Steven Pinker: the dangers of “pseudo intellectual bullsh*t”

Part 2 here: https://youtu.be/OoNMgyPyK30

Are human beings “probability blind”? How can we best explain exponential growth – does it involve vampires? And how can we best avoid “pseudo-intellectual bullsh*t?”

In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding – and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that discovered vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorizing? Live from London, in conversation with Marcus du Sautoy, Professor Steven Pinker explores why – in part 1 of this exclusive How To Academy conversation.

Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. His videos for Big Think (Linguistics and the brain), RSA (Language and human nature), TED (Is the world getting better or worse?), human nature, the surprising decline in violence), Unbelievable? (Debating God), The Royal Institution (Linguistics, Style and Writing), How To Academy Mindset (With Stephen Fry), The Rubin Report (Sex differences, human nature and identity politics), World Science Festival (Mind Your Language), Jordan Peterson (Enlightenment and the righteous mind), Big think (The great free will debate), AprendemosJuntos (El reto de ser racionales), Ram Talks (La Naturaleza Humana), Russell Howard, Reason TV, PhilosophyInsights and UnHerd, have garnered millions of views.

Marcus du Sautoy is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2008 he was appointed to the university’s prestigious professorship as the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, a post previously held by Richard Dawkins. His videos with Numberphile (Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, Music on a Clear Möbius Strip, Shortcuts), TED-Ed (The paradox at the heart of mathematics), World Science Festival (The Illusion of Certainty: Risk, Probability and Chance), The Royal Institution (What We Cannot Know, Constructor Theory), The Guardian (Painted with numbers), and Ted (Symmetry, reality’s riddle), have amassed millions of views.

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