593: Steven Pinker | Why Rationality Seems Scarce
The Jordan Harbinger Show
Jordan Harbinger
4.8 • 12.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2021
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Steven Pinker (@sapinker) is a psychology professor at Harvard, one of the world's leading authorities on language and the mind, and an author of several bestsellers. His latest is Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters.
What We Discuss with Steven Pinker:- Why, by most metrics, older generations are mistaken when they proclaim: "Things were better back in my day!"
- Alternatives we might consider if Universal Basic Income can't sustainably solve the problem of housing and feeding a workforce increasingly unemployed by automation.
- Why nostalgia is overrated, and how criticizing the present is very often a way of criticizing your rivals.
- If we're really living, as Steven says, in "the most peaceable era in our species’ existence," how does he explain why we still have wars, famines, uprisings, and genocides?
- What sentiment mapping shows us about the power of the media to manipulate us into seeing the world in a heavily negative light even as it's improving constantly on every measurable level.
- And much more...
Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/593
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode is sponsored in part by Peloton. |
| 0:02.1 | It's the time of year when we start thinking about what next year will bring. |
| 0:05.2 | We make new years resolutions to exercise more, but let's face it, |
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... |
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