The War on Truth | Steven Pinker on Free Speech, Science & Cancel Culture

49 thoughts on “The War on Truth | Steven Pinker on Free Speech, Science & Cancel Culture”

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2. Mayim & Jonathan, I congratulate you for having dr. Pinker on 👏🏼
   what I’ve learned about that one who is intensely emotional in a debate might be someone eager to hold on to their belief.. and often times it gets summed up by the confirmation bias.
   in my view, I think it was not dr. Pinker’s job to confirm or validate your beliefs.. they’re yours, and that should be enough.
   🤍🩶

3. Pinker is great, thanks for this!

4. Insurance companies won't pay for tests to even see if people have low serotonin, let alone pay for brain scans or full neural chemistry workups of individuals. It's basically a guessing game.

5. I have severe brain damage / autism , They said i should not be able to speak as that part of my brain is dead and i have defied their prognosis, and i have esp, telepathy and i can remote view, i have seen 2030 back 10 yrs ago and i can say without a shadow of a doubt that we will not even recognize the planet by then i also have had obe's since i was little and the information has always been undeniable Nobody on this planet has complete knowledge no matter how their iQ is , yet Autistic children are well known to have higher IO's than some in the medical field , of which they learn from an extremely indoctrinated systems , the difficulty with us is the inability to articulate audibly the knowledge we hold within EVERYTHING is grey!!!!

6. I believe that there are numerous ways we humans make meaning of ourselves, of others and of the world. I think that if your way helps you be a more contented person and you do not feel the need to
   impose your way on others, and more importantly, punish them if they do not agree or comply, then do you. There are many things I do not believe in, or lifestyles I would not enjoy, but I understand we are allowed to experience our lives in the way that brings us most peace and happiness (see above caveat).

   The debrief by the hosts at the end was so interesting. It seemed clear to me that both of them, as well as the guest were very sure of their own beliefs. I didn’t get a sense of arrogance or condescension from the guest, just clear in his own world view. The hosts knew what his world view was before inviting him. He has been very clear in his numerous books and interviews. Despite this, they seemed to want him to change his world view to agree with theirs and seemed somewhat offended when he didn’t acquiesce. He could perhaps, have chosen to be less emphatic in his own beliefs, to appease his host(s), who clearly wanted him to acknowledge that there is a possibility that things, not yet provable from the current understanding of the laws of physics, could exist, but why should he. The host didn’t say, I know there is a god, but I allow for the possibility that I am wrong, so why should the guest be expected to do the opposite?

7. Dear Mayim and Jonathan, I enjoyed this two-part session with Steven Pinker. Putting aside Pinker's general distaste of anything not consistent with his materialism and listening to him, I was struck that he was narrow in his view of "reality" and "truth." The problem with materialism is that it is a reductive thesis — everything gets reduced to bits of stuff doing stuffy things. But this would beg the question that how do we know when neurons fire in a certain corresponds to the real and when in another way it is delusion. There is no materialist way to show materialism has the correct story. The brain in the vat was coming up over and over again with him.

8. Also, your references to Catholicism, the Inquisition, and the Crusades were off the mark. The Crusades were always about defending the Christians in the Islamic world rather than the common view that it was a colonial exercise against Islam. Islam spread quickly and often with bloodshed. Christians, mostly, and Jews (less so) were persecuted with the rise of Islam. The Crusades were first and foremost an attempt to protect the faith and build it—and not the view that European Christians were trying to conquer Islam. Speaking as a Catholic from the Levant, Christians up until a couple decades ago made up nearly 15% of the Arab population. Now it is well below 10%. Just ask all the Maronites, Chaldeans, Melkites, Copts, and other Eastern Rites about their experience and mass exit from the region.

9. ❤❤

10. I don't know why but I had to come back to this one to comment. The truth is, you couldn't pay me any sum to have him as my therapist. And this guy is supposed to epitomize what a psychologist "should be?" I wouldn’t go to him if he was the only therapist available and I were suicidal manic depressive and desperate for help. I have never seen a set of beliefs as disempowering and dehumanizing as materialism. To them: love? Just a set of chemicals and hormones, nothing more (spoken like someone who's never been in love on a soul-deep level). Mystical experiences? Delusions. Spontaneous healings? Coincidence. What a truly awful way to live, to have no vision, no belief in the great unknown, to think you have it all figured out. Funny enough, the people who think they know the most, tend to understand the least. I know very little. But I do know that this magnificent universe is far more vast and wonderfully mysterious than can be summed up in that ridiculous word "coincidence." For anyone reading this feeling disempowered by materialism but also worrying you're the idiot for daring to see something far more grand, you are so much more wise than you know. Truth is, materialists will always be 1,000 steps behind the dreamers because they lack imagination. It's the materialists who are always saying "you can't." Listen to the people who say "you can."

11. This guy is an absolute tool. Sorry but seriously!

12. This guy is an idiot

13. https://youtu.be/kQAyFlah0mM?t=4637 Me (and Steven Pinker) WT actual F 🤦🏼

14. Make interview with Joscha Bach, for these mind-body questions, and a fresher view that neither discards physics, nor subjective experiences.

