100 - Steven Pinker: Rationality, Enlightenment, and Free Speech

Steven Pinker is Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is an experimental cognitive psychologist who writes on language, mind, and human nature. In this episode—the hundredth of Robinson’s Podcast (!)—Robinson and Steve talk about his recent book Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (Penguin, 2022), which is linked below. More particularly, they discuss rationality’s evolutionary basis, how it is subverted by conspiratorial thinking and other dimensions of the “mythology mindset”, how it relates to enlightenment and human progress, and the state of free speech at Harvard and in the academic world at large.

Rationality: https://a.co/d/9N2uFyr

Steven’s Website: https://stevenpinker.com

Steven’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/sapinker

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode…

00:58 Introduction

06:31 The Importance of Rationality

10:16 The Connection Between Language and Rationality 

14:18 Rationality and Human Progress

20:09 The Evolution of Rationality and Irrationality

34:08 Conspiracy Theories and the Mythology Mindset

40:13 The Madness of Crowds

49:42 Free Speech, Enlightenment, and Rationality

55:55 Free Speech Versus Social Justice

01:03:03 Academic Freedom at Harvard

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.