Jordan B Peterson
I spoke with Harvard’s Dr. Steven Pinker about the immense improvements in human living conditions that are now happening with amazing speed almost everywhere in the world — as detailed in his new book, Enlightenment Now! (https://amzn.to/2jDwv7D) — a careful, clear-headed and data-driven defense of the rational/scientific worldview that helped make such improvement possible).
Dr. Pinker grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and his PhD from Harvard. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his nine books, including:
The Language Instinct (https://amzn.to/2JXZcai),
How the Mind Works (https://amzn.to/2KEh77f),
The Blank Slate (https://amzn.to/2jzXsZO),
The Better Angels of Our Nature (https://amzn.to/2rnkqHF), and
The Sense of Style (https://amzn.to/2wf5WyI).
He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, and one of Foreign Policy’s “World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” He is Chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and writes frequently for The New York Times, The Guardian, and other publications.
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do you know what Titan is?
dunno if they speak for sake of viewers at this point – lots of repeated topics
Steven Pinker looks like he came out of an oil painting
The following on ‘the Enlightenment’ and move toward rational enquiry is perhaps oversimplified, and must have been suggested many times previously… Once upon a time, ‘Christianity’ or ‘Churchianity’ was as authoritarian in its dogmatic reign over societies, its insistence on ipse dixit, and as punitive-toward/discriminatory-against non-conformists, as classical Islam and many Islamic regions are at present. I would suggest that the threat of consequence for uttering anything ‘non-p.c according to Church dogma’ helped keep people at large stupid from fear of thinking anything out of line (…even if the Church did not find out, a deity conceived as malevolent toward free-enquiry would surely exact a terrible punishment); those who disagreed would probably keep their thoughts to themselves or shared with few; means of safe communication were limited in form and reach; and for some in a mentally tyrannical environment, thinking differently to ‘normspeak’ might come at psychological and psychosomatic cost, apart from the effects of social isolation, such as triggering doubt in ones own ability to know anything directly for oneself and belief that one must have been made faulty if one cannot accept an assertion that flies in the face of what one knows for oneself (…“There must be something so wrong with me that I cannot even see that it is wrong”). And then Church dogma began publicly to be revealed as something of an ass in some respects (e.g Galileo), no longer an absolute authority on truth, which opened the way for seeing it as beliefs and ideas that might empirically lack substance being imposed forcefully from without, supported by threat of punishments here and hereafter. In some ways, maybe the Protestant proliferation of Biblical interpretations, while tending toward their own versions of ipse dixit, also became somewhat illuminating of the (now socially democratised) mental process of projecting and seizing theoretical assertions. Over time and assisting the shift toward free-enquiry, punishments for not conforming became less severe, or at least physically tolerable, further easing fact-based reasoning and self-examination independent of ‘Church p.c’.
I always wondered if they knew each other. This is beautiful.
Dear Jordan I enjoy your mind. That said I have a tech recommendation. Watch these youtube videos: "How to Get Better Audio in Your Videos — 5 Budget Audio Tips" and for a deeper dive "How To Get Better Audio Quality For YouTube" There are lots of others that you my find more up your ally.
I find it remarkable that so many of these intellectual types, many of whom are so correct in so many ways, are so utterly dismissive of religion, specifically Christianity, which has done so much for humanity. Part of the reason that the Enlightenment happened when it did and where it did was because of Christianity and the rational, systematic way of thinking it engendered. Also, a question was asked early in this video about how we were able to advance as a civilization while decreasing rates of homicide, etc. The answer is, of course, the morality Christianity engendered. Christianity steadily made things like murder and slavery unacceptable in a society that considered itself civilized. The Founders understood the importance of Christian moral education, and the bulwark it would provide against the worst excesses of human nature, which could be unleashed with unfettered liberty. But these modern "rationalists" ignore that, because so many of them are caught in scientistic thinking (thinking marked by scientism – which I'd almost argue is a kind of neomodernism, complete with modernism's obsession with "progress" as an ideal). I'd LOVE for someone like Peterson to do a thorough study examining the relation between a generalized Christian morality diffused throughout a free society, and its lack thereof in the same kind of society. Because I think it's plain that, with the liberty we have, as our society has steadily moved away from being a "Christian" society (a society where Christian morality is the generally agreed-upon morality of the society, even if Christian orthopraxy is not universal), we have begun to regress toward the barbarism of our pre-Christian past. However, regress, like progress, is incremental, so such a study may have to wait for the future. We will probably have to go further down this road – perhaps to complete societal collapse – before the social scientists have enough data to determine the obvious. Christian morality is vital to a free people; it is what keeps the societal train from jumping the tracks. At least Peterson gives Christianity SOME credit. Men like Pinker and Harris give Christianity NO credit, and in fact, accuse it of being THE PROBLEM with society, which I think is manifestly absurd.
