/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17528005]

What does /lit/ think of Steven Pinker?

[Anonymous No.17528009]

>>17528005
cringe

[Anonymous No.17528011]

>>17528005
Small-souled bugman

[Anonymous No.17528016]

ASS

[Anonymous No.17528021]

Possibly one of the worst people to exist

[Anonymous No.17528028]

>>17528005

[Anonymous No.17528031]

Stevie "up the Stinker" Pinker as his buddy Jeff Epstein called him

[Anonymous No.17528034]

>inb4 something about him being Jewish

>inb4 that photo with Epstein despite zero evidence of Pinker diddling kids

Hard mode: criticize Steven Pinker on his merits as a thinker

[Anonymous No.17528040]

>>17528005
Hack

[Anonymous No.17528044]

>>17528005
Idk never read him bit he seems to make christcuck LARPers seethe so I assume he's based

[Anonymous No.17528046]

>>17528034
>"Even for wealthy Western urbanites, who always had the run of the palaces of culture, access to arts and letters has expanded tremendously. When I was a student, a movie buff had to wait years for a classic film to be shown at a local repertory theater or on late-night television, if it was shown at all; today it can be streamed on demand...Cheap hi-fi headphones and, soon, cardboard virtual-reality glasses enhance the aesthetic experience well beyond the tinny speakers and muddy black-and-white reproduction of my youth."
>"But are we any happier? If we have a shred of cosmic gratitude, we ought to be...He or she can spend that leisure time reading on the Web, listening to music on a smartphone, streaming movie son high-definition TV, Skyping with friends and relatives, or dining on Thai food instead of Spam fritters."
>"Also, people single out freedom as component of a meaningful life, whether or not it leads to a happy life. Like Frank Sinatra, they may have regrets, they may take blows, but they do it their way."

>We can consume more readily and with less effort, therefore we are happier
>The gratuitous democratisation of high culture via technology, i.e. rendering it too a product, has improved life and somehow culture itself
>by the way, to quote Frank Sinatra ...

>"Epithets aside, the idea that the world is better than it was and can get b better still fell out of fashion among the clerisy long ago. In 'The Idea of Decline in Western History', Arthur Herman shows that the prophets of doom are the all-stars in the liberal arts curriculum (he names Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Sartre, Fanon, Foucault, Said and also Cornel West for some inexplicable reason) ... Yes, it's not just those who intellectualize for a living who think that the world is going to hell in a handcart. It's ordinary people when the switch into intellectualizing mode. Psychologists have long known that people tend to see their own lives through rose-colored glasses: they think they're less likely than the average person to become the victim of a divorce ... But change the question from the people's (sic) lives to their society, and they transform from Pollyanna to Eyeore,. Public opinion researchers call it the Optimism Gap."
>thoughtful criticism of the consequences of Enlightenment rationality is bad, mkay?
>Thinking makes you turn from Pollyanna to Eyeore, just like how Thanos is happy with himself but wants to wipe out the universe. If you're happy with yourself, why be unhappy about other things, bro?
>ignore those dumb thinkers, let's get empirical and listen to American public opinion pollsters

SMALL-SOULED BUGMAN

[Anonymous No.17528082]

>>17528046
/pol/ LARPers really get mad at milquetoast takes like these?

[Anonymous No.17528084]

>>17528046
based

[Anonymous No.17528108]

>>17528046
>just watch tv and order grubhub bro

[Anonymous No.17528113]

>>17528034
>Hard mode: criticize Steven Pinker on his merits as a thinker
His entire philosophy of progress is misguided and juvenile. He completely ignores that material progress is neither a good proxy for wellbeing nor is it something that should be measured in absolute terms. He jumps around his book being like "Look! Less people die, therefore society is better!", "Look! People have more stuff therefore society is better!" and its a stupid way of viewing the world because it ascribes some kind of moral value to the very indicators that liberal society invents to justify itself (e.g. GDP growth).

His idea that economic inequality isn't a big problem is fundamentally retarded and displays a childlike understanding of economics and its relationship to political power. He repeats the most basic myths of liberal capitalism ad nasueam uncritically and doesn't engage with any of these ideas on a deeper level.

