.
The good opinion I developed about Steven Pinker decades ago when I read an article about his work in language has only increased with time. Sanity, such a rare quality these days. Thank you!
Well, Pinker, a very smart person indeed in many regards, supported the Catalan nationalist separatist movement. I am not sure if that is a stupid thing, but it is not taking into account the Spanish recent political history, the coup it was victim of through that movement, its constitution and the large amount of people who want to remain in Spain as Spanish citizens and receive an unfair treatment there in Catalunya.
Steven is a brilliant guy with an excellent system for applying reason to find truth. He doesn't always follow his own system. He points out the "fallacy of composition", and notes how each additional detail makes a claim less likely... but he ignores the legal standard of "preponderance of the evidence"- where no single fact makes a case, but an overwhelming number of facts tips the scales. The case for an assassination conspiracy against JFK can't be dismissed with a handwave. No honest person can seriously state that the investigating commission was on the level- especially after seeing how the J6 commission was run. There really are genocidal monsters who will use AI to cause havoc and destruction. All it takes is someone with a school-shooter's mentality to jailbreak the program. Steven should know this. And the 2020 election WAS rigged. The amount of empirical evidence is staggering. Denying it all with a shrug because some courts refused to hear the case is dumb. They cant rule on things they refuse to look for. Steven's optimism frequently blinds him to reality.
"Some courts" meaning 65 courts where no evidence was presented for rigging the election? Or the court case where it was proved that Fox News knowingly lied to its viewers by airing "the rigging" stories? How they admitted it was "not for the Red or Blue but for the green" ( money)! So Fox paid a $787 million settlement to Dominion for lying, was the Fox settlement also a part of the conspiracy too. Your J6 Commission concerns are also just as weak. Whats next you try to claim that their all Republican witness pool was "deep state " Dark Brandon" operatives involved there. Please, Trump lost and he tried to subvert the transfer of the Presidency- corruptly. I empathize how you can't accept that he duped you too. I wish you well.
I don't have a problem believing that Oswald killed Kennedy. But I don't think that he was alone. That part does not make sense. If you are going to kill someone you would have some sort of exit strategy. I think that Oswald was expecting a waiting car to take him away. It never showed up.
With respect to the presenter and guest...may I suggest that here we have 2 smart people not understanding how closing beaches during a pandemic is a management problem. It is hard enough managing a primary school sports day let alone the complex variations that manifest as beaches all around a sea based country. How do you tell some folk that their remote beach is fine to stroll along when the densely populated beach close by is closed? What happens when those denied migrate to the less dense beaches? The only way to avoud a cultural and management disaster is to blanket exclude all beaches. In South Africa, for example, this was potentially a political nightmare as many unpopulated beaches are seen as being only for the privileged. I thought this to be a small example of how 2 very bright thinkers are buying into a seemingly obvious conclusion...without thinking. 😊
The Free Press should get Ray Kurzweil on this channel to talk about AI and "the Singularity". That said, we already have transport that moves us without us having to do the work, and we have for centuries. It's called being a passenger. So what is the problem? Why do people want more? The answer is economics and social order. The degree of privacy and autonomy you wish to experience is proportional to the cost. The cost of absolute privacy and autonomy within any social structure is enormous. Only those who exist at the top or near top of the social order can afford the ultimate luxuries of that economy. And that's not you. If you want to get somewhere without piloting your vehicle, live where you can take public transit...for most people this luxury already exists. But the service alone is not what people want. People want to live like Kings (and Queens) and have complete control over their privacy and autonomy while also benefiting financially and emotionally from living within the social structure. Live outside the social structure, give up its greater benefits and you'll have all the privacy and autonomy you want. Oh, you don't want that either? You're delusional.
America’s white European heritage working class has paid a high price for the prosperity of the developing and third world. That should not be dismissed.
Its wrong to say that we didnt understand the Covid Pandemic. We didnt know the virus at that point, but we (Veterinarian Epidemiologist) DID understand the principles of biosecurity, and viral transmission.
Too very intelligent guys who miss a lot of important points. They tend to go to extremes of the spectrum for each issue. Lies, fake news or wishful thinking are often mixed with science and truth, not just opposed to it before being disseminated. Also, science is, never set in stone.
Kurzweil's idea of The Singularity is not that AI will come true, but that humans and technology will merge. The idea is that this Singularity will occur before AI can ever become self-aware and autonomous, so there won't be a "Man versus Machine" dystopia to worry about. Yes, Humans will disappear and become self-modified constructs (through amongst other things genetic manipulations) , but so too will the possibility of truly autonomous self-conscious AI become impossible. Man and man's inventions will be merged into something new. And then, regardless of what life is like on this planet, in reference to previous human values, we won't care.
😝 What a load of assumptions! It's not that I object to the fact that this is apparently the kind of future Kurzwell wants to imagine for himself and whomever wants to ride along with him... It's that he's envisioning it for everyone, including me and many others, who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in such a future, and who care very deeply for the state of this living planet, and the health of all the living creatures extent upon it. Therefore, if that is where Kurzwell and all his buddies want to end up, my request, which I think is not at all unreasonable, and more than fair, is that they abstain from activity leading to this outcome until they can do it on some other planet that doesn't support life and beings who can be brought to harm -- or more harm -- and to extinction, by the activity of other beings, or an other being, whatever that cyborg reality can ultimately be termed, that "no longer cares."
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. - Saul Bellow
Thanks for sharing this. 😊
Too true!
and the rest of the quote"...The search for relief from the uneasiness is what is real in Israel. Nationalism has no comparable reality." - Saul Bellow
@@jljones6343 "The search for relief from the uneasiness is what is real in Israel. Nationalism has no comparable reality. To say, as George Steiner says, that Zionism was created by Jewish nationalists who drew their inspiration from Bismarck and followed a Prussian model can’t be right. The Jews did not become nationalistic because they drew strength from their worship of anything resembling Germanic Blut und Eisen but because they alone, amongst the peoples of the earth, had not established a natural right to exist unquestioned in the lands of their birth. This right is still clearly not granted them, not even in the liberal West."
If Pinker thinks democracy & freedom of speech are not intuitive to humans, I suggest reading “Hierarchy in the Forest” by Christopher Boehm. Boehm argues that throughout the great majority of our evolution as humans we lived in small hunter-gatherer bands that were essentially egalitarian, and made most group decisions by consensus, with all adults entitled to opine. Those tendencies remain deep in our genes.
