Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
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Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s 15th Anniversary Gala Keynote Speech by Harvard Professor and Psychologist Steven Pinker.
Recorded on October 23, 2014
Source
Summing up: Free speech = the only true intelligence.
Humans do create a lot of ways of claiming bogus authority, gods, faith, subjective feelings and the rest that are never tested. Always reject and question bogus authorities.
You said it…
Freedom of speech = everyone can speak = good and bad people can speak equally = bad people can speak. Thus freedom of speech is hate speech.
“It seems to me that educated people should know something about the 13 billion year prehistory of our species and the basic laws governing the physical and living world including our bodies and brains. Educated people should grasp the timeline of human history from the dawn of agriculture to the present. They should be exposed to the diversity of human cultures and the major systems of belief and value, with which humans have made sense of their lives. They should know about the formative events in human history including the blunders we can hope not to repeat. They should understand the principles behind democratic governance and the rule of law. They should know how to appreciate works of fiction and art as sources of aesthetic pleasure and as impetuses to reflect on the human condition. On top of this factual knowledge, I think a liberal education should make certain habits of rationality second nature. Educated people should be able to express complex ideas in clear writing and speech. They should appreciate that objective knowledge is a precious commodity and know how to distinguish vetted fact from superstition rumor and unexamined conventional wisdom. They should know how to reason logically and statistically avoiding the fallacies and biases to which the untutored human mind is vulnerable. They should think causally, rather than magically, and know what it takes to distinguish causation from correlation and coincidence. They should be acutely aware of human fallibility, most notably their own, and appreciate that those who disagree with them are not necessarily stupid or evil. Accordingly they should appreciate the value of trying to change minds by persuasion rather than by intimidation or demagoguery. I believe, and more importantly I believe I can persuade you, that the more deeply a society cultivates this knowledge and mindset, the more it will flourish.”
No freedom of speech, no democracy.
I believe that America currently fights a cultural war and how it plays out will echo through most of the western world, one that is not being truly fought because many advocate censorship under the guise of political correctness, silencing moderates and extremist alike on whatever is perceived to be the opposing party. I, for one, hope that the FIRE rises.
Free speech is essential, but that doesn't mean all opinions are equally valid. Challenging – refuting – hypotheses is a vital part of free speech. This process is not harassment, as many people on the far left claim.
Stunning and brilliant address.
The girl who crosed the Gobi dessert is an absolutely inspiring story check it out Yeonmi Park
Reaaaaly linking this guy!
Great talk. But I have to say that things like revelation, dogma, intuition, received wisdom, faith etc, are indeed sources of knowledge. The knowledge derived from these sources is not invalid due to the source, but rather the content. These sources are different in that the knowledge they generated is examined by, not created by, reason. Wish I could have asked him the question myself though.
As a Brit I am comfortable with one limit placed on free speech:
"public nuisance" laws
Basically, if you're being loud, obnoxious etc and people are unable to avoid you, you should be moved on or arrested.
Basically, being offensive on public transport, or in a public shared space (say, waiting for kids after their school finishes)
I don't see a problem with this, as long as it is scrutinised heavily for abuse by authority.
Now, expressing even the most awful opinions in private, or in shared spaces where people can not expect decorum/"privacy" or even in conversation while in public. That should all be protected 100% of the time.
This guy's amazing. He was able to define something so clearly without ever giving the definition a title.
THE FIRE RISES.
The message is good but some of his history and his critical take on Hayek is off base.
7:09
Hayek never claimed that welfare states lead directly to the rise of new Hitler's. That's a really poor understanding of Hayek coming from Pinker, if that's even his own opinion or one just gleaned from something else he had read. Hayek's argument was way more advanced than that. I can only basically sum it up as when you have a never ending bureaucracy of social planners seeking social "justice", eventually power concentrated in those hands will make adjustments to far in one direction or another eventually destabilizing the system economically or politically, much like the engineering principle called "tolerance stacking." That along with evidenced data relating to the growth of government institutions and endless wars, Hayek's hypothesis seems very likely.
7:29
If you now take into account the Hayek's idea as laid out above, his claim that "this has never happened" is completely false. As you can see in Wiemar Germany/ German Empire and the Russian Empire (obviously before) the February Revolution. Around the 1890's following liberation of Russian serfs you can see glaring similarities between the Russians and the Germans. These factors are most notably the ones mentioned by Hayek.
What we can see from only these two instances is clearly that constant wars (ww1, Russo-Japanese war, Russo-Persian war, Franco-German war, Austro-Prussian war, etc etc etc.) and the ever increasing bureaucracy, social welfare state under Bismark in Germany, and the redistribution of wealth in Russia, is that Hayek's conclusions are very sound hypothesis'.
When I look at the silencing of free speech in the English-speaking world today, and especially on campuses; and moreover, when I look at who is trying to limit free speech, I'm reminded of the old claim that far-left and far-right meet somewhere around the back.
The "progressives" of the 2010's use the same tactics as the Christian conservatives of the 90's and 2000's, and very often fight to suppress the same forms of speech, even if the justifications they give are different.
Now THAT is an excellent tie.
We need to protect America from the facist feminazis who want to feminize our young men into sissies in pink. I was out visiting the local market the other day and I see these three sissies wearing pink shirts. My God I couldn't believe we had queers in this part of the neighborhood. Why are there so many damn homosexuals today? Where did you see them in the bible? The homosexuals only started coming out when the feminist and dumbocrats started taking over. They are poisoning the water supply with female cow hormones but you won't see that in the liberal mainstream media!
~Jese Laxon, Patriot, Freedom Fighter & Men's Rights Activist
If anyone's interested in the transcript of this speech, you can find it here:
http://www.thefire.org/three-reasons-affirm-free-speech-keynote-address-fires-15th-anniversary-dinner/
Tendentious drivel. "Democratic" regimes (the US, France) are brought about violence, too. Just like "totalitarian" regimes.
"Common knowledge" is just the other side of the "political correctness" coin.
Pinko thinks Darwinian Evolution is true. I fact, the whole body of Pinko's work is to promote the religion of evolution.
This video pissed a lot of people off.
And the kinds of people this video pisses off likely don't have much in terms of free will.
Never stop doing what you do, Pinker.
The far left are not even happy with going after free speech anymore. It is free thought they are after now.
ass
If professor Pinker means what he spoked out: Freedom of speech is the foundation
of democracy – than he has to state that we havent democracy in those states, were
the truth cant be spoken out cause – if you do – youll get in jail for a lot of years!
Example. in the Federal Republic of Germany a former lawyer stated: the holocaust is a hoax by cionist jews – and two courts gve him 11 and a half year for that speech!
He was 72 years old at that moment, he has to stay to the age of nearly 84 in prison,
without any mercy. So – by Professor Pinker – we dont live in a democrazy, isnt it?
Amazing as usual, Dr. Pinker
What a clear mind Steven has. Always a delight.
I love Pinker, he's always on point! How can anyone possibly oppose what he's trying to communicate here? Religion simply has no future. The Christians & Muslims will be defeated & rightly so, there is no room for cults. We either move forward or be the next species to die off. It's your choice, my choice & society's choice. You want to hold us back or not?
No freedom of speech=no civilization, full stop..period.