15. 1:22:13 it’s because it’s not totally physical

16. 1:42:45 yes, we do need to make a distinction between death and violence that are the opposite that God teaches.

17. Great podcast! Love the healthy debates!

18. Jonathon is right. Bring on the materialist to debate. I have been waiting for that for a long time!

19. The interview was really good until it got to the esoteric part. You wasted Steven Pinker’s time to ask if mysticism exists? Seriously? That was terrible.

20. I’m with Johnathan and Mayim. I would not want to go to a psychiatrist like him. He would automatically think you’re crazy, delusional and put you on meds instead of taking the time to explore or be open to other things. OBE is real. I’m not buying his book. 😅

21. What a load of crap

22. 17:50 I'm not on the spectrum and I don't care what other people think of me. I agree with Johnathan on just be direct. It really is passive agressive what the guest is suggesting. It sounds like he's suggesting that everyone should be lemmings and just to acquiesce to what is the "norm".

23. Common knowledge IS NOT the same as common sense. It should not be confused.

24. I agree with Mayim! I was put off by his blase attitude regarding religion. I feel like if someone doesn't believe in God, I feel sad for them… but I don't say it to the person. Whereas, he blatantly says there is no God without considering that we have sufficient proof that there is a God. Our proof is sufficient to us & that's all that matters to us. The fact that he says there is no God, has no bearing on my beliefs.

25. 1:19:36 I just laughed spontaneously when he mentioned the studies : ) Just thinking of what these two were thinking in return. Obviously smart people, in ability of course, do behave stupidly on occasion. The supernatural is in the same league as heaven, fantastical ideas that sound awesome. The weird thing is, since it's happening, why aren't we seeing that. Also, the military could be lying, I mean it's the government. They're researching some unethical thing and that's where the budget is coming from, another thing no one would question a lack of results.

26. Do you need to be certain even? if I'd tell you about any folklore monster, that is an obvious example Dr. Mayim, do we need to be certain, the amount of nonsense our imagination is capable of collectively, is equal or more than the amount of great ideas and advances. They both come from the same place initially. I don't even understand this need that some people have, to have something supernatural in their worldview. As Dr. Steven Pinker said, good evidence solves it for us. Making claims with no evidence and likening them to scientific discoveries should be enough to tell you that you are stretching this way beyond the reasonable. I respect you and you are clearly a brilliant mind, a very smart person clearly, but the mystical is trailing 0 to who knows how much by now. We don't have any proof for any supernatural claims ever made. More credence to Dr. Pinker's certainty

27. Finally, you have someone on that tells you the truth and you condemn him while believing total bulls&it from others.

28. Just because you believe something, does not make it true.

29. Cancel culture is a WOKE manifestation of you f*cking democrats

30. Gosh, who at Stanford researched remote viewing? Dr. Bialik should read some of Martin Gardner's skeptical articles and books on these subjects. Being a neuroscientist doesn't make you an expert on physics, let alone anything else.

    As for truth and journalism, my awakening was Dan Rather's fiasco about W's national guard service. He depended on a xerox of an alleged document. Rather's own experts told him a xerox copy cannot be authenticated, but that didn't stop him from making unfounded accusations about W.

    Somebody's Law: everything you read in a newspaper is absolutely true — except for something you have personal knowledge of.

    Criton's Law: After reading a newspaper article that you know for certain is inaccurate, you immediately forget about it and read the rest of the paper as if it were absolute truth.

    Also read Thomas Jefferson's wikiquote for a few choice gems about the media of his day. His 1787 is well known. His 1807 and later quotes, not as much.

31. I was thinking of subscribing until I heard their respect for ESP and related magical BS.
    How disappointing to find out Mayim and Johnathon buy into this. Maybe her number of $ub$cribers has something to do with it. Check out Susan Blackmore who had a profound out-of-body experience and also talks about NDEs. She was a believer.

32. All magical thinkers like Mayim and Johnathon think they're the open-minded ones and their critics are not. So where is their open-mindedness to Pinker's position, or anyone else they disagree with?

33. To win over a materialist you have prove OBJECTIVELY that anything exists outside of the physical world. Good luck with that.

34. I hope you were listening Mayim. Dr. Pinker took the time to very patiently and graciously explain what is science and what isn't.

35. Oh, come on. It is not closed minded to say you need evidence. Prove it, and then we don’t have to believe because we know. Believing things without valid evidence can be very dangerous at worst and misleading at best. Why do you hate the scientific method so much? I thought you were a ph.d. You should know better than to jump on every bandwagon of woo.

36. Thank you Mayim I now see that science isn't always reliable. Quatum physics is totally real.

37. Great example of how people of science can be exactly like people of politics- Tribal Belief. Unwilling to accept what they do not know and then stand on their credentials to discredit. I have no respect for this guest now, he cannot see his own bias.

38. Why doesn’t more people talk about his connections to Epstein? Fuck this clown. His ideas may be good but yeah he can suck a duck.