Unfortunately, civilization required much larger populations than can decide by consensus, and therefore a central authority. But we’ve always chaffed under such authority. It took another 5000 (mostly tumultuous) years for us to tinker our way back to democracy and free speech that can work for a large society. How long such a society can endure remains an open question.
If you are saving things change greatly in groups over 150 people. The answer is duh
How did Boehm arrive at the conclusion that prehistoric small hunter-gatherer bands lived in egalitarian, consensus driven groups? We definitely don’t have any written records of this. If anything, we have archaeological records of the exact opposite- burial sites where it’s obvious that some people were buried in a much more elaborate fashion than the rest, indicating they were leaders.
Pinker seems to think lots of things that are mostly wrong. I am not even antizionist at all and i find his gaza take here insane
@@emilianosintarias7337 How so?
Chimps are lead by the alpha, so I call bs
it's nice to live in a world where everything you believe is right
Wow, lovely insightful comment. Thanks.
You're being sarcastic, right?
That's what I got out of the interviewer too, there are undertones of socialism
@@youtubeuser4645 There is widespread disagreement about socialism, but also abortion, women's rights, sexuality, food regulations, trade and business regulations, and many more issues that objective descriptions of reality won't resolve because they have existed for millennia despite passionate claims of truth and reality.
@@matthewfuller9760 yeah tendentious presuppositions from marxists that keep the debates unresolved indefinitely and deliberately
It's more comfortable and convenient to find what we are looking for.
“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history”
George Orwell
I guess the problem is, there are no repercussions. In a tribe of 100, if you deceive someone, everyone learns it and if you do it more often you will be punished or kicked out.
Nowadays it's rather a legitimate job to spread misinformation in marketing, as an influencer, or in state propaganda or even news agencies. There are no repercussions. If you are kicked out of one channel, there are hundreds waiting.
I do agree that lies are becoming a very normal part of public discourse. That said, lies have a very funny way to running into the physical realities of the universe.
Unless your name is God.
@@lynx1357-f3c It's not a very common name, so ...
Because apart from a very few, countable on your finger things, there’s nothing as such that exists as pure objective reality. Anyone who prides himself too much about being a completely non attached, unaffected unbiased objective spectator to the TRUTHS of life then good luck to you, you’re god, leave us mere mortals with the limiting subjective perspective we’re born with and die with, a few deviations notwithstanding.
At 30:50, he claims that women have no "urge to dominate" (in contrast to men). Granted, the female style of domination is different from the male one, but his statement is ignorant and pandering.
If women have no urge to dominate then why, among most married couples, can the wife arrange the appearance of a room in the house with no fear of blowback from the husband, but not vice versa?
Maybe he means women have the urge to dominate men's affections/emotions, while men have the urge to dominate many people's resources. Physical aggression versus emotional aggression.
He hasn't seen Game of Thrones.
Practically any binary statements regarding psychology are bound to fall apart. History of opportunity affecting probability and all that.
@@AdamJones381 Game of Thrones isn't real and is also written by a man. :)
@@pegm5937 thanks for letting me know, I thought it was based on a true story!
Excellent discussion. I'd love to hear more reasonable, intelligent, and nuanced conversations like this rather than the angry, fearful, hateful garbage to which we are constantly exposed.
Hear! Hear! Unfortunately, by dint of being much easier to generate, "angry, fearful, hateful garbage" is more plentiful AND is more click-propagated. More people want to experience heightened emotions than to have their intellects challenged.
I agree. I greatly enjoy these long form conversations by intelligent people. But how does one engage with the political hyperbole and indoctrination that now passes for education?
Change the channel and turn off the device occasionally.
@@jr.6199 this is the advice from someone that finds it necessary to post on you tube?
@@jr.6199 I do. In order to maintain some semblance of sanity, I've limited my screen time considerably. Three hours per day, tops. Usually much less.
The Irony.
Intelligence and wisdom are separate stats.
Brillant statement.
People who lack both, don't know the difference between each one.
At least you must have one, to know which of the two you have not.
Maybe, but they are not orthogonal
Orthogonal? That can be debated.
My question is if one is intelligent but not wise, is he or she actually smart?
@@xaviperez26 I'd say a lot of intelligent people are completely blind to and devoid of wisdom while some simpler minds have found paths to wisdom.
It is not just that. A lot of so-called smart people hate not questioning, but hate being wrong. As a result, they want to have confirmation bias based on what they initially heard, stick to the belief, and oppose any rebuttal that comes their way.
Nobody wants to have confirmation bias. They want to be confirmed and that provokes the bias.
I dont think you understand smart people or the definition of smart. "Hate" is also inappropriate here.... But i wish you well, either way.
That's exactly the opposite of what the really intelligent people I know do, in my experience. What you've said, however, reflects almost exactly the kind of talk I've heard all my life from people of little education who resent other people's good fortune in having acquired degrees in higher education.
FYI, people who are really intelligent are aware of their own confirmation bias, and are constantly on the alert for it. This is because real intelligence harbors a desire not just for real knowledge, but also for wisdom. The need for confirmation bias only gets in the way of acquiring both knowledge and wisdom. And so, btw, does the ego's investment in being right at any cost, which is what you are talking about.
I'll grant you, there are people in academia who have this problem with egotism, but that is nothing unusual, as there are such people in every field of endeavor and type of work. The egotistical need to be right at any cost, however, is not a sign of "being smart." It's indicative of a particular lack of emotional development. It shows an unfortunate lack of grounded autonomy, and of the kind of self confidence that is born from the experience of natural self-transcendence.
The reason conspiracies rarely exist is because the only way 3 people can keep a secret is if 2 of them are dead.
If you live in a country that has been through a dictatorship you know this isn't true. In my country the dictatorship ended 30 years ago and the criminals took most of their secrets to their graves, much of what happened is still unknown.
That may be true for secret conspiracies, but what about the non-secret ones?
Currently here in New Zealand we have a conspiracy in which the government and the legacy news media are flat-out denying that the death rate is far higher than it should be, and ridiculing those who point this out, notwithstanding the fact that the government's own statistics department is quantifying the excess deaths on its official website. This news blanket is by definition a conspiracy. I can assure you that the vast majority of people who know it's a conspiracy are still alive.
@@minkz4097 You're obviously right. What an incredible belief to have that governement, and other actors, are not capable of conducting business in private... when it is virtually impossible to uncover info on most of their dealings!
Hardly the case with government. So...
Did you see that pink unicorn on the news, this morning?
Totally pertinent topics to discuss. Strange to mention: TFP has, for me, taken on the informative-analytical role that, at one time, NPR had.