37:36 I find it fairly dubious that there is a singular unified "course of History".
55:35 sounds like there was a political aim for the History to be written that way.
It might be the camera, but Jordan's "resting bitch-face" is priceless.
It amazing that brilliant person like Pinker can be so ignorant about history and and so biased againt catholic church. He sound like moron which he is not but he should read Thomas Aquinas father of rational thought Or Ockham father scientific method and read about first agricultural revolution brought about monastics
Another annoying anti Christian bias of Pinker is His Book Better Angels which shows that decrease of violence started in medievial Europe both in scope as well as ideology. Yet he ignores it
Concept of human rights came from catholic universities of 16 century Spain. First country to abolish death penalty was in Northen Italy etc etc but he his credit he collected data I wish his Christophobia did not poison his intellect so.
I wonder if Pinker is conscious of his anti catholic bias and is willfully omitting history Or ignorant to facts that Christianity and Roman catholic church in particular was uniquely responsible for idea of continuous progress in science For development of Universities as centers for learning and knowledge accumulation , for creating scientific method, rational thinking, use of mathematics to verify science, placing medicine as a science within university system, development of hospitals orphanages and and social work and so on.
Let's spread the good word brothers and sisters, things are actually really going great, and f*ck it, they will improve further and further! #fuckpessimism
Yes, things are overall better, but isn't the human society intrinsically contradictory? We crave freedom and end up in an economic co-dependancy and mutual language policing; we know how to improve what bothers or even tortures us, but are unable to act. Isn't our market value as production units set independently from our own value system? Isn't an ecological catastrophe a real prospect, which is precisely the result of our progress in all things? Why do we keep focusing on left or right ideologies, whilst both have failed to produce any sustainable and progressive improvement in human condition? Educated people are very much aware of how much better most things are than even 50 years ago – but isn't satisfying or good enough – it doesn't mean there is no suffering, just because suffering got less. What about the things that haven't improved or are the downsides of our progress -slavery, corruption in various forms, lingering colonialism, misuse of technology, integration of all aspects of our reality into the market, which is now a value system in itself, prevailing stupidity and religiousness of the literate. Better does not mean good, that's what I'm trying to say…
Maybe Jordan should try to stop interrupting.
I wanted to listen to this but damn that phone. Love both these guys
“With its primitive scientism and manga-style history of ideas, the book is a parody of Enlightenment thinking at its crudest… a therapeutic manual for rattled rationalists.”—John Gray on Steven Pinker’s new bestseller, Enlightenment Now: A Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, & Progress. Applauded recently by Bill Gates as his “new favorite book of all time.” Perhaps Gates needed the therapy? Hmm. https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlightened-thinking-steven-pinker-s-embarrassing-new-book-feeble-sermon
Things are all getting better ey? have neither of you heard of Entropy, amateurs.
It amazes me how Pinker’s thought process always seem crystal clear in just about every conversation or video I’ve watched of him. He’s always seems to be on.
How is Dr. Pinkers book different to Hans Rossling lifetime work?
Pinker sounds like professor oak lol
Stop the video at exactly 2:45 and soak in those faces…
Albert Camus said something close to that, he said in "la peste": "And since a dead man has no weight unless he has been seen dead, a hundred million corpses sown throughout history are only a smoke in the imagination"
All atheists I've known are extremely egotistical prideful human beings. The enlightenment originated from prideful men who were too proud to believe they're was something out there greater than themselves BUT they saw that Christian values were so powerful and important and they took those ideas and incorporated them in to there junk science and what they would consider to be rational thinking. Christianity is what has changed the world and the people living in it.
