What Is Going Wrong With Academic Discourse?

5min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Stephanie tyler: What is wrong with academia that there are so few stephen pinkers out there? Bryan caplin: I think thea there is a intellectual equivalentof tribalism. Stephen Tyler: How we could set up the rules so that, despite all the qorks of human nature, such as intellectual tribalism, are overcome in our active arena of discourses is an absolutte vital question. At the end of your answer, please tell us what your next book will be about.

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).

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Other ways to connect

Follow us on Twitter and Instagram
Follow Tyler on Twitter
Follow Steven on Twitter
Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox.