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… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I try to jog in every city I visit, and I particularly enjoy harbour-front paths that let me ogle big ships, railroad… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Children don't have to… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
When time permits, I try to see interesting people in the cities I visit. In Seattle, I met Paul Allen, the co-founder… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Look at almost any passage, and you'll find that a paragraph has five or six metaphors in it. It's not that the… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
There's a common criticism of evolutionary psychology that it's fatalistic and it dooms us to eternal strife, 'Why even try to work… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Commerce, trade and exchange make other people more valuable alive than dead, and mean that people try to anticipate what the other… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the… — 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 Image
Consistent style prevents presentation from getting in the way of content. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
