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Steven Pinker – Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, & Progress



The Artificial Intelligence Channel

February 27th, 2018
Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.

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15 thoughts on “Steven Pinker – Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, & Progress
  1. The case for what!!!!!!????? Does he mean the kind of "reason" one would expect to see in a Ken & Barbie Wendy-house? I expect so because he clearly has little access to the intellectual instruments which would permit him to use any more a sophisticated form of reasoning. And Humanism, the most appealing terminology to the great unwashed.

  2. Very shallow thinker. The Enlightenment was nothing more than an embrace of ancient pagan mysticism and an attack on Christianity. So lets consider:
    1) Reason: In the time of Augustine Christianity was seen as the voice of reason over pagan bloodletting and mysticism. Christ is known as the Logos, and one of the main themes of Christianity is the subjugation of lower passions to the heart and mind, i.e. reason. So clearly the Enlightenment is a return to pagan mysticism and irration.
    2) Science: Newton wrote far more about Alchemy than he did about F = ma. The ancient Greeks understood science quite well. They built temples of such brilliance that we can not even approach them today. They understood F = ma even if the did not have a formula for this. Also, science was predominately forwarded by the Catholic church. The church is not against science. It is against atheistic science, which is a speculative enterprise anyway, not science or reason. The Big bang is nothing more than pagan mythology.
    3) Humanism: The enlightenment brought atheism, and the National Socialists, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Please. Christianity is the ultimate in humanism and care for the human condition. The enlightenment brought death and destruction.
    4) Progress: What progress? The world hangs under the sword of nuclear annihilation. We see warfare and death in this century unparalleled. Inequality and economic exploitation rule the day in the worst way ever seen.

    Pinker is truly a fifth rate intellectual, just parroting old used up Dutch and whig ideology of the most stale and irrational kind. Dudsville.

  3. A breath of fresh air in a world that has so long been dominated by superstition and ideology. Maybe there is some hope for humanity.

  4. Good thinker. Great presenter. Lots of talent and experience in this one. Very much enjoy Steven Pinker and his compilations of data.

  5. .. through the" Darwinianistic" view and the all prevailing " scientific " theories propped up by the bollocks of " big bang " and the ever present propaganda of modern day " spinners" who propagate ridiculous ideas of what " goodness " looks like .

  6. “Humanism” – the notion that if we ever encounter an intelligent ? alien ? civilization – we should not treat them with any more respect ✊ than the chicken ? we ate for lunch ?.

  7. Why is it that many of the rapidly aging scientists and thinkers who appear on channels like this opt for hairstyles like the above? Don't they know that the greatness of their achievements is eclipsed by douche when they do so?

  8. Hi, where did the Jacob Bronowski interview go? It seemed to just disappear. I only got half way through it. Is there a way to get it back up?

  9. he has no idea about his facts cause four out of ten american children are malnurished and our poverty rate climes daily cause job displacement from automation and we have new strands of flue an he as no idea what real america is going threw

  10. 52:35 The main reason (to my knowledge) to why humans can communicate so effectively/efficiently, is because they are so like-minded.

    They operate via similar enough principles as "systems", so they can often do a "system comparison" with themselfs and other "systems" to accurately/precisely predict the reason/s for their behaviour/s/action/s to then effectively/efficiently understand them/other humans.

    An AI wouldn't be capable of inturpreting “cure cancer/increase happiness" as intended, with just that little exchange of information it would be extremely ambiguous to it. It would need an extreme amount of specification in our exchange of information, unless they also have an internal "system" to compare with.

    So they prolly should be designed as to be like humans as much as possible, to reduce that possibility. Though that might possibly make it much easier for it to manipulate humans, which would be bad if it have other goals/intentions etc,. conflicting with humans.

    Since they would have an intuitive/instinctive and cognitive systematic understanding of humans, rather than just building up lots of “statistical information” on how their "systems" operate in different situations, which might have greatly limited them in how effectively/efficiently they would be able to predict and steer their/humans behaviour/s/action/s.

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