He's right that the anti-nuclear faction is regarded, though.

He is a classic example of someone who is exceptional in one field (cognitive sciences, STEM), thinking that their genius carries over to other fields (political and economic history, the humanities) and he proves himself to be an absolute novice in these areas. He's a fool and a dork.

[Anonymous No.17528123]

two in the pinker
one in the stinker

[Anonymous No.17528127]

>>17528113
>Source???

[Anonymous No.17528167]

>>17528113
Good critique.

[Anonymous No.17528219]

>>17528021
why

[Anonymous No.17528248]

>>17528219
I followed up this comment with >>17528113

[Anonymous No.17528370]

>>17528113
>>17528248
well thought, thanks. I read language instinct and bought better angels because I'm sick of the misconception that society is somehow at its most violent ever, people dying left and right, etc etc. when is reality it's basically the opposite. I also think that things like medicine and fixing food scarcity genuinely have improved human life to a significant degree. I would rather be poor today than rich 200 years ago, but that's also possibly reflective of my knowledge about the present (ie, if I lived in the past, I wouldn't miss things from the present because I wouldn't know them). Also, my impression is that wealth inequality is far less now than at most points in human history except at the very very high end, which makes sense because globalism allows someone to be rich off the whole world, rather than just off the area around him.

Sorry, just some rambling thoughts, but I'm not really sure I agree with your conclusions. I think there are some obvious shitty things in society today that money doesn't fix, I'm just skeptical that other periods were any better in terms of social structure, and are far worse in terms of things like famine, poverty, disease

[Anonymous No.17528475]

>>17528005
A good pop sci writer, a very good writer for a scientist. A decent choice for people who know nothing about cognitive science and wish to learn about it in a pre-digested regurgitated baby-food form.
Utterly blind to his ideological and philosophical biases which distort his assertions with a falsely objective skew. A casualty of scientism.

[Anonymous No.17528538]

>>17528370
There is some sense to the general idea that life as a poor person now would be materially better than that of a poor person's one hundred years ago. But there's a lot that Pinker's analysis misses, especially to do with the economic and social aspect of things. People have more "stuff", yes, but people are also very financially insecure and politically alienated relative to, say, 20 or 30 years ago. What good is a big TV if you feel impotent and alienated?

But more than that: Pinker takes the mere existence of improvement in specific areas to indicate a better or more moral society. But there's no actual link between the improvement of, say, GDP indicators and the morality of a society -- people in wealthy societies are just as susceptible to violence, coercion, bullying, and whatever as their poorer counterparts, despite Pinker's overwhelming lump of stats that show that "people aren't dying left right and centre".

Also, Pinker's logic is rife with this nefarious logic of "if things were improving before, they'll continue to improve!" which is a totally retarded way to look at the world. He handwaves away problems like economic inequality, climate catastrophe, water insecurity, etc. by just saying "we'll fix it!". The reality is that the current post-industrial era is an extremely small aberration in the general course of history, and there's no reason to suspect that the exponential increase in living standards that we experienced will continue, or even, if its a good thing if they should (here, you could insert an ecological economics argument or whatever).
>Also, my impression is that wealth inequality is far less now than at most points in human history
This is demonstrably false. Wealth inequality is actually at one of the worst points in human history, and the real effect of that is a distillation of political power in the hands of the few rather than the many. Here, Pinker really demonstrates his total lack of understanding of political processes as he essentially just dismisses one of the most problematic aspects of modern society out-of-hand for no particular reason. Actually, the way that he's unable to grapple with economic inequality is indicative of his failings as an intellectual: economic inequality is a problem because it diminishes your relative political agency -- if you have $10 and your neighbour has $12, even though you are both poor, he doesn't wield that much power over you because his extra $2 doesn't do much. If you have $1000 and your neighbour has a billion dollars, he can essentially buttfuck you endlessly with no consequence because even though you're far, far richer than you were previously, it doesn't matter because your neighbour is orders of magnitude more powerful than you. Now, this is Pinker's problem: he assumes that somehow you should be grateful for the fact that you have $1000 instead of $10, even if the relative situations of both are wildly different. Y

[Anonymous No.17528745]

>>17528538
Yeh, that makes sense. TV and possessions are not what I would say makes living now better than in the past. Silly if he makes the "muh media consoomption" argument.

