Steven Pinker

Enlightenment Now The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

If you read the news today, you might come to the conclusion that the human race is doomed, that democracy is on the decline, that authoritarianism and tribalism are on the rise. But is the world really falling apart? In this bold keynote, Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data. Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. But in 2018, have we become complacent? Have we taken the Enlightenment’s breakthroughs and ideals for granted? The Enlightenment stands against many of the darker currents in the air, which demagogues are all too willing to exploit, resulting in attacks on liberal democracy and global cooperation. In a timely and hopeful keynote, Steven Pinker, one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals, makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

Social Power of Language

Steven Pinker is a psychology professor at Harvard. He conducts research on language and cognition, fusing linguistics and societal atmospheres. His ideologies offer an interesting outlook on the true effect of both verbal and non-verbal communication.

Pinker explores the surprising weight of language in social situations. There is a subtle but complex system in which language can alter a social interaction. Pinker explains that language aims to convey some content and negotiate a relationship type. These types include dominance, communality and reciprocity. The three relationships interact differently with each. It is a clashing in these relationships that creates awkwardness.

To prevent uncomfortable interaction, people often take to indirect speech acts. In committing an indirect speech act, it is presumed that the listener will pick up on the real intent between the innuendo. With overt language, you can’t take it back.

Pinker makes a powerful argument for the power of language on social relationships.

A Descent Into Peace

In a series of talks titled ‘Everything You Know is Wrong,’ psychologist Steven Pinker makes a compelling argument that challenges the common notion that the world we live in is extremely violent, if not the most violent. Such ideas are a product of living in the same century as such travesties of the Holocaust, Darfur or the Iraq war, but Steven Pinker, by charting the history of violence, attempts to reverse the seemingly logical assertion that we are amidst ultra-violent times.

Steven Pinker makes a compelling argument that violence has been in decline since Biblical times, something he calls a fractal phenomenon that stretches across millennia. This may be due to better reporting, but it also has to do with cognitive illusions such as recalling the scarier threats, like photos of bombs exploding, than of an old person dying in their sleep. Generally, though, according to Steven Pinker, there has been a longstanding process of humankind curbing their violent lifestyles in the hopes of a more peaceful future.

The Sense of Style The Thinking Persons’ Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Do people write badly on purpose, to bamboozle their readers with highfalutin gobbledygook? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Should we bring back the lost art of diagramming sentences? Have dictionaries abandoned their responsibility to safeguard correct usage? Do the kids today even care about good writing? Why should any of us care?

In this talk, Steven Pinker argues that we need to rethink usage advice for the 21st century. Rather than moaning about the decline of the language, carping over pet peeves, or recycling spurious edicts from the rulebooks of a century ago, we can apply insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose.

Don’t blame the Internet, or the kids today; good writing has always been hard. It begins with savoring the good prose of others. It requires an act of imagination: maintaining the illusion that one is directing a reader’s gaze to something in the world. A writer must overcome the Curse of Knowledge—the difficulty we all have in imagining what it’s like not to know something we know. Skillful writers must be sensitive to the ways in which syntax converts a tangled web of ideas into a linear string of words. They must weave their prose into a coherent whole, with one sentence flowing into the next. And they must negotiate the rules of correct usage, distinguishing the rules that enhance clarity and grace from the myths and superstitions.

A History of Violence

Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new talk, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence. For most of history, war, slavery, infanticide, child abuse, assassinations, pogroms, gruesome punishments, deadly quarrels, and genocide were ordinary features of life. But today, Pinker shows audiences how all these forms of violence have dwindled and are widely condemned. How has this happened?

This groundbreaking talk continues Pinker’s exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly nonviolent world. The key, he explains, is to understand our intrinsic motives—the inner demons that incline us toward violence and the better angels that steer us away—and how changing circumstances have allowed our better angels to prevail. Exploding fatalist myths about humankind’s inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious and provocative talk is sure to be hotly debated, and will challenge and change the way we think about our society.