Its a pleasure to watch this, thanks Jordan and Steven and thanks to technology that allow me to watch this trough my computer in a small town from Argentina. What a great time for living….. I wish that more people articulate their thinking with data and not only with their own feelings and common sense
Overfishing, accumulation of huge quantities of plastic debris in the ocean (5Gyres), rapid species decline, rapid global warming…these are unmistakable signs of the beginning of a new epoch in world history. I would say that the likelihood that the human species will endure for another thousand years is at least questionable. Witnessing these events unfold over the decades has been my source of pessimism. As far as optimism goes, I would suggest that even if humans don't survive, it is likely that life itself will go on without us: witness the recent report of elephants evolving without tusks as adaptation to poaching (National Geographic). Yet it is possible that if humans continue to persist, that nevertheless the earth and its biosphere will be radically changed due to human activity.
two of the greatest minds of this generation.
8:06 Pinker's prostitute crashes the video, just watch his guilty face
Hey guys, The reason why there is such a resentment in the West is a result of the immense progress in the decrease of poverty elsewhere in the world.
This decrease of poverty is not felt on those who had too much and now have to give back in the West. This slight decrease of wealth is felt most at the bottom half of the population and this leads to a general feeling of resentment. So they look around and blame the immigrants (the narrative on the Right) or blame the rich (the narrative of the Left).
We are now at a stage where a generation sees the previous generation having it better than they do, so the sense of progress has been lost and therefore optimism has left their minds. Objectively you are right: times never have been better. But give someone 100 dollar a month for free and then suddenly 50 dollar while others still get 100 dollar and they go mad. The strange thing is the more they didnt earn it in the first place the even more angry they get.
Of course there is more to say about this; but you know the research on locked up monkeys that throw back raisins when they see other monkeys receive grapes.
This is Classic
A couple of pontificating Canadians. Good on ya.
I highly recommend "The Defeat of the Mind" by Alain Finkielkraut published in 1987. It discusses opposition to the Enlightenment both Historically and in modern times and how this contributed to the culture wars of modern times, especially Universities, going back to the 1930s. He touches on German Romanticism, and how multiculturalism is injected with the Volksgeist which all ties in to what we see 30 years later in todays far-left contradictory "unholy trinity" of Postmodern Intersectionality Religion, coupled with neo-marxism, followed by a belief in science that tends to be contradictory in essence- something akin to a Newtownian & Darwinian worldview coexisting within a single framework, despite the fact that they are contradictory. Newtonians that don't know Einstein/Chaos Theory disproved this, in newtonian's epistemology, who simultaneously insist on Evolution and Climate Change as absolute truths, but deny biology, who simultaneously believe there are no such things as absolute truths and that everything is subjective… I was lucky enough to stumble across it in a box of old books, but here's the amazon link:
https://www.amazon.com/Defeat-Mind-Alain-Finkielkraut/dp/0231080239
It looks like Peterson debating Ruth Bader Ginsbergs sister….
intellectual life should be more data driven…… god what a wanker. Imagine if Kant didn't write the critique of pure reason because he wasn't using any data. facts are pretty irrelevant without an ideological framework, or even completely useless in a lot of mathematical domains and philosophical fields of inquiry such as aesthetics and morality
I am glad that this book is on the New York Times best sellers list, and that it is that popular.
At a certain level, though, we do focus on the imperfections, the things that can be resolved. Certainly the fear response and the sale of (if it bleeds it leads) news, have become joined in a loop cycle propagation pair. And it is a problem. However it is our need to have things resolved, to fix those wrong things, that has fed a simultaneous cycle, of improvement, and resolution to issues that exist. To borrow a phrase from Jordan Peterson, it is not obvious that the trajectory of human progress does not necessitate a continued evaluation and improvement cycle, to prevent its collapse. Look at global trade and the scare of viral outbreak, highlighted in the public subconscious by movies like 'outbreak'. Or the machine age and the ease of base human staples and distribution of physical goods, that was paired with Marxism. It could have been called anything else, but the masses rioting for more equality when its implementation became feasible could have (and obviously nearly did) take down the progressive trajectory of human life improvements that we call civilization. There are problems we point out, and that get media attention, like the intelligent builders that we are, we advance and handle the things that occur or come to being because we are advancing. It is part of the process.
As well, the achievements along the way, the % of people that have available food, and shelter in the world. Those targets reached could be a banner year for the global human civilization. As a hypothetical example "In the year 1998, global starvation was reduced to < 0.5 %". Something like that SHOULD BE as big as the dates that ended WWI, and WWII. So, yes, more promulgation ! More stating, explaining, telling and retelling of those important pieces of good news. It isn't just one group or just conservatives, or just liberals. It is an Earth milestone. It should be celebrated.
