Steven Pinker Quotes - Page 10

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• There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization.

  Steven Pinker

  Culture, Doe, Acquire

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• Today we take it for granted that war happens in smaller, poorer and more backward countries.

  Steven Pinker

  Country, War, Today

  Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.281, Penguin

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• We can make fun of hockey fans, but someone who enjoys Homer is indulging the same kind of vicarious bloodlust.

  Steven Pinker

  Fun, Hockey, Bloodlust

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• We really are creatures of a violent world, biologically speaking - watching violence and learning about it is one of our cognitive drives.

  Steven Pinker

  Violence, World, Violent

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• As individual people, embedded in our daily lives, of course we're interested in what makes one person different from another. We've got to hire one person and not another, marry one person and not another.

  Steven Pinker

  People, Different, Daily Life

  "Basic instincts". Interview with Oliver Burkeman, www.theguardian.com. September 22, 2007.

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• Astrology had an important role in the ancient world. You can't understand many things unless you know something about astrology - the plays of Shakespeare and so on.

  Steven Pinker

  Play, Astrology, Important

  "Proud atheists". Salon Interview, www.salon.com. October 15, 2007.

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• Climate change could produce a lot of misery and waste without necessarily leading to large-scale armed conflict, which depends more on ideology and bad governance than on resource scarcity.

  Steven Pinker

  Climate, Scarcity, Waste

  "Steven Pinker: 'Artists used to gush about the beauty of war. The First World War put an end to that'". Interview with Clint Witchalls, www.independent.co.uk. November 10, 2011.

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• For one thing, before the 20th century, there were plenty of genocides. We tend to forget about them, partly because they weren't as well documented and partly because, until recently, people didn't care. We used euphemisms like 'sackings' and 'sieges' instead of calling them 'genocides.'

  Steven Pinker

  People, Calling, Care

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• Of course, genes can't pull the levers of our behavior directly. But they affect the wiring and workings of the brain, and the brain is the seat of our drives, temperaments and patterns of thought.

  Steven Pinker

  Brain, Patterns, Levers

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• One of my favourite kinds of movie is the American picaresque, in which the characters make their way across the country, learning about life against the gorgeous backdrops of that vast land.

  Steven Pinker

  Country, Character, Land

  "My week" by Steven Pinker, www.theguardian.com. October 14, 2007.

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• The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.

  Steven Pinker

  Baby, Age, Tourists

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• We can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision.

  Steven Pinker

  Vocabulary, Brain, Events

  Steven Pinker (2010). “The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language”, p.1, Harper Collins

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• Working out what it would take to program goodness into a robot shows not only how much machinery it takes to be good but how slippery the concept of goodness is to start with.

  Steven Pinker

  Work Out, Robots, Goodness

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.17, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It's the old idea that the process of evolution is some push in the direction of greater complexity--in particular greater intellectual complexity. In one twig of the tree of life, namely ours, having a big brain happened to have advantages. But that's just what worked for a particular species of primate 5 to 7 million years ago.

  Steven Pinker

  Ideas, Years, Tree

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• ... people notice differences and expect every difference in form to convey some difference in meaning.

  Steven Pinker

  Differences, People, Form

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• The problem with the emotions is not that they are untamed forces or vestiges of our animal past; it is that they were designed to propagate copies of the genes that built them rather than to promote happiness, wisdom, or moral values.

  Steven Pinker

  Animal, Past, Untamed

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.370, W. W. Norton & Company

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• A successful learner, . . . must be constrained to draw some conclusions from the input and not others.

  Steven Pinker

  Successful, Input, Conclusion

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.148, Penguin

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• Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture.

  Steven Pinker

  Psychology, Four, Human Nature

  "A biological understanding of human nature". Edge Interview, www.edge.org. September 18, 2017.

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• Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance.

  Steven Pinker

  Numbers, People, World

  "Proud atheists". Salon Interview, www.salon.com. October 15, 2007.

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• I think students should know something about religion as a historical phenomenon, in the same way that they should know something about socialism and humanism and the other great ideas that have shaped political philosophies and therefore the course of human events.

  Steven Pinker

  Philosophy, Thinking, Ideas

  "Proud atheists". Interview with Steve Paulson, www.salon.com. October 15, 2007.

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• If you look in general at people who live in anarchy, they have quite high rates of death from either homicide or warfare or both. Anarchy is one of the main reasons for violence, and it may be the most important.

  Steven Pinker

  People, Important, Warfare

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• It is true that raids and battles killed a tiny percentage of the numbers that die in modern warfare. But in tribal violence, the clashes are more frequent, the percentage of men in the population who fight is greater, and the rates of death per battle are higher.

  Steven Pinker

  Fighting, Men, Numbers

  "A History of Violence" by Steven Pinker, newrepublic.com. March 19, 2007.

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• It's likely that taboo words are stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. Massive left hemisphere strokes or the entire surgical removal of the left hemisphere can leave people with no articulate speech other than the ability to swear, spout cliches and song lyrics.

  Steven Pinker

  Song, People, Brain

  "This much I know". Interview with Tom Templeton, www.theguardian.com. June 21, 2008.

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• My politics were pretty anarchistic until 1969 when the Montreal police went on strike. Within hours, mayhem and rioting broke out and the Mounties had to be called in to restore order. It instilled in me that one's convictions can be subjected to empirical test.

  Steven Pinker

  Order, Police, Tests

  "This much I know". Interview with Tom Templeton, www.theguardian.com. June 21, 2008.

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• People know there is a difference between what you do and what you accept. There is a difference between me knowing that people swear, me hearing people swear and me swearing, and everyone accepting that this is something you can do as much as you like.

  Steven Pinker

  Differences, Knowing, People

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