I would suspect that was something akin to their mission when founding it!
lol, no
"Cherryil Jackson is a non-binary gender non-conforming trans humanist bipoc lesbian who owns a cat cafe in the Bronx, our reporter Sanjidiv Manvipolocomonicka caught up with her after a harrowing experience involving her hobby of building tiny doll houses for transgendered squirrels to live in."
Me too
Second that. I used to be an NPR listener, but my local news station seemed to fall into a “progressives-only” club, giving free mic to anybody that fit that description.
Pinker's data-informed views often come as a breath of fresh air, but I think he is missing a big part of the AI puzzle. The threat isn't that AI will have undesirable human tendencies baked into its "DNA", it's that AI increases humans' capacity to express those tendencies by orders of magnitude.
Some humans are violent psychopaths. But the availability of high-powered firearms allows those humans to do a lot more damage than they otherwise would. AI could have a similar effect. In other words, it's not the semantic misunderstanding of the input phrase "Eradicate cancer" that threatens the world, it's the plethora of actually malevolent potential inputs.
Having said that, we don't really have a relevant data set to refer to on this topic, so we're all just speculating.
I think you are on the right track. The danger comes from people using AI not from AI itself. Where AI differs from the gun-metaphor is that it also can be used for good. Guns can only be used for bad (murder) or less bad (hunting), but not really good, unless using violence is characterized as necessary maybe.
AI however can be used for generating misinformation but also recognizing misinformation.
Yes... AI is a tool or a weapon. It comes down to the desire/s of the individual/s that are in control of it using it for good or evil as with most technologies... It's not that AI won't have the ability to 'take over', it's that it won't have the desire... unless it has been programmed to of course. And that is the danger...
The leverage AI can give to whoever for whatever? Interesting point.
His data points are cherry picked, we are going through a human driven mass extinction that will directly affect stability, and reach a point where wars and conflict amplify over resources do to population grow and compute driven competition. Which is why A.I is a problem (it increasing the degrees of movement in strategy space, and movements at higher frequency, allowing deception to become a business model increases uncertainty of finding correction).
Can you also see how your's is a pessimistic view of A.I.? Safety will also be magnified by AI, not just the harmful traits of humans. So it inherently will be engineered for, designing in for the best safest outcome also.
Great conversation...Thannk you, I have become a big fan of this channel
Was just listening to this on my subway ride home. Excellent conversation gentlemen.
A lot of hot air, empty words exchanged trying to sound intelligent
Thank goodness for The Free Press. Journalism has got to get back to being as unbiased as possible. And free. Keep up the good work.
Journalism always has had someone deciding what went to print, or for radio/tv - what the producer decided to air. That decision process can be described as bias.
Wait a minute… multiplying probabilities only works when the events are independent. Lawyers and conspiracy theories don’t always add details to a story at random and with things that are independent.
True. If events A and B are perfectly correlated than the probability of events A and B occurring is just the probability of one of them. If they are independent then the probability of A and B occurring is the product of their probabilities. If they are partially correlated it is somewhere in between. The point is that the probability of both occurring is always the same or lower, never higher then a single event occurring.
What Stephen Pinker here alludes to is not merely a conjunction fallacy. If two of your neigbhours conspire to hide the arrival of your last amazon order from you, there is a reasonable high chance that they succeed (mostly because packages get lost all the time). If you believe that the post office is doing it with every package you order, there is both an extension in time and the number of people involved. Every interaction has the chance of going wrong not only logistically but also regarding the motivations of the people involved. It thus a lot more unlikely. Many c-theories ignore this entirely by excluding alternative explanations and concluding from "it is possible" to "therefore it is probable".
The Warren Commission? Trust it? You must be joking.
Well at least you listened that far, without outrage and turning it off. Better luck next time, when someone tries to talk sense to you.
Do you know what a supported exit wound is?
Listen, listen, listen the very skill we all need to practice! honestly.
We all human❤ our nature and conditions are to be curious not skeptics? Trust others for good contemplative reasons. Good fortune to those, who could do just that.
Thank you. Look at the zombies on your comments, lol
Hypothesis: about topics that don't have immediate practical effects, people are not so much given to believing nonsense as they are to *saying* they believe nonsense.
Genuinely out-of-curiosity question: Why would people solely pay lip service to said nonsense, though? (I'm assuming person-on-the-street 'people', not FoxNews anchor type 'people')
@@ebog4841 Right. Good point
Fantastic writer, one of our greatest public intellectuals. The Blank Slate, How the Mind Works, Enlightenment Now, Rationality are all tremendous contributions.
First example of "stupid things": conspiracy theories. Funny.
I like listening to Steven Pinker, I feel smarter listening to him speak, lol. I saw both of these men in person recently, at the "Dissident Dialogues" in Brooklyn, New York, on May 3-4th. I wonder if this interview was recorded there? Regardless, it was a pleasure to hear Mr. Pinker speak in real life.
As a person gives us more detail about Linda, we can reasonable increase our belief that they know Linda well and hence accurately know her profession. This type of causal connection can be implicit in questions about Linda even if not explicit in the test. “Is she a teller?” can be interpreted as “would you believe me if I said she was a teller?”. My answer depends on how well you know her.
Forgot to ask:
1. Why does the Harvard board of governors think that SKIN COLOR/GENDER is component to cognitive power??
2. Why didn't Harvard's board of governors collectively resign over Claudine Gay's plagiarism and testimony before Congress??.
Why are people who believe that 2000 years ago a guy turned water into wine allowed to teach science or be a scientist?
I REALLY want to hear a well reasoned explanation to #1. All you will ever get is "you're a racist/misogynist" or slavery or "systemic racism". Brilliant question that will go unanswered forever.
'
@@jamesedward9306 "WELL REASONED" begins with principle. From Biology 101: Not one genome on the face of the Earth displays the so-called "race" marker. Thus, the term "race" is empty of meaning and exists only as a political expedient for those who do not care about objective reality. This also means that phrases like "critical race theory" (CRT) have a fallacious middle term. Therefore, CRT is not a theory. CRT is nothing more than a SLOGAN with political purpose, leveraging those who failed Biology 101. Furthermore, sloganeering like "systemic racism and reparations" not only ignores objective reality, as demonstrated by the foregoing, but ignores three easy to understand PRINCIPLES:
1. GUILT is no more than one generation deep.
2. RESPONSIBILITY is no more than one generation deep.
3. One's status as VICTIM is overcome in less than six months when THE PRINCIPLE of self determination is applied to productive ends.
