Is There a Natural Ark to Destroy Civilizations?

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As civilizations advance, they could continue the trend that we've been on since world war two. That's another plausible trajectory. We evolved in such a way that we are too quick to anger and defend our dominance. I think this is parochial. It's saying that what we see in homo saphians is the only way that intelligent beings can come into existence. And youkow, don't think we should be constrained by that.

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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