stephen pinker once defended black english in a debate with william f. Buckley. He says rat music is not an argument for the objective merit of it compared to any other kind of music. The standard could have been black English if history had run differently, but that doesn't happen to be. It's good that we all settle on a standard to maximize communication and efficiency or certain aesaesthetic judgments. Arobic exercise, underrated or overrated? Ohha aa, underrated. I like it. Because i like to think that i'm also accomplishing wheni when i go jogging or cycling. Behaviour a economics. Economists playing at psychology.
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).
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