The Free Press
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Steven Pinker is a world-renowned cognitive psychologist, and is widely regarded as one of the most important public intellectuals of our time. His work delves into the complexities of cognition, language, and social behavior, and his research offers a window into the fundamental workings of the human mind.
Today, we talk to Pinker about why smart people believe stupid things, the psychology of conspiracy theories, free speech and academic freedom, why democracy and enlightenment values are contrary to human nature, the moral panic around AI, and much more.
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Re COVID controls. You really believe the health scientists were working to gain political or social control rather than trying to reduce the spread of a completely unknown infection mechanism
As a retired boomer, I don't find ai either impressive or even useful to me. It's good at summarizing information, though the quality of the information can be poor. I see no reason to let it write for me. I prefer to speak for myself. It certainly will be powerful in the world of work and production and many other places. But I don't need or want it to replace my own ability to analyze information or do creative work. Even the idea of that seems repugnant to me. Why would we want to have our highest functions done for us by machines without values or individuality?
Oh, boy, I wonder if Mr Pinker is worried now, 11 months later!
Too bad he puts genocide on a hierarchy when crimes against humanity and war crimes are equally condemnable and have nothing to do with "blood libel".
You guys don't understand the AI issue at all or the training of AIs. You don't have to be a doomer to think that alignment is not an issue that needs to be solved or that the mode of AI training being used is not creating problems like reward hacking and deception. Its already happening on the frontier models.
thank you so much for sharing this video: I learned a lot about things I didn't know before I am still interested in. So I guess I would like to summarize my experience – that was kind of supervision for the part of the high quality interview who put the super well "formulated" questions on the table and I could learn how to deal with my negative thought forms in an agradable way. A kind of odd is the fact that Mr. Trump in office is doing business as usual… God bless us all, have a nice starting in the week of the solstice, yours sincerely Crissy
The speaker lost me when he stated that men seek dominance and women don't. He has zero credibility for talking about misinformation while putting it out in a talk that was supposed to address this kind of misinformation.
As someone who attempts to keep up with such things – what (reputable) evidence is there that someone in authority said BLM crowds were ok and MAGA wasn’t. It was said in this podcast like it was common knowledge.
This Trump take didn’t age well…. Trump making threats left and right .
This didn't age well.
How many is too many?
Unarmed civilians being murdered waiting medical care and food. Humanitarian aid being blocked. Residential blocks and infrastructure bombed to prevent re-occupation. Prominent Jewish leaders calling it the g-word. (yes YT censored my first comment based on language).
Over 55,000 civilians dead.
How many slaughtered civilians are too many Mr. Pinker? What's the magic number? Tell us.
Steven Pinker is also a language specialist and he is an Atheist. he is very intelligent indeed.
The simpler and shorter answer to the question why smart people believe in stupid things is because they can. You see, stupid people are not capable of believing and doing clever things. But the other way round is totally possible.
4:30 – consider the risk when gathering in maga groups versus BLM. Depending on the specific demographics, one group sounds more likely to adhere to preventative, protective measures like vaccines or hand washing (resisting a bacterial infection which decreases reliance to a future viral infection).
I don't usually fall for conspiracy theories, but I'm actually going to start one of my own. Based on similar facial features and voice pattern, I've come to the conclusion that Steven Pinker is actually Dick Cavett wearing a Brian May wig.
The term genocide has been adopted because Gaza is seen as a country with a singular people, and the bombing whilst supposedly targeted – as in a war – is actually clearly meant to simply to kill as many people as possible – as in a genocide. My point being, it may appear to intellectuals to not be a genocide, but it clearly is, by any name you choose to give it.
This will not age well.
Because smart people like to ask why.
32:10 One way of getting rid of cancer is getting rid of humans is considered "artificial stupidity" by Pinker. Then getting rid of foreskin diseases is getting rid of the foreskin, should be natural stupidity under the same criteria?
“Yeah crazy how many people believe in conspiracy theories….this is not data, its just a hunch, but i think covid saw a huge rise in this”.
Whoa.
I think Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine.
AI will never be conscious, I think.
I think you guys should've begun by defining, "conspiracy theory." In some of the cases you discussed, what was called a conspiracy theory was simply a disagreement about whose ideas were more correct.
Dangerously naïve to dismiss the possibility for conspiratorial agency in the obvious instances you reference. More absurd, I submit, to believe that the most powerful government in the world is batting 1.000 with regard to an altruistic pursuit of greatest good over the idea that former marine with communist ties and poor marksmanship successfully put 3 rounds (minimum) on a moving target with a bolt action weapon so quickly it sounded like a single report and was then murdered by a assassin with mob and teamster ties before that marine was able to confess to his guilt or innocence. That seems rational to question vs the practice of dismissive ignorance or neglect for the sake of maintaining a warm cozy pseudo intellectual rationalism. 😢
He lost me on the mask analogy. It came off as being very opinionated and judgmental.
Social media has broken our epistemology.
Watch Glenn Kirchner and Harry Litman to name a few, to get ONLY the legal truth of how this is progressing.
I think what you might be missing about free trade or open trade is that Trump is saying that we don't have free open trade if other countries are texting us to buy their goods then it's not free trade unless we're taxing them to get their goods into our country. It's a bit nuanced but I think it's fair.
Farrah Pinker Majors
How often are these things revisited to show how wrong they were?
I would not believe Joe if what he was saying that the sun would rise tomorrow
Based on analytics
Why Smart People Believe the Stupid Things Steven Pinker says…the world is not getting better.
Steven you do not live in the real world.
Why smart people believe stupid things of which this conversation is a perfect example.
The pomposity would be amusing if it weren't so insufferably off the mark and therefore disturbing.
Why do these two intelligent men stupidly believe the Warren Commission? Better off believing CNN than Alex Jones? Why is one lie superior to another? I thought this would be an interesting video, but overall, it turned out a waste of time.
The idea that wanting "the market" to create truth is not an ideological position is hilarious.