Selective data 'mining' is always inevitable to a certain extent, as we are all motivated by our underlying beliefs. I wonder when Peterson speaks about his investigation regarding how personality traits correspond well with life success, which will mostly refer to financial success, if he is taking any account of how much wealth is inherited.
Yes, it is certainly difficult to argue against the proposition that a person who has the requisite personaity traits, aptitudes, and skills needed to achieve some measure of life success stands a better chance of gaining this success than someone who does not have these traits etc. This is fairly obvious. But to dismiss out of hand the notion that there is some form of manipulation at the top, some sort of gaming of the system just because this correlation exists is a real stretch. Peterson is telling us more or less what these traits are, and we know more or less what the measures of success are, but more shadowy is the means of gaining that success, and the system in which it is gained. To simply dismiss calls of unfairness ignores the fact that many of those achieving success are doing so precisely because they are better at manipulating, cheating, swindling, convincing, persuading, deceiving, etc. It is no secret that at the tops of many corporations are sociopaths and psychopaths. Yes, they have 'earned' their, positions, and there is a meritocracy at work, but this does not automatically confirm any 'fairness' in the system. Is it fair that people who have traits such as ruthlessness and shrewdness, people who have been born with these traits and had no choice in having them, who did nothing to earn these traits, are able to use them to rise to the top? More so, is it just that such people shoulf be allowed to do so without constraint? This is what happens in most societies, and it is somewhat inevitable, but it is hardly just to simply wash one's hands and say 'what can you do?'
Finally, getting back to my original point, what about inherited wealth? Such wealth accounts for something like 50-60% of all wealth in America. Was this earned through merit? Did Paris Hilton do ANYTHING to achieve her position? Was this success achieved because of character traits? I understand Peterson's points about overplaying the idea that the system is rigged, the notion that it is human nature and the system of competition itself that leads to some doing better than others, and that does not come about as a result of some secret society deciding many years ago in a dark room to rig everything in their favour, but I think he overplays his own, hand, especially in totally ignoring the problem of inherited wealth. I think someone needs to chalenge him on this point.
Pinker is clear. Peterson… I have no idea what he's talking about. Pinker's "lottery" analogy is instructive. Ditto his reference to the current overinvestment of intellectual capital in finance. Human progress, to date, is an objective fact; Pinker makes a good case for this proposition. But nuclear war (which could easily happen entirely by accident and at any moment) would, of course, completely change that calculus.
Excellent stuff, thanks
This is like Apollo and Dionysus pretending like they're on the same page. So many of the people Peterson talks to are in radical opposition to him, yet he tries to encircle their ideas and/or cherry pick the few that mesh with his. It's weird.
I guess we'll never hear these two on MSM.
Need the fucking better audio quality
I read 4 Pinker books but Enlightenment Now is mostly a list of twisted statistics to make things appear better than they are. It's all punctuated by 'orange man bad'. Very disappointing.
“Enlightenment now” in every chapter you can find page about Israel right to exist. I was wondering why this intellectual giant is supporting apartheid state.
He was a friend with J. Epstein and mossad money…
Preacher 👎
If you want to have a laugh at Pinker and his silly lullaby for panicked liberals, listen to Edward Dutton's take on "Enlightenment Now": https://youtu.be/PyZ_KMs79HU
"As more of us leave behind old ‘comforting’ beliefs in this secular liberal democratic world that both Pinker and I espouse to, the meaning of life becomes our ‘cross to bear’." My reflections on Steven Pinker's #EnlightenmentNow talk in #Bogota. Read more here: http://blogs.eltiempo.com/wrong-way-corrigan/2019/10/24/wake-up-to-pinkers-wonderful-world/
I think Pinker hits the nail on the head when it comes to most in the humanities. They fear, probably reasonably, that if the sciences are allowed into issues such as morality, ethics, beauty, and aesthetics among others, that the humanists will become obsolete. Whats worse if the science begin probing the very methods of the humanities it is likely that most if not all humanists/philosophers are and were worthless, meaningless, waste of time, that the emperor has no cloths.
i haven't read any of pinker but i can't see how the world is getting better when the existential threats are more severe than ever. the ability to stave off crisis does not mean singular dictators don't have more power to obliterate the entire species whether through negligence or malevolence than ever before.