39. Rupert Sheldrake’s “Exposing Scientific Dogmas” is exactly why scientists are the best scammers. The scam is the scientific delusion that all constants are constant until they aren’t and we fix the formula to make them constant again. When their own constants are exposed by nature and they fall apart under scrutiny…they start going in pulling apart the fairy tales and point out the evils in the world instead of addressing their own faulty data, or admitting that they just don’t have an explainable answer. “We indulge them when it’s not dangerous”, the same could be applied to scientists and its potentially more dangerous to indulge them when their dogmas are politically poisoned. Academia has done the best job of selling its own importance and superiority without showing their work while doing their best to explain it away. Just admit that you don’t know, accept that you can be wrong and accept that maybe the universe is more conscience than you once believed and more mysterious than you can explain at this time in history. That is progress and it doesn’t diminish anyone’s effort or relevance ww 1:35:29

40. 1:42:40 looking at the groups cultivating a “spiritual warrior” identity for 40 years with strategic level warfare tactics. They are preparing for “the end of times”, attacking “territorial spirits” (like homosexuality and other religions encroaching on their territory or those who refuse to acknowledge their territory), and casting their opposition as “demonic instruments”. This is happening on a wide scale across 3 continents as we speak! the ideologies of violence are frightening no matter where they come from bc ppl are will to give their life and take the lives of others for their beliefs. WILD!

41. If my mind works within a closed field of what I consider acceptable, then any time another individual with an OPEN mind experiences something I didn't, then I say they are delusional, therefore I have made myself better and more aware than they are.

    Does THAT make any sense?

    This is EXACTLY WHY we don't have "convincing" evidence. There's no interest held by people that are unhealthy "skeptics" for pursuing something they already have determined is false or non-existent.

    If I have 100 people with an extraordinary claim, and TEN of them are such credible "sources" that common sense says there must be something UNUSUAL about THEIR case(s), BUT… since I've seen 90 cases that are false it therefore allows me to conclude with absolution that ALL cases are false? That's called fooling yourself so you can look smarter than everyone else. It's safe, of course, because most people aren't so open-minded, and they'll assume you're that intelligent because the language you use to defend your stand, on whatever issue, appears to be of an intellectual perspective—-even though in reality a closed mind is of measurably limited intellectual capacity.

    "I believe "Joe" was telling the truth about his event"
    "Well since other accounts of that even have proven to be false, that means you are gullible and have been fooled MERELY BECAUSE you believe what Joe said."

    Anyone that thinks that way is limiting their capacity to expand their consciousness. It's a behavior that trains the mind to shut OFF rather than to be open for true experience. They're typically afraid of EVER getting caught looking vulnerable and/or gullible. Most often they never want anyone to prove them wrong about their mistakes, similar to narcissistic behavior. it's a psychological classification of its own. You can function quite well with that problem because most things in life won't require it in order to fully function (I've known several people like this). But your consciousness is trapped by having to be on a full time defensive posture trained from a psychological need to appear intelligent. It's an intellectual form of insecurity. What's very interesting (something I've noticed over the years), is that every person that thinks this way explains it with the EXACT SAME language. As if they're all reading it out of the same book. So therefore my rhetorical conclusion on that is they have systematically surrendered part of their human individuality as well.

    ~JSV

42. My older sister is a Minister.
    One of my older brothers contracted HIV. He nearly died.
    He was taken to the hospital just in time to receive treatment.
    When he was well enough, my sister convinced him to start going to her church. After a while she told him that he had been healed by God through Jesus Christ, and no longer needed his medicine.
    He stopped taking it, and Died 😢

43. Steven Pinker is very comfortable in thinking how he thinks. I can see little doubt in his mindset. He talks of the neurodivergent theory of mind and then talks about the double empathy problem.

44. Wait what

45. Who is paying THAT GUY 🙄

46. We did not invent D.N.A. and evolution. Those thongs existed and people finally noticed and said "Would you look at that?".

47. I like closed minded scientists, their efforts are for nothing. Science is humans' effort to become a god and yet scientists who are paving the way refuse the concept of a god. The irony is that when they finally reach their goal they will know how wrong they were. (Also they ain't helping the common person learn things they don't need to know. So they are denying assistance in finding truth. Ironically what this video is about.)

48. Ok, so I have a question to Dr. Pinker. If ESP and other PSY abilities do not exist, then does he think we are using 100% of our brain power or does he agree with other scientists that we only use 5% of our brain power? If we use 5% of our brain power then he is thinking with that amount of brain power only and he cannot judge what the other 95% of his brain can do or predict since he is not accessing that part of his brain. Therefore, he cannot say that factually ESP and other PSY abilities don't exist since he's not using 100% of his brain power to judge the validity or invalidity of such abilities being used by other human beings.

49. Iain McGilchrist’s writings on the brain – right and left hemisphere is so much more profound. Any readers here ? — “ The Master And His Emissary – The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World”. Dr McGilchrist is a psychirst, philosopher , author.

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