“Cas Wouters, inspired by conversations with Elias late in his life, suggests that we are living through a new phase in the Civilizing Process. This is the long-term trend of informalization I mentioned earlier, and it leads to what Elias… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“One of the most impressive civilizing offensives of the 1990s came from African American communities, who set themselves the task of recivilizing their young men. As with the pacifying of the American West a century before, much of the moral… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Consistent style prevents presentation from getting in the way of content. — Steven Pinker Copy Share
The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
I've never argued that humans are massively hot-wired. What I was trying to point out was that you can't understand how we learn unless… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones. — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Since violence is largely a male pastime, cultures that empower women tend to move away from the glorification of violence and are less likely… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock.… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Morality is not just any old topic in psychology but close to our conception of the meaning of life. Moral goodness is what gives… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
“The biblical story of the binding of Isaac shows that human sacrifice was far from unthinkable in the 1st millennium BCE. The Israelites boasted… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Part of the bargain of being alive is that one takes a chance at dying a premature or painful death, be it from violence,… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
In fact, without a specification of a creature's goals, the very idea of intelligence is meaningless. A toadstool could be given a genius award… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
“The obvious cure for the tragic shortcomings of human intuition in a high-tech world is education. And this offers priorities for educational policy: to… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
If you look in general at people who live in anarchy, they have quite high rates of death from either homicide or warfare or… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
“In some eras, self-control defines the paragon of a decent person: a grown-up, a person of dignity, a lady or a gentleman, a mensch.… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Knowledge is a continuous fabric, in which ideas are connected to other ideas. Reason-free zones, in which people can assert arbitrary beliefs safe from… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
