ToKCast Ep: 95 Steven Pinker‘s ”Rationality” Chapters 1 & 2 Remarks and Analysis
Rationality as Error Correction
- Rationality is about identifying and correcting errors to progress.
- Creativity drives both knowledge growth and inevitable errors.
Culture Shapes Rational Progress
- Cognitive potential is universal, but culture shapes knowledge and progress.
- Traditions of criticism enable dynamic, rapidly progressing societies unlike static tribal ones.
San Tribe's Static Culture
- The San people survive with hunting but lack rapid progress seen in Western societies.
- Their culture restricts open criticism, limiting innovation and change.
This video and associated podcast are about Steven Pinker's new book "Rationality". I read a small number of brief excerpts from the book itself, alongside commenting, criticising and reviewing the content of the first two chapters. There are a number of images and videos in the Youtube version which may help with particular concepts as we go along.
I compare Pinker's vision of rationality with what might be interpreted about that same topic from the work of David Deutsch and Karl Popper. In summary: I found the book highly entertaining in places and an excellent overview of this topic as it might be taught in an Ivy League University in The United States (indeed Pinker says that such a course that he taught was part of the impetus for the book). In terms of being a good substitute for those who might never have been able to afford due to chance, location or cost actually attending such an institution and taking on a course such as one on "Critical Thinking" and "Rationality" the book could readily serve as a series of well written university lecture notes. To that end, it is certainly worth the cost for anyone interested in these topics. In Chapter 2, Professor Pinker not only agrees with the "justified true belief" conception of knowledge but uses it in practise to explain what might be called the "rational" and "irrational". I thus spend a good portion of the second half of this video suggesting ways in which that very conception of knowledge itself leads to irrationality and explain a better way of understanding concepts like "knowledge" as compared to "belief" and how to understand the phrase "I know". I intend to cover 2 chapters per episode.
00:00 Introduction
03:30 “Enlightenment Now” and praise for "The Beginning of Infinity".
07:50 Timeless errors, timely examples.
13:05 “Rationality” in “The Beginning of Infinity” sense.
17:15 Do ancient-type tribal people have a “scientific mindset”?
25:00 Explanatory Universality & Anti-rational memes
34:34 Skill with logic puzzles and *being* logical/rational
42:00 The Wason Selection task
51:25 The Monty Hall Problem
1:02:50 The Linda Problem (& remarks on uses and misuses of probability) 1:11:42 Popper and theory laden observations
1:14:20 Knowledge as Justified True Belief - Why Popper matters
1:27:00 Objective truth
1:32:30 Reason is fun
1:38:18 Closing remarks about chapter 2