These PRINCIPLES are affirmed by Booker T. Washington who asked his fellow ex-slaves, in his time: "Why do you choose SLOTH over personal industry?". True then as it's true today. Finally, please consider this: Abstractions of invention, abstractions of innovation, simulacra whether simulations or dissimulations, and the 900lb gorilla... moral authority, the sum of all this (and much much more) are NOT FOUND in the skin, NOT FOUND in gender, NOT FOUND in sxxual praxis, but are prominently featured among those who pridefully exercise merit in their intellectual/cultural endeavors, demonstrating, therefore, WHY the science of Anthropology is bifurcated into two great fields of study... physical/cultural (never to breach that very significant boundary).
@@jamesedward9306It's just virtue signalling
Plagerism? Do some research. Gays ouster was a concerted racist attack fomented by Bill Ackman. Pinker is right. People believe stupid things. There’s always more to a story than what is written.
It continues to amaze me that people talk about rationality without specifically talking about emotions. It's almost as if we want to pretend we can be completely logical and rational at some point in our future without emotions. Or at least without directly addressing them. Our desire for predictability, including the drive for more and better science, is an emotional drive. Until we can absorb emotion into the conversation we will always have a slightly skewed conversation about being human. And to no longer have any biases would not be human.
I found out that the people who are most proud about being rational are those who can't control emotions such as rage and jealousy. They don't think of them as emotions. Other kind of emotions they consider them as weakness.
I believe rationally is meant to be a way of observing facts without emotional influence. Whether it can actually happen or not, I don’t know, but we obviously think we are capable of it, men especially think they have this ability. But, it’s a worthy exercise
Mr Spock agrees 🖖🏻🖖🏻
They portray their bias/emotion when they said anyone who believes fraud won the last election for Democrats, was delusional.
Wow, your really bad at this, you missed the whole point.
Great discussion thanks - if any enlightenment value cease to be taught in schools and universities that will truly be the end.
Imagine being just smart enough to talk shit about people who have solved more than your current understanding as a “public intellectual”
🎯
'we want to believe a good story over the truth' Pinker expresses some great thoughts
Live your truth 🙏💖🙏🙌....
@@JamilaJibril-e8h there's just one truth, not yours and not mine. Just the one truth.
@@DarrylMiglio live it .... Don't make things up ... Live your own truth ...
@@JamilaJibril-e8h Its a binary, truth or not truth
There is no such thing as "your truth". You can have your opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts.
I always enjoy Pinker's breakdown of things.
Me too
Really, i think the guy is an egoist that is full of it on a number of subjects, some of them showcased here.
@emilianosintarias7337 he's a bit too optimistic by saying things have never been better. I like his calm tone
The large role Conspiracy played in English politics and the American founding is well documented, as one example. This is good gaslighting, though.
Of course! WTF was the midnight ride of Paul Revere, if not the coordination of clandestine activity against a government?
@@jamesdewane1642 Oh dear. Way to prove Pinker's points.
@@Ollies2CentsWardill Can you explain that in detail?
US Jew hatred is insane
Hatred or distrust?
@@candidlens you distrust the babies in tel aviv? Albert einstein?
Are you baked in ovens? Living in a bomb shelter?
Free Palestine 🍉😭
First of all: I like this discussion
I do have a few remarks, though.
Point I disagree with.
Democracy:
Choose the leader that fits your group best (that's the statement in the discussion, no?)
-> versus
Choose the leader that can run the country best, in your view
Those are 2 different things.
In the USA you have indeed only 2 parties.
Here in Europe people regularly vote strategically, voting for a party that doesn’t suit their needs the best way, but will ensure that the other end of the isle doesn’t become the bigger party. So that’s a short-term deviation from your long-term vision for the country. Which means you vote for the leader that can run the country better than the alternatives. Not the one that would suit your group best. It's called "compromise", I believe...
One could extrapolate that to "short-term best interest", but then you are deviating from your own group, into possibly a smaller group, etc. etc.
So, by your deviation from your own best interest into the next-best interest, you áre setting aside your purely selfish perspective.
And I am pretty sure that many people don't even háve their own best interest in mind when voting, but the policies and perspectives that suit their country best.
For me it's hard to rhyme that with the 2-party vision of "fits my group best". You really áre voting for what suits your country best.
And that's a véry extrapolated self-interest. But maybe I'm wrong?
Israel:
Genocide is not only the deliberate killing of a massive group, it is also about displacement and starvation. For now, the displacement happening is bigger than the 750.000 who were forced to leave in 1948. Now we are talking about more than a million. Is it a genocide? I don't know. If Israel rebuilds Gaza and gives all these people back their land and their homes, then it is not. But how big of a chance is there Nethanyahu will do that?
For now the question is open on whether or not he is displacing a whole population. The signs are not good: Ever since Nethanyahu started to build his wall and confiscate the lands of Palestinians (around 2003), it has turned into an Apartheidstate. One can deny it and say Palestinians still have some rights, but in practice they don’t. They are at the whims of Israel. Which is a very bad position to be in.
The best comparison presumably is the waiting time at the border controls from Gaza (in the past) to the waiting time at the “homelands” in South Africa. Both were designed to check and humiliate, while the only reason people wanted to pass them, was either to go to work or to pass to another secured district. Which is Apartheid. Maybe it’s just my own bias (I’ve been watching this for 30+ years now), but even the excuses used for the border controls are the same: security measures after “terrorist attacks”. Which are essentially freaked out people blowing themselves up, not unlike many of the mass shootings in the USA, more often than not incited by some crazy ideology or conspiracy.
Which brings me full circle: thank you for provoking some thoughts!
💙💛❤
they are obviously targeting civilians , Pinker is often just performing rationality not enmploying it
I wish Dr. Pinker had more of a presence on social media throughout the last few years.
I agree, although I'm curious how he would be more enriching on those media types. I appreciate where he pops up!
@@foop9 I just want to see how he interacts with opposing viewpoints. He's probably in a particular sphere so seeing him out of that sphere would be interesting.
I genuinely believe that with the pandemic he just decided to lay low. Kinda hard to convince people that the statistical reality is the world is actually getting better when there's a pandemic on. Had to wait for it to calm down.
@@Sam-d7m8w i don't think he would do too well, in many areas he is a sloppy thinker with obvious biases that eh doesn't own . he made his career taking on biological blank slatists - that is pretty easy. There is an economist on youtube who does like a 2 hour breakdown of Pinker's shaky claims about inequality, poverty and progress.
@@emilianosintarias7337 Some of his individual books have more material than can be covered in 2 hours. He made his career doing a lot more than that. You don't sound very familiar with him.
