Steven Pinker Quotes - Page 9

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• The typical imperative from biology is not "Thou shalt... ," but "If ... then ... else.

  Steven Pinker

  Typical, Biology, If Then

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.27, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I don't think aggression works like thirst or sleep. I think aggression is more elicited by particular situations. I think it can be mitigated.

  Steven Pinker

  Sleep, Thinking, Situation

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• When a scientist considers all high-tech mental machinery needed to arrange words into ordinary sentences, prescriptive rules are, at best, inconsequential little decorations. The very fact that they have to be drilled shows that they are alien to the natural workings of the language system. One can choose to obsess over prescriptive rules, but they have no more to do with language than the criteria for judging cats at a cat show have to do with mammalian biology.

  Steven Pinker

  Cat, Judging, Ordinary

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language”, p.409, Penguin UK

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• Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control.

  Steven Pinker

  Self, Empathy, Violence

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• The 9/11 strikes left an indelible impact on our minds, but in relative terms, the scale of casualties actually wasn't all that high.

  Steven Pinker

  Impact, Mind, Scales

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• Disgust is intuitive microbiology

  Steven Pinker

  Microbiology, Disgusting, Intuitive

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.383, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I think a lot of moral debates are not over what is the basis of justice, but who gets a ticket to play in the game.

  Steven Pinker

  Thinking, Games, Play

  "Steven Pinker: the mind reader". www.theguardian.com. November 5, 1999.

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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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• Since violence is largely a male pastime, cultures that empower women tend to move away from the glorification of violence and are less likely to breed dangerous subcultures of rootless young men.

  Steven Pinker

  Moving, Men, Empowering

  Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.16, Penguin

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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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• Heritability pertains to the entirety of the genome, not to a single gene.

  Steven Pinker

  Genes, Entirety, Genome

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• Most intellectuals today have a phobia of any explanation of the mind that invokes genetics.

  Steven Pinker

  Mind, Today, Genetics

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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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• 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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• Theories of art carry the seeds of their own destruction.

  Steven Pinker

  Art, Destruction, Theory

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.523, W. W. Norton & Company

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

  Steven Pinker

  Differences, People, Form

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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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• But in most cases even the possibility that the correlations reflect shared genes is taboo.

  Steven Pinker

  Possibility, Genes, Cases

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• Equity feminism is a moral doctrine about equal treatment that makes no commitments regarding open empirical issues in psychology or biology.

  Steven Pinker

  Commitment, Equal Treatment, Issues

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.451, Penguin

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• I think that a failure of statistical thinking is the major intellectual shortcoming of our universities, journalism and intellectual culture.

  Steven Pinker

  Thinking, Intellectual, Culture

  "Steven Pinker: fighting talk from the prophet of peace". Interview with John Naughton, www.theguardian.com. 15 October 2011.

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• The brain is not a bag of traits. It's startlingly complex. There are few or no single genes with a consistent effect on the mind.

  Steven Pinker

  Brain, Mind, Bags

  "Will Genetic Engineering Kill Us?" by Mark Baard, www.wired.com. April 16, 2003.

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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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