Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence (Live at Mason)
Conversations with Tyler
Conversations with Tyler
4.8 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 November 2016
⏱️ 87 minutes
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Summary
Steven Pinker has spent an entire academic career thinking deeply about language, cognition, and human nature. Driving it all, he says, is an Enlightenment belief that the world is intelligible, science can progress, and through rational inquiry we can better understand ourselves.
He recently joined Tyler for a conversation not only on the power of reason, but also the economics of irrational verbs, whether violence will continue to decline, behavioral economics, existential threats, the merits of aerobic exercise, photography, group selection, Fermi’s paradox, Noam Chomsky, universal grammar, free will, the Ed Sullivan show, and why people underrate the passive (or so it is thought).
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, |
| 0:08.4 | bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. |
| 0:12.6 | Learn more at mercatis.org. |
| 0:15.2 | And for more conversations, including videos, transcripts, and upcoming dates, visit |
| 0:20.4 | ConversationsWithT Tyler.com. |
| 0:25.5 | Before we get to today's conversation, I'd like to let you know of several upcoming |
| 0:29.8 | live dates with other guests, including Joe Henry, Jimpola Heary, Rabbi David Wolpy, |
| 0:36.8 | and Malcolm Gladwell. |
| 0:38.7 | All of these will be held in the DC area and they're free to attend. |
| 0:42.6 | For dates and for more information, just visit ConversationsWithT Tyler.com. |
| 0:52.6 | Stephen Pinker has stridden into the room and requires no further introduction. |
| 0:58.6 | So I've looked at a lot of Stephen's work again lately and I'd like to start with your |
| 1:02.4 | early work on irregular verbs and it's striking to me how much in this work you think like an |
| 1:07.7 | economist. |
| 1:08.7 | So some verbs are regular, you conjugate them with an ed, others are irregular, right? |
| 1:13.3 | You don't say get it, you say got. |
| 1:15.4 | Now how computationally efficient is that process? |
| 1:20.4 | The, I think it taps two of the mechanisms that make intelligence possible. |
| 1:25.3 | I mean, why would I spend a good chunk of my career studying the minutiae of irregular |
| 1:30.7 | verbs? |
| 1:31.7 | I do love language, I love linguistic detail for its own sake, but I chose that topic |
| 1:37.1 | because I thought it shed light on bigger issues of cognitive organization. |
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