What confounds me is how someone can be a "strong leader" and yet incredibly weak by almost any measure. Often they cannot tolerate criticism; typically they lack a sense of humor (in particular, cannot laugh at themselves); they cannot admit when they're wrong; they require constant validation from sycophants -- the list goes on and on.
You mean Mr Rogers wasn't a sniper?
😂🤣😂
“Post-modernist” outcomes after decades of criticizing Western institutions and liberalism. (Kuznar 2008:78):
1-question reality and representation (it's all “fake”). All history, literature, religion is wrong/biased)
Specifically, Universities teach qualitative analysis (opinions and feelings) outdoes quantitative analysis and numbers (votes)
2 make social media and documents the battleground by isolating text and language as “phenomena” (e.g. CRT) Everything (e.g. gender) is a “construct”. Over focusing on the construct of “power” creates “hegemony”
3-apply literary analysis, making words and images the weapons. E.g. CRT
4-deconstruct Enlightenment “metanarratives” by counter-storytelling. (cyber-espionage) promoting “progressive nihilism”
5 argue against method and evaluation (science) e.g.- lotions and potions are as valuable as vaccines.
Doesn’t seem to be much of a Free Press if it looks like the interviewer and interviewee are about to make out anytime now. It isn’t even a conversation, this is bromance, not journalism. This is intellectual self pleasuring masquerading as an academic discussion.
?
so true... rarely, Pinker was challenged
You don't need conspiracy when you've got blind obedience to orthodoxy.
What does that mean? Who is "blindly" obedient to orthodoxy? What is orthodoxy? perhaps what you would regard as orthodoxy is the view most supported by the weight of evidence. I've noted that the most frequent objectors to the "mainstream", "orthodoxy" or "prevailing narrative" are those pushing theories without a convincing evidentiary basis.
@Ollies2CentsWardill homodoxy is "same same thinking", orthodoxy is homodoxy with enforcement. These are both anchored in the system 1 learning pathway (narrative & mimetics) and fall within the domain of social proof. This is the reason "science advances one funeral at a time". Widely held doesn't mean rigorously proven.
Each claim requires a proponderence of evidence. The more claims being made to support a hypothesis, the more evidence required. Also, evidence counter to each claim must be fairly considered. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
In my long life I have observed time and again that people read ONLY the papers that agree with their opinions or prejudices.😂
I'll watch, but I'll embarrass myself first by saying Pinker will say anyone who believes the opposite of what he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt to be true, is being stupid no matter how smart they are and how well thought out their positions. Classic. Let's see.
6 minutes: Pinker is apologizing for the cabal's rolling out of covid. NO CREDIBILITY Mr. Pinker (I'm a real doctor). Do I have to keep watching? OK, I'll give it a few more minutes. 14 MINUTES Warren Comish? vomit. this is a fake interview to piss me off no one not even a genius like Mr. Pinker believes what he is spewing. Fuck me
8 and a half. Now he's apologizing with obfuscation. DOES ANYONE THINK LEE HARVEY OSWALD HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE BULLETS THAT KILLED JFK? THEN WHAT HAPPENNED? YOU LIE, WE DON'T BELIEVE YOU.
@@CPHSDC I share your frustration.
Same here, except I won't watch. And let's up the ante: he'll say nothing threatening to or critical of any powerful person or institution, excuses all the way down.
I presume you have some examples of well thought out positions pinker dismisses? You didn't listen to the part where he asserted the value of free speech in challenging things that may turn out to be untrue? "Classic. Let's see." is a rather disingenuous sequence in itself.
And academics, imo, are some of the least smart ppl i know. They are cerebral, ‘educated’, and confident (sort of) but smart ppl are as susceptible to willful ignorance as the rest of us.
- old lady from a family rife w academics.
I had no idea Woody Harrelson interviewed Henry Winkler.
Yep! Just two actors putting in a day's work to collect a paycheck, soaking up people's free time leading them out into nowhere.
@@jamesdewane1642 Indeed! They're not the real guys. They're clearly from Zeta Reticuli...
That's Willem Dafoe
I was on board until he said “peoples beliefs don’t effect the conduct of their lives, but I get where he’s coming from
He didn't say that. he said that conspiracy theories seem to prevail where wrong beliefs don't have an obvious impact on day to day life. For instance, one is more likely to believe Queen Liz was a reptile than think the cliff edge you'r heading toward is a CIA hologram.
Pinker is a great example of that
If AI transforms inexpensive drones into cunning hunters, used by both sides in a conflict, and if defensive tech fail to keep pace with offensive tech, then ..?
It's not that I'm always right. It's just that everyone else is always wrong.
Pinker is spot-on about the trivialized misuse of the word "genocide" in relation to the war in Gaza. Sadly, misguided people have been softening up the definition of genocide for at least a couple of decades, in all sorts of contexts - mainly I think because, as Pinker says, the absolute opprobrium of the idea, inviting unconditional condemnation, is something they want to co-opt for their own cause, whatever that is, and using the “nuclear option” of the G-word is a cheap and easy way to do it. There was a very ill-advised example in Canada in 2022 when Parliament voted to declare the (now thankfully defunct) residential school system to be an example of genocide (not just cultural genocide, but unqualified genocide) - as if the schools to which First Nations children were compulsorily sent for a century were not simply cruel, shoddy, and educationally inefficient (all of which they were), but as if killing the children who attended them were the institutions’ primary purpose.
No he really isn't. It isn't much of a war, and about a zillion independent bodies have determined gazans to be de facto israeli subjects. In a court of law, based on the yugoslav tribunals, intent would be found very easily just by blocking an entire civilian population from fleeing, while starving them, while bombarding the general area. That shouldn't even be a partisan claim, you can be a zionist and recognize that.
Please run for President, Dr. Pinker.
Interesting that the two of them could have a discussion about the the threat to democracy and not have any mention of a U.S. president trying to put the number one opposition candidate in jail.
I thought the same thing when they mentioned the misinformation in the 2016 elections and the "stop the steal" being an outright lie. Yet completely failed to mention how the FBI worked directly with the large social media corporations to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop, claiming it was Russian misinformation, yet it was just admitted in a court of law by the prosecution in his case. You can be technically correct and choose to omit certain events to avoid being dishonest, but doing so does not mean you're being honest.
