RATIONALITY: Steven Pinker’s Love Song to Critical Thinking

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Science, Society & Culture, Social Sciences, Education

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2021

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In his new book, “Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters,” Steven Pinker writes: “When humans set themselves the goal of improving the welfare of their fellows … and they apply their ingenuity in institutions that pool it with others’, they occasionally succeed. When they retain the successes and take note of the failures, the benefits can accumulate.” In this episode, Steven argues that those benefits would accumulate even faster if we all learned a bit of logic, got better at sniffing out fallacies, embraced institutions that safeguard empirical truths, and entertained the idea that halting, imperfect progress may be better than no progress at all.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's not a question of how rational any single person is.
0:10.4	The question is how good are the institutions in which we collectively pursue rationality
0:15.8	despite the biases and fallacies inside each one of us.
0:19.7	I'm Rufus Griskem, and this is the next big idea.
0:23.2	Today, are you as rational as you think you are, probably not, but Stephen Pinker is here
0:29.1	to help.
0:46.2	Back in the day, I used to begin this show with the rather bold promise that each week
0:50.6	we'd bring you a new book with the power to change the way you see the world.
0:54.8	I say bold because so few books, even the very best of them, actually achieved that
0:58.5	lofty goal.
0:59.5	A few writers could reach through the page, grab you by your lapels, and shake some sense
1:04.5	into you.
1:05.5	But one author who has consistently had that effect on me is Stephen Pinker.
1:10.8	It started back in 2002 when he published the blank slate.
1:14.1	At the time, he was a psychology professor at MIT, and a lot of his research had focused
1:18.1	on the theory that our linguistic abilities aren't learned, they're innate.
1:22.5	In the blank slate, he looked beyond language.
1:24.5	He combined, as a Neurotimes put it, an arsenal of scientific research, acute analysis,
1:29.6	and a pugnacious attitude to argue that human nature, your personality, your intelligence,
1:34.1	your world compass, is powerfully influenced by your genes.
1:38.1	And this need not be threatening to our moral values, acknowledging that there is such
1:41.9	a thing as human nature can help us be more effective at improving the world.
	...

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