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Steven Pinker Defending Free Speech

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42 thoughts on “Steven Pinker Defending Free Speech”

  6. At 40:05, a question is asked about "freedom of speech" online and "mental health." It seems the question has to do with bullying. And we have seen, for example, groups of high school students use these online forums to bully another child in a way that fails to meet the bar of a "death threat" (the bar of the coldly legalistic answer given), but still end with the bullied child killing h/herself. I ask myself, possibly unfairly, did I just hear a bully's answer? The answer leaves me wanting more empathy & better protections for bullied people. Is there an answer that meets my empathy with the abused that fits into the theory of freedom of speech as conceived by Pinker?

  7. I hate people who claim that the left wing is anti-free speech. Pinker and Sam Harris are great examples of the Left who knows the value of free speech to the importance of reaching our other values such as community, compassion and equality of opportunity.

    SJW are only able to influence politics because politics is broken. Politicians pander to the loudest people (either literally, or financially). The intellectuals on the Left have not changed their position on Free Speech! The weak leaders who fear for their job by the loud minority have compromised their fundamental principles and give the rest of us a bad name.

  8. Mr. Pinker, it is absolutely Exxon's fault that they have not only suppressed their own scientific evidence connecting fossil fuels with global warming (for decades), but also have poured uncounted millions of dollars into spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about the mere existence of global warming. Yes, sometimes there are bad guys.

  9. Re: False beliefs: Reminds me of a great quote from the moral philosopher Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) – "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so"

  11. You need free speech to learn properly. Having access to a wide diversity of opinions is the only way to know if what you believe is correct or incorrect.

  12. Pinker is disappointingly facile when it comes politics, philosophy, morality, ethics etc. Exxon 'is' a bad guy if it spends money lobbying against the measures Pinker talks about that are necessary to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

  19. There is clear documentary evidence that Exxon Mobil, the "demon," has been hiding the results of its own internal research on climate change while pumping out lies to the public at the same. They are working to undermine an informed discourse which allows the public to make a rational decision as to what they "want" but Mr. Pinker sees no problem with that here. Hypocrisy at its finest.

  21. American free speech law is actually quite well-settled and covers a lot of the issues people continually raise. That we're having such a debate about it now shows that in part, people presume that this stuff hasn't already been addressed. That does not mean there aren't areas for improvement, but by in large, American free speech law is something to be proud of and is the result of very learned thinkers. I wonder if calls for hate speech law, etc. doesn't stem from, at least in part, increasing generations of people being raised to think that all Americans institutions are irretrievably broken and are in need of reform. But, this is largely due to the fact that such assumptions derive from navel gazing thinking, not hard study of the actual system.

  22. "Putin is a bad guy and Exxon is a good guy" – Steven Pinker. Well, actually, Exxon and Putin are best friends and associates. How can Exxon be a good guy helping a bad guy and Putin a bad guy helping a good guy ?

  24. 14:03 I was a bit taken aback from his statement on how "nothing of the sort has ever happened". Social engineering is the footprint of socialism. Cuba has universal healthcare, the soviet union guaranteed work, China builds mega ghost cities. You could argue welfare doesn't lead to tyranny, but most tyrannies have welfare. It's a chicken and the egg argument. Furthermore, welfare and government run economies are relatively new concepts, and we may just now be seeing the dark side of it unraveling.

  26. 33:28 Yikes, The only thing carbon taxing will do is make the standard of living more expensive. Will literally do nothing on a global scale to reduce CO2, unless you want to impose that globally (like he said), and then that topic is it's own can of worms.

  28. Pinker says social welfare states have never gone totalitarian. Social welfare states are brand spanking new in human history. He's being idealogical. Hayek was right.

  30. While the lecture is mildly entertaining I do not find Pinker to be a particularly profound thinker. Occasionally his lack of philosophical training shows, especially in a rather arbitrary list of items he considers self-evident.

  31. 1:17:05 the questioner poses a good idea that would salvage Pinker's earlier confusion about how private speech could be protected. To wit, free speech is that which you intend for the public to hear; private speech is that which you don't. Pinker didn't pick up on it adequately, seems to me.

  32. What do you call it when someone believes everyone knows a thing and that everyone knows it, but is actually wrong? Uncommon Ignorance?

  36. I can wholeheartedly agree with most of Mr. Pinker's points, but one thing baffled me:
    44:24 – Why is not acceptable to tell 'ethnic jokes' or other jokes that he apparently deems to be problematic? I'm all for eliminating discriminatory policies, but I don't see it as a moral good to eliminate, … well any form of humor, really. I like my humor, and I like my freedom. And I welcome jokes by others about my own ethnicity, sexuality, gender, etc…

  38. Love the talk but it's a shame that Pinker peddles the Popperian meme of science. Most philosophers of science don't think that science should or does actually function as Popper describes.

  39. Pinker " Nor should we lock up the bore at the end of the bar with his conspiracy theories" . Sure, but putting trump at the head of government was a poor decision ( ok there were no particularly good ( candidate) decisions at that time . I.e. " climate change is a Chinese conspiracy " and any news that doesn't agree with my political points of view is therefore " fake news". It could of been worse , it could of been the guy at the end of the bar whom drinks too much and then picks a fight with another guy he thinks he can easily beat.

  42. To be a great communicator is not that tricky. What it requires is being honest about evidence. Communication goes wrong when we push too hard to support our own interests in the face of evidence. So, the academic left often fails to communicate well because they put their tribal affiliation before truth. The same could be said of right-wing nationalists or religious fundamentalists. Serve truth before the tribe and everything becomes so much simpler (which is not to say that we must turn our backs on the tribe – rather, we should be sceptical about tribes that either deny that truths exist or that are dogmatic about their truths).

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