Startseite
Podcasts
Robinson's Podcast Podcast
100 - Steven Pinker: Rationality, Enlightenment, and Free Speech

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

Robinson's Podcast vor 3 Jahren

0:00

1:07:47

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.