The Metaphor of the Mind

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In our political discourse, different modules take over, and it's almost not integrated with the rest of your brain. Letlas: I don't think the mind is span i don't think we just have a homogeneous neral network in the skull. The problem with them metaphor is tatit assumes they are snap in components that with very limited channels of communication between them. But i think it is reasonable to say that there are different a faculties, to use an old fashioned word, to choose a different metaphor.

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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