There is a sense in which Pinker is a "bean counter" saying that the current Gaza situation is much less important compared to the Syrian conflict, since less people were killed. This would be fine if you believe that all lives are equal. I hate to say this, but there should be a recognition that there is a notion of *culture* being preserved, like the last of a species. We hope that, eventually, displaced Syrians would recognise and rehabilitate their culture(s) in a way which was more stable and tolerant. Elsewhere in this discussion the topic of population reduction was briefly mentioned, it would be great if Pinker could turn his mind to that, since I think it is necessary. But what I'm trying to say is that the world needs to preserve culture. And by implication, all living species that have struggled to make it this far to now, especially insects, plants, corals, things at the base of our ecosystems. I guess I'm advocating preserving what we have for a long time, I'm a "conservative" in the sense of conservation, but not against change, as long as it can conserve "diversity". Because diversity means creativity. It means choice. Options.
Hmm. Diversity, options. Except when powerful people are pulling an operation like crown viros recently. Then censorship to the max is OK with him.
When will Pinker ever say something about it? Or what will he say in the middle of the next big op? Pinker is a choir boy who does not sing off-script when powerful interests are involved.
@@jamesdewane1642 Firstly, he said exactly the opposite about censorship. Secondly, seek help, conspiracy Boy.
@Ollies2CentsWardill If you give a timestamp for his censorship comments, I'll give a listen. Even if he's saying the right things now, the test is what he was saying during the critical time when qualified scientific and medical opinion was being banned. And still now, yt scrubs channels that contradict the cdc.
@@Ollies2CentsWardillwhy do Muslims go to European countries refuse to assimilate and demand shria law ?
I understand the normative axioms of probability (Kolmogorov, Cox, etc.). I understand that 'conjoining' the probability of two events is done by multiplying them (necessarily leading to a smaller number/lower probability). However, let's consider the concept of evidence, particularly the concept of a 'preponderance of evidence'. Is evidence thought to be no longer a matter of probability but of certainty (P=1)? So, in the case of Linda the bank teller, it would be probable (not less likely) that she is a feminist than not a feminist given her other evidenced traits. Those traits may not have a bearing on whether she's a bank teller (or not) but they may have a bearing on whether she is feminist, volunteered for a 'social justice' cause, voted Democrat, etc. That is it could 'add weight' to making some conclusion actually more probable ... but not necessarily 'any' conclusion (eg. she likes cilantro).
I think Judea Pearl's work in Bayesian nets/conditional probability tried to fix this problem with frequentist probability. I'm not an expert but he showed that not only did more occurrences (i.e. evidence) increases the probability for an event, event's could increase the probability of other events. For example, having more symptoms related to some illness increases the likelihood for diagnosis, they don't consecutively decrease it b/c your less likely due to how probability are conjoined. Having more traits can increase the likely hood that you have some other trait due to a causal structure; in this example some illness having caused the symptoms.
Each symptom adds to the probability of a diagnosis due to a causal structure. Going back to the Linda, if we've have enough evidence to believe with high certainty that she is politically and socially significantly left of center, then this should be cause to believe she is more likely to have further leftist traits than not. Just like once we've got enough evidence to believe there's an infections it increases the lieklihood that we'll find a raised white blood cell count justifying a blood test.
What am I am I missing here?
you're assuming Pinker is speaking in good faith, out of intellectual curiosity, and a desire for discourse.
Maybe your missing understanding his simple point and how it kinda relates to Occam's Razor. So your point about adding evidence to a theory is different.
Pinker is just rationalizing his somewhat ungrounded optimism while judging other's biases. A rather overrated intellectual, so it seems to me (and his most famous Russian proponent Ekaterina Shulman happens to exhibit exact same flaws).
32:22 “Bringing about multiple simultaneous goals is what intelligence is. If you single-mindedly pursue one goal at the expense of everything else, that is idiocy.”
AI? All car factories have been fully automated for twenty years while car prices tripled!
Automation isn't the same as Artificial Intelligence. Cars have much more advanced technology now then they had 30 years ago. Also, would cars be more expensive after taking inflation into account?
Car prices would also fall if people repaired and continued to drive their vehicles until the utility is gone. Fact is, people are obsessed with new cars and forever having car payments so the demand is artificially high.
The same argument can be made for phones.
Stop consuming as much and consumers will gain some power. Consume a ton and compete with each other while prices increase.
Refreshing presentation. My level of cynicism goes down when I consider that things aren’t as bad as they seem. Historical context matters.
They are basically convincing themselves that what THEY believe is true, regardless of evidence.
Sad...
💯💯
"The simple minded and the uninformed can be easily lead astray. Those who cannot connect the dots, look the other way. People believe what they want to believe when it makes no sense at all". John Mellencamp.
Fantastic conversation, thanks Micheal!
Anyone that has done computer programming at all knows that making a mistake when giving instructions to a computer is always going to be a problem because we can't know all of the implications of our instructions.
As someone who worked as a software engineer for decades, and has some technical knowledge of the current AI systems, I think Pinker and others misunderstand the nature of these systems. LLMs are NOT engineered. There is a tiny amount of computer code that defines an inscrutable layered matrix of floating point numbers, a training algorithm (backpropagation/gradient descent), and a few other things. The neural net is then "trained" or "grown", similar to a human brain. All of its intelligence and understanding is abstracted into a giant set of floating point numbers. The complexity of this seems irreducible, and, thus, our comprehension of how it works may be an intractable problem (see Wolfram on irreducible complexity of complex systems). This means we have no way of plausibly guaranteeing any kind of behavioral output of these systems, and we simply do not know what we are going to get as we scale them and different new properties emerge.
We evolved with fear and joy. People tend to believe what makes them feel joy over the truth. Truth isn’t concerned with feelings.
Your statement doesn't capture the nature of evolution. Those who had an innate impulse or ability to derive reward (such as "joy") from the right things were able to survive. The tuning of reward levers (what gives you joy) is a result of evolutionary processes hence grounded in reality.
@@Eng_Simoes My statement is exactly accurate. I didn’t put into it what you got out of it.
@@danielpaulson8838 the "joy over truth" part is wrong, at least in the evolutionary, long term context you mentioned. If you fail to see that you don't understand evolution .
@@Eng_Simoes people feel joy over fake things not the truth What do you think makes theists? People who prefer reality? We evolved, are still evolving as are animals out there today being driven by pleasure or pain. You wish to argue something I don't know what. How's about you going away?
He talks from experience!
I'll give you a thumbs up just because you have Steven Pinker on your show.😃
It’s very simple really. Intelligence is not a substitute for wisdom.
Some of the problem with presumably intelligent people are that they might still have problems with basic math. In Norwegian I would call it tallskrekk (being afraid of numbers). Arguments that requires understanding the extremely advanced mathematical operations plus and minus are not understood.
