{"author":"Steven Pinker","author_id":"Steven+Pinker","total_quotes":155,"quotes":[{"text":"There is no society ever discovered in the remotest corner of the world that has not had something that we would consider the arts. Visual arts - decoration of surfaces and bodies - appears to be a human universal.","author":"Steven Pinker","tags":["world","human","visual "],"id":1217,"author_id":"Steven+Pinker"},{"text":"Lewis Richardson wrote that his quest to analyze peace with numbers sprang from two prejudices. As a Quaker, he believed that 'the moral evil in war outweighs the moral good, although the latter is conspicuous.' As a scientist, he thought there was too much moralizing about war and not enough knowledge. 'For indignation is so easy and satisfying a mood that it is apt to prevent one from attending to any facts that oppose it. If the reader should object that I have abandoned ethics for the false doctrine that 'tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner' [to understand all is to forgive all], I can reply that it is only a temporary suspense of ethical judgment, made because 'beaucoup condamner c'est peu comprendre' [to condemn much is to understand little].' (p. 200).","author":"Steven Pinker","tags":["condemn","ethics","indignation","moralizing","richardson"],"id":6216,"author_id":"Steven+Pinker"},{"text":"Some biblical scholars believe that the story of the fall from the Garden of Eden was a cultural memory of the transition from foraging to agriculture: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” 79 So why did our foraging ancestors leave Eden? For many, it was never an explicit choice: they had multiplied themselves into a Malthusian trap in which the fat of the land could no longer support them, and they had to grow their food themselves. The states emerged only later, and the foragers who lived at their frontiers could either be absorbed into them or hold out in their old way of life. For those who had the choice, Eden may have been just too dangerous. A few cavities, the odd abscess, and a couple of inches in height were a small price to pay for a fivefold better chance of not getting speared.","author":"Steven Pinker","tags":["history","religion","violence"],"id":6257,"author_id":"Steven+Pinker"},{"text":"It Begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible.","author":"Steven Pinker","tags":["science","skepticism"],"id":6834,"author_id":"Steven+Pinker"},{"text":"Thinking is computation, I claim, but that does not mean that the computer is a good metaphor for the mind. The mind is a set of modules, but the modules are not encapsulated boxes or circumscribed swatches on the surface of the brain. The organization of our mental modules comes from our genetic program, but that does not mean that there is a gene for every trait or that learning is less important than we used to think. The mind is an adaptation designed by natural selection, but that does not mean that everything we think, feel, and do is biologically adaptive. We evolved from apes, but that does not mean we have the same minds as apes. And the ultimate goal of natural selection is to propagate genes, but that does not mean that the ultimate goal of people is to propagate genes.","author":"Steven Pinker","tags":["evolution","evolutionary-psychology","mind","psychology"],"id":8993,"author_id":"Steven+Pinker"},{"text":"The universality of reason is a momentous realization, because it defines a place for morality. If I appeal to you do do something that affects me—to get off my foot, or not to stab me for the fun of it, or to save my child from drowning—then I can't do it in a way that privileges my interests of yours if I want you to take me seriously (say, by retaining my right to stand on your foot, or to stab you, or to let your children drown). I have to state my case in a way that would force me to treat you in kind. I can't act as if my interests are special just because I'm me and you're not, any more than I can persuade you that the spot I am standing on is a special place in the universe just because I happen to be standing on it.You and I ought to reach this moral understanding not just so we can have a logically consistent conversation but because mutual unselfishness is the only way we can simultaneously pursue our interests. You and I are both better off if we share our surpluses, rescue each other's children when they get into trouble, and refrain from knifing each other than we would be if we hoarded our surpluses while they rotted, let each other's children drown, and feuded incessantly. Granted, I might be a bit better off if I acted selfishly at your expense and you played the sucker, but the same is true for you with me, so if each of us tried for these advantages, we'd both end up worse off. Any neutral observer, and you and I if we could talk it over rationally, would have to conclude that the state we should aim for is the one where we both are unselfish.Morality, then, is not a set of arbitrary regulations dictated by a vengeful deity and written down in a book; nor is it the custom of a particular culture or tribe. It is a consequence of the interchangeability of perspectives and the opportunity the world provides for positive-sum games.","author":"Steven Pinker","tags":["ethics","morality"],"id":9302,"author_id":"Steven+Pinker"},{"text":"Science is thus a paradigm for how we ought to gain knowledge—not the particular methods or institutions of science but its value system, namely to seek to explain the world, to evaluate candidate explanations objectively, and to be cognizant of the tentativeness and uncertainty of our understanding at any time.","author":"Steven Pinker","tags":["knowledge","science"],"id":12794,"author_id":"Steven+Pinker"},{"text":"Computation has finally demystified mentalistic terms. Beliefs are inscriptions in memory, desires are goal inscriptions, thinking is computation, perceptions are inscriptions triggered by sensors, trying is executing operations triggered by a goal.","author":"Steven Pinker","tags":["cognitive-science","evolutionary-psychology","intelligence"],"id":12890,"author_id":"Steven+Pinker"},{"text":"The connections I draw between human nature and political systems in my new book, for example, were prefigured in the debates during the Enlightenment and during the framing of the American Constitution.","author":"Steven Pinker","tags":["book","american","constitution "],"id":33765,"author_id":"Steven+Pinker"},{"text":"The audible signals people can produce are not a series of crisp beeps like on a touch-tone phone. Speech is a river of breath, bent into hisses and hums by the soft flesh of the mouth and throat.","author":"Steven Pinker","tags":["language","linguistics"],"id":34134,"author_id":"Steven+Pinker"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":155,"pages":16,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}