The climate question raises a category that you write about in Enlightenment Now. There are big risks with thinking in terms of existential risk, and you highlight some of them. Martin Reese has made an argument in his most recent book where he says we now live in a world which faces these enormous potentially existential challenges. And unlike in the past, they are man-made. They are human-made. And it depends on us. In many cases, we know what to do. We just don't do it.
For this edition, Intelligence Squared revisits a compelling discussion from 2019 with one of the world's foremost cognitive psychologists, Steven Pinker, whose work often focuses on language, the mind, and human nature. He was joined in conversation by David Runciman, the academic and podcaster who teaches politics and history at Cambridge University, to discuss the themes of Pinker’s book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. This is the first half of a two-part conversation. Join us for part two in the following episode.
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