That is where being against nuclear power is. It is strongly irrational. There is basically no way we can decarbonise without nuclear power. The numbers does not add up.
Why can't we have leaders with Steven Pinker's intelligence.
They have neither the aptitude, nor inclination for ass kissing.
One day. Leaders that understood people like him would be great too
Because smart people believe stupid things and thus vote for stupid people.
People with his smarts don't want to go through all of the necessary crap (fundraising nonstop, FEC requirements, giving up your weekends to attend boring "local events", d 43:42 ealing with dullard, obnoxious constituents, etc.)
@@raymondmiller5098 how true. I never thought about it that way.
The decrease in democracy follows international politics. Democracy is regularly halted when countries are under existential foreign threats. Russia, Iran, etc are unlikely to move to democracy when they are under existential threats.
Another superb discussion with Steven. I could listen to him for hours - it is music for the soul. An intellect well applied. He represents the good side of Harvard - "myside bias", doom-mongering, pathologizing, and unreflective group think in general are otherwise rather prevalent at august institutions of higher learning these days.
In the first 90 seconds, this guy is bringing up conspiracy theories. People have been trained to immediately dismiss all conspiracy theories despite human history being chock full of people conspiring to commit crimes.
"Conspiracy theory" is an infantile, gaslighting term weaponised against critics of mainstream narratives. Who talks of "conspiracy"? Is everything the so-called "conspiracy theorists" say in the realm of "theory" or might it be irrefutable fact? Ron Brookman, structural engineer, said this of WTC-7's destruction: ruclips.net/video/TM_l_4sJ-sY/видео.html
"When I first looked at the films of Tower 7, I automatically assumed and concluded - pretty close, quickly - that it was a controlled demolition. I didn't think it was worth a lot of extra effort to dig into the various details of the building in order to refute that.”
As a structural engineer, whose mind is unclouded and unintimidated by the 24/7 propaganda narrative, Ron Brookman was able to speak out using his professional expertise. The thing is you don't need to be a professional: destructions by fire and destructions by controlled demolition have zero in common, they are unconfusable ... moreover, as stated by Fire Protection Engineer, Scott Grainger, "Steel structural frame buildings, high-rise buildings, simply do not collapse due to fire. There has never been until 9/11 an experience where there was a high-rise building that was steel frame completely collapsed. ruclips.net/video/tmw9iql4e64/видео.html
What neither the believers nor the disbelievers of the 9/11 narrative factor into their analysis is that those in power - from centuries of experience - have complete faith in the limitless elasticity of the Emperor’s New Clothes effect. It’s not as if they don’t know that destructions by fire and controlled demolition are fundamentally completely different kinds of destruction and there is no possibility of confusing one with the other, they know - but they also know:
--- Most people - regardless of their expertise which should direct them otherwise - will either believe or at least accept fire as the cause
--- A small minority - the derided “conspiracy theorists” - will recognise controlled demolition but this small minority is not powerful enough to cause problems in maintaining the fictional narrative …
… and that is why they brazenly showcase WTC-7’s perfect implosion from seven vantage points and clearly script media personnel to allude to controlled demolition, eg, Brian Williams’, “Can you confirm it was No. 7 that just went in,” “to go in” being a term used in controlled implosions due to the buildings falling in on their own footprint. ruclips.net/video/Vgx8Uwo-Vxc/видео.html
The secret to 9/11 isn't who was responsible but the nature of the alleged crime but I can't put links here. If you look up my name and substack you will find it.
Exactly why he's full of shit
Maybe listen more than 90 seconds before commenting. He says that conspiracies occur but conspiracies that require many people and many steps are not likely to remain hidden.
@karagi101 That's just speculation that is clearly not based on the evidence. Big conspiracies do remain hidden ... that is not exactly hidden more hidden in plain sight.
@@petraliverani1247 Name one big conspiracy that remained hidden for long. People talk. Mistakes are made. The bigger the conspiracy the more people and the greater the chances for mistakes.
With all due respect for Steven Pinker, and I admire him a lot. But I also believe that he is a victim of "my side bias" on the question of Palestine.
I believe he isn't the victim. I believe a lot of people are victims of a longstanding and massive propaganda campaign with vast amounts of money behind it which has normalised lies about the history of Israel. There is a stated intention of genocide involved , it began long before the establishment of Israel and it is rooted in religious and racial hatred. To believe that Israel has genocidal intent requires an incredibly narrow microscope and a lack of appreciation of relevant facts and history.
How so?
I guess a liberal who makes decisions based on data and science and also likely has knowledge of his ancestors history would have a certain bias
Unlike you?
@@MarcusN-kp1jn I was just thinking about that when I wrote the comment. Yes, I am, for sure victim of it..and I think that its one of our biggest blind spots, to point to others without checking-up on ourselves. At least I am aware of it unlike him at that moment.
Jung was right. Man's lack of understanding of his mind is the time bomb waiting to end everything.
I would think that a reasonable definition of "not smart" would be belief in conspiracy theories. I have been a physicist for over 50 years, and have always thought the highest indication of intelligence is to understand where the border between what you know and what you don't know lies. Then, it is ok to explore the area you don't know, but you must always be aware that you don't know any of the things you are thinking about. I don't know if this is a matter of training or differences in personality, but this constant awareness of the edges of knowledge is always with me. And going for stories about the world that you like the most seem patently dumb! I have always said that the most charming thing about nature is that she doesn't care what you believe or want; It is your idea to dig the truth out of nature. I think all of life is like that. If you have a preferred outcome on a topic, you probably shouldn't research it because of the risk of bias.
Very well said. I haven't asked everyone, but extrapolating from my personal experience, I believe that 99% of people on this planet do not apply this wisdom principle. The reason? The human brain does not work that way.
Because most of intelligent people are narrowly focused, pure souls and naive and cannot believe that there are people with other thoughts and acts.
One of the problems with smart people is they are better at rationalising false views until they get what sounds like a logical reason to believe them. Dumber people come up with less convincing reasons but are also easier to fool, whether by others or themselves. The necessary skill is critical thinking and being prepared to change your mind and admit to mistakes. Everyone has beliefs which are wrong but I like to think I'm not wedded to any of them to the point I wouldn't change my mind if I received new data which was from a more knowledgable source or capable of verification.
