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Steven Pinker on Taboos, Political Correctness, and Dissent

Steven Pinker on Taboos, Political Correctness, and Dissent

FIRE President Greg Lukianoff interviews Harvard psychology professor and bestselling author Steven Pinker about his books, the crucial role dissent plays in keeping society sane, the special importance of free speech on campus, and the origins of political correctness. Professor Pinker, a member of FIRE’s Board of Advisors, is the author of The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of our Nature, and The Stuff of Thought.

Read more at http://fir.ee/O22F9R.

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Produced by Ted Balaker. Interview by Greg Lukianoff. Camera by Darby Duffin and Kyle Laffey. Music by audionautix.com.
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  1. “It is an undeniable privilege of every man to prove himself right in the thesis that the world is his enemy; for if he reiterates it frequently enough and makes it the background of his conduct, he is bound eventually to be right.”
    ― George F. Kennan

  2. Pinker (such an incredible mind!) provides brilliant insight into collective delusion.
    This clip is timely… Just yesterday I was thinking about how news stories or hot issues gain momentum and start perpetuating the shaming of groups, PR and the selling of agendas, hate speak, and partisan thinking. These things often become barriers to truth and progress, and for me it's SO important to understand the undercurrents of an issue before fully investing in it. EVEN WHEN WE THINK A STORY IS RIGHT there's usually more at play beneath the surface. 
    Anyways, this sheds some light on the dangers of 'group think'.

  4. Is that filmed at LMU? Sorry, I got distracted, and I have to admit that this might be the first time I ever agreed with Steven Pinker. We have to learn to face opposition, because in life, that's what happens on a daily basis!

  5. Everyone writing here is in spasms of agreement, but I can prove no one really agrees with Steven Pinker. No one at all. And I can do it with five words:

    Pinker: "A situation where no one actually believes something, but everyone believes everyone else believes it, therefore no one is willing to [tell the truth]."

    Me: Blacks are equal to whites.

    Now, tell some truth, you truth telling fearless intellectual, you. Anybody willing?

    Didn't think so.

  7. What speech does he think he's being prevented from making? This is all so vague and wishy-washy. The witch hunts, the antisemitism he cites are from the pre-PC era when folks could say whatever they liked about minorities and the disenfranchised.

  11. Here's a story you might like that demonstrates the titanic hypocrisy of this piece.. Pinker is Jewish. An evolutionary psychologist named Kevin B MacDonald in Cali wrote a series of books that argued that Jews practice a 'group evolutionary strategy' to gain an advantage over gentiles and that many important movements like Psycholanalysis have been "Jewish intellectual movements" that have aimed to weaken gentile societies. MacDonald eloquently argued it and it is scholarly. When Pinker found out, he went berserk, throwing out statements that weren't based on MacDonald's work and jumping to conclusions, without having even read the books or papers. One scientist in Australia, Frank Salter, who reviewed the work said later it was long overdue that Pinker apologize for being unprofessional. Yet here is Pinker talking about political correctness and that campuses more or less protect freedom of speech and thought. (Oh, and that stuff about evil Christians killing Jews because of blood in Matza that Pinker mentions is not really the whole story, as Jews victimized gentiles through usury, so the history of antisemitism is largely ethnic competition, not some distilled irrational Christian hatred of Jews).

  13. FEMINISM IS DESTROYING SOCIETY and anyone that stands up to their hate-speech

    "  Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. "
                ~ Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), 33rd US president