Alain de Botton and Steven Pinker debate progress highlights

22 thoughts on “Alain de Botton and Steven Pinker debate progress highlights”

1. Alain keeps strawmanning Steven

2. 7:14 Alain reveals how painfully confused his understanding of statistics is, which is simply another fallacious appeal to feelings over facts

3. Alain de Botton's argument is rhetorical, if not obscurantist: he calls everything that is data-based or factual a 'shifting of grounds.' Well, I can see where De Botton is coming from; I am coming from the same place — a sort of neoexistential hysteria; a tendency to gloomily exaggerate the imaginary maladies of modernity. Well, good-bye to all that! (Aside to fellow-novelists: having rid myself of 'all that' hasn't impoverished my writing either.)

4. Forget using data to counter pinker. Stick to Strawman arguments baby. That's the way to beat pinker.

5. They basically debated different things. I thing they can all agree poverty is a great source of tragedy in life,yet alain is more interested in what still make us suffer after poverty is not an issue? As he said himself, first world problem in a serious sense. And steven really cared about the living condition in the third world

6. from the facts that we cherry pick to make a point that all is well, stop whining and go back to sleep!

   also ignores that all progress comes from that "whining".

7. Steve-10 Alain-0

8. Omg! Pinker is so patient

9. full video pls!

10. The problem with the Con-Team is that it resorts to emotion ( poverty is a subjective feeling of a millionaire) and jumps to conclusions such as “the pro team is naive to confuse better with different”, rather than to acknowledge that not everyone, an idiot m.d. like myself for example, or anyone with a ph.d. from the Pro-Side, let alone the many wonderful brilliant minds who are trying to rise up from poverty from less prosperous parts of this planet, can thrive on adopting “reasonable optimism” by reminding themselves everyday to be humble and realise that we are ALL broken and hopeless. For anyone with deeper knowledge of neuroscience, this just demonstrates the relative ignorance of the Con-Team of affective neuroscience , of what executive functions of the brain are, and what role evolution and the collective will of humanity plays in the strive of the “faulty walnut” to improve, and to be happy by empowering ourselves and others. Perhaps, it is exactly that what the Con-Team lacks, being humble enough to acknowledge that they lack enough knowledge to stand up to the Pro-Team.

11. If you watch the entire debate you may notice a few revealing things, that Gladwell runs out of things to say after his concession and both he and Botton increasingly deploy ad hominem (a sure sign of losing) by way of mockery and adjective-slinging

    Ps the full debate can be watched on the munk website after a free sign up, which is what I did

12. I think Alain is right about the perception of happiness.

13. Is this cherry picked to make this Alain fuckhead look like an idiot?

14. "there are millionaires and billionaires that feel they don't have enough and that is the true definition of poverty." Alain de Botton is fucking retarded.

15. I didn't get the chance to see the full debate.Did Alain even make a point throught it?

16. wow, alain de botton is so blind^^ his points are truly insane

17. I am suprised how this conversation went so immature. Like two boys in highschool. So many ad personam arguments and mean comments. They are not interested in finding common ground for dicussion 🙁

18. The problem with many debates is that people simply think very differently. Pinker sees the world through a hyper-rational, statistically-driven magnifying glass that, whilst impressive and the basis of valid arguments, is blind to the nuances of human experience that the more philosophically inclined are more likely to pick up on. These two men – Pinker and De Botton – will never see eye to eye because they see the world through totally different lenses.

19. I distrust and shy away from people who love their voice too much (and you know who I'm talking about).

20. What an ability of Pinker to take out of context what Alain said and distort it entirely. Happens in conversations many times, sadly. Its natural. We understand the way we desire to understand. Logic is vanished and instead you make a "funny" joke without any link to what Alain said originally. Sigh…

21. Values of the enlightenment failed clearly with romanticism and the bloody political history of the XX century and continue to fail. Why? Because reason in itself can't grasp our realities entitely. We need another kind of reason that is able to understand all the human problems that are beyond the mere political and economical discourse. The School of Life, thats the place to find solace, shelter, understanding and a sense of community.

22. You know, I watch debates like this because it's always fun to see people insisting on their mistakes in order not to lose a debate. (Yes, I am talking about that team).

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