The good opinion I developed about Steven Pinker decades ago when I read an article about his work in language has only increased with time. Sanity, such a rare quality these days. Thank you!
funny / mi iinitial good opinion has only disintegrated in face of pinkers apAlling smugness hiding indsde his harvard dloak
@@eligoitein6499same here
Well, Pinker, a very smart person indeed in many regards, supported the Catalan nationalist separatist movement. I am not sure if that is a stupid thing, but it is not taking into account the Spanish recent political history, the coup it was victim of through that movement, its constitution and the large amount of people who want to remain in Spain as Spanish citizens and receive an unfair treatment there in Catalunya.
40:00 You are definitely helping people.
My personal term for why smart people believe in stupid things is: batshit on the margin.
Steven is a brilliant guy with an excellent system for applying reason to find truth. He doesn't always follow his own system. He points out the "fallacy of composition", and notes how each additional detail makes a claim less likely... but he ignores the legal standard of "preponderance of the evidence"- where no single fact makes a case, but an overwhelming number of facts tips the scales.
The case for an assassination conspiracy against JFK can't be dismissed with a handwave. No honest person can seriously state that the investigating commission was on the level- especially after seeing how the J6 commission was run.
There really are genocidal monsters who will use AI to cause havoc and destruction. All it takes is someone with a school-shooter's mentality to jailbreak the program. Steven should know this.
And the 2020 election WAS rigged. The amount of empirical evidence is staggering. Denying it all with a shrug because some courts refused to hear the case is dumb. They cant rule on things they refuse to look for.
Steven's optimism frequently blinds him to reality.
"Some courts" meaning 65 courts where no evidence was presented for rigging the election? Or the court case where it was proved that Fox News knowingly lied to its viewers by airing "the rigging" stories? How they admitted it was "not for the Red or Blue but for the green" ( money)! So Fox paid a $787 million settlement to Dominion for lying, was the Fox settlement also a part of the conspiracy too. Your J6 Commission concerns are also just as weak. Whats next you try to claim that their all Republican witness pool was "deep state " Dark Brandon" operatives involved there. Please, Trump lost and he tried to subvert the transfer of the Presidency- corruptly. I empathize how you can't accept that he duped you too. I wish you well.
FYI for people with respiritory issues otolaryngologists sometimes recommend masks on high traffic conjestion proximity bike routes.
I don't have a problem believing that Oswald killed Kennedy. But I don't think that he was alone. That part does not make sense. If you are going to kill someone you would have some sort of exit strategy. I think that Oswald was expecting a waiting car to take him away. It never showed up.
Allotto people call me a "conspiracy theorist," however I prefer the term "historian."
With respect to the presenter and guest...may I suggest that here we have 2 smart people not understanding how closing beaches during a pandemic is a management problem. It is hard enough managing a primary school sports day let alone the complex variations that manifest as beaches all around a sea based country. How do you tell some folk that their remote beach is fine to stroll along when the densely populated beach close by is closed? What happens when those denied migrate to the less dense beaches? The only way to avoud a cultural and management disaster is to blanket exclude all beaches. In South Africa, for example, this was potentially a political nightmare as many unpopulated beaches are seen as being only for the privileged.
I thought this to be a small example of how 2 very bright thinkers are buying into a seemingly obvious conclusion...without thinking. 😊
Thought provoking and entertaining in equal measure. Loved it.
Relevant to the Shakespeare conspiracy theories that Henry Oliver writes about in the blog post cited this morning by Oliver Wiseman.
The Free Press should get Ray Kurzweil on this channel to talk about AI and "the Singularity". That said, we already have transport that moves us without us having to do the work, and we have for centuries. It's called being a passenger. So what is the problem? Why do people want more? The answer is economics and social order. The degree of privacy and autonomy you wish to experience is proportional to the cost. The cost of absolute privacy and autonomy within any social structure is enormous. Only those who exist at the top or near top of the social order can afford the ultimate luxuries of that economy. And that's not you. If you want to get somewhere without piloting your vehicle, live where you can take public transit...for most people this luxury already exists. But the service alone is not what people want. People want to live like Kings (and Queens) and have complete control over their privacy and autonomy while also benefiting financially and emotionally from living within the social structure. Live outside the social structure, give up its greater benefits and you'll have all the privacy and autonomy you want. Oh, you don't want that either? You're delusional.
AI taking over> You can always unplug the computer.
America’s white European heritage working class has paid a high price for the prosperity of the developing and third world. That should not be dismissed.
The ivory tower effect, in action.
And it is so funny that the irony is totally lost on Pinker (and probably the other chap too).
Pinker and Dawkins are my favorite thinker of our times.
“Certainement, qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste.” - Voltaire
Eh, no. 2 dems discussing social issues will inevitably put their own biases forward as fact.
Its wrong to say that we didnt understand the Covid Pandemic.
We didnt know the virus at that point, but we (Veterinarian Epidemiologist) DID understand the principles of biosecurity, and viral transmission.
Too very intelligent guys who miss a lot of important points. They tend to go to extremes of the spectrum for each issue. Lies, fake news or wishful thinking are often mixed with science and truth, not just opposed to it before being disseminated. Also, science is, never set in stone.
Nice to hear rational thought! Thanks for the great interview.
I always love listening to intellects because they are so out of touch with the everyday reality we experience.
To Steven Pinker, I wonder whether the recent SC immunity case changes his thoughts about the US falling to fascism?
Kurzweil's idea of The Singularity is not that AI will come true, but that humans and technology will merge. The idea is that this Singularity will occur before AI can ever become self-aware and autonomous, so there won't be a "Man versus Machine" dystopia to worry about. Yes, Humans will disappear and become self-modified constructs (through amongst other things genetic manipulations) , but so too will the possibility of truly autonomous self-conscious AI become impossible. Man and man's inventions will be merged into something new. And then, regardless of what life is like on this planet, in reference to previous human values, we won't care.
😝 What a load of assumptions! It's not that I object to the fact that this is apparently the kind of future Kurzwell wants to imagine for himself and whomever wants to ride along with him... It's that he's envisioning it for everyone, including me and many others, who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in such a future, and who care very deeply for the state of this living planet, and the health of all the living creatures extent upon it. Therefore, if that is where Kurzwell and all his buddies want to end up, my request, which I think is not at all unreasonable, and more than fair, is that they abstain from activity leading to this outcome until they can do it on some other planet that doesn't support life and beings who can be brought to harm -- or more harm -- and to extinction, by the activity of other beings, or an other being, whatever that cyborg reality can ultimately be termed, that "no longer cares."
It’s a difference
, if The restrictions on free speech were because of protecting the or lying to the citizens
Steve has an amazing intellect! Always a pleasure to listen to him talk ❤