Tag Archives: Steven Pinker
On the record about a source of irritation
I need to go on the record about a source of mild irritation that seems to resurface in periodic fashion: the recent Current Affairs article about the “dangerous populist science of Yuval Noah Harari”. It’s an excellent article; however, I’m irritated by … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged Current Affairs, Darshana Narayanan, Homo Deus, Steven Pinker, Yuval Noah Harari
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Necessity and sufficiency
With apologies for recalling horrible people early in the day: I chanced upon this article quoting Lawrence Krauss talking about his friend Jeffrey Epstein from April 2011, and updated in July 2019. Excerpt (emphasis added): Renowned scientists whose research Epstein … Continue reading
Posted in Science
Tagged empiricism, Jeffrey Epstein, Lawrence Krauss, necessity, Neil deGrasse Tyson, scientism, Steven Pinker, sufficiency
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When deGrasse Tyson pulled a Pinker
Since this post was published, an upward-edited version has been republished on The Wire. Twitter is, among other things, that place on the internet where people fight over the tips of icebergs. There is often the presumption that what ends … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged cherry-picking, climate injustice, Enlightenment ideals, George Monbiot, human rights, humanities, incel, mass shooting, Neil deGrasse Tyson, optimism, pandemic, Quillette, Sandy Hook, Social Sciences, Steven Pinker, white nationalism
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Epstein’s friends from the ‘Reality Club’
New York magazine has published an alphabetised list of the names of people that find mention in Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘black book’, a log book of sorts in which he kept track of the people he entertained, including at his residence … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged Christian Ott, Daniel Dennett, Edge Foundation, Geoff Marcy and including Jorge Domínguez, Jason Lieb, John Brockman, John R. Searle, Lawrence Krauss, Michael Katze, New Atheists, Reality Club, Richard Dawkins, scholarship, Steven Pinker, Thomas Pogge, William V. Harris
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Looking for gemstones in the gutter
Just the other day, I’d mentioned to a friend that Steven Pinker was one of those rare people whose ideas couldn’t be appreciated by proxy, such as through the opinions of other authority figures, but had to be processed individually. … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes, Op-eds
Tagged cherry-picking, Culture, Enlightenment Now, George Monbiot, history, Jerry Coyne, moral authority, ontology, Pharyngula, PZ Myers, scientism, sociology, Steven Pinker, Why evolution is true
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