On the flip side, that consumerism is largely voluntary. For someone willing to live like people lived centuries ago, that is perfectly attainable on welfare, even. Housing isn't expensive in small towns, neither is anything else.

>people in wealthy societies are just as susceptible to...
Do you have a source for this? I find it hard to believe wealth isn't at least correlated with reduction in violent crime.
>wealth inequality
You cut off the important part of my sentence. "Wealth inequality is actually at one of the worst points in human history" -- that depends on how you measure it. You're probably calculating something like average distance to the mean, but that's not really reflective of anything important. If Jeff Bezos suddenly became worth 10x what he is worth now, wealth inequality would increase drastically but there's no reason to think that has any bearing on anything. Wealth now is very different from wealth prior to the invention of modern banking, because there is far more money in circulation due to loans than actually could be rounded up and collected all at once (eg 10x the amount of money if banks are required to keep 10% available in cash).
>political inequality
Which is entirely a non-issue when we compare against the past, because in most places at most times, only a tiny % of people had any political say at all. The fact that your $10 and your neighbor's $12 are worth anything at all politically is a huge win compared to pretty much every other time in history.

[Anonymous No.17528784]

>>17528538
You're also completely ignoring things that used to be huge issues that now are essentially non-issues, like slavery. A good portion of people throughout human history were slaves. Women had little to no rights. Non-landowners had little to no rights. You're comparing life as you now to life as an aristocrat in the past. Living in poverty and free is better than being a slave, so any measure that doesn't reflect that is inherently flawed.

[Anonymous No.17528815]

>>17528784
>Living in poverty and free is better than being a slave
No it isn't. This is liberal propaganda. Slaves actually lived really well and most blacks would prefer slavery to their current state if they weren't brainwashed by the media. Same with women. Do you really think they want to work?

[Anonymous No.17528835]

>>17528815
>Slaves actually lived really well and most blacks would prefer slavery to their current state
Cringe.

[Anonymous No.17528836]

>>17528815
>Slaves actually lived really well
confirmed retard, given I didn't specify time or place and you just jumped to "muh slavery wasn't that bad, negroes like being worked like oxen"

[Anonymous No.17528873]

>>17528815
>blacks would prefer slavery
slaves who were freed by the 13th amendment would disagree. The ones who /did/ prefer slavery largely preferred it because they were still essentially slaves (see sharecropping) but then had even more issues to worry about in addition.

[Anonymous No.17528897]

Unsung genius of our times. People hate him because he speaks the truth without the opinions of others. Depressed peoples try to convince themselves and everyone else that suffering is the norm in this society but Pinker dismantles those arguments with irrefutable logic and reasoning.

[Anonymous No.17528919]

>>17528815
That damn media!

[Anonymous No.17528921]

>>17528835
The song Dixie was actually written by a black man about his longing to be taken care of in slavery. Most people don't want to be truly free or at least can't handle it. Blacks need Nature or white man to provide structure for them. Throughout Africa the older Africans that lived and remember living under white rule want a return to that time.

[Anonymous No.17528932]

>>17528921
just stop posting dude, nobody wants to discuss your backwards ideas

[Anonymous No.17528952]

>>17528921
Nothing like /lit/ to remind yourself how uneducated you are. What books can I read to study up on this?

[Anonymous No.17528985]

>>17528921
>older Africans remember living under white rule
Because the white rulers were competent. It's not like the option was "white slaveowners" or "complete freedom", it's just choosing between two dictators, and the European ones were better than the African ones. That's not really relevant to this discussion at all.

[Anonymous No.17529120]

>>17528921
based
Slave owner Fredrick Gorn pretty much says the exact same thing in the memoirs. Another great point that he brings up is that whites actually give blacks meaning by giving them work. And most white's would be able to connect back to nature and a pure/holy state by having their slaves sodomize them. If you ask any former slave owner they almost all mention how the sexual aspect of slavery was more valuable than the labor because all white men desire physical dark men over women.

[Anonymous No.17529141]

>>17529120
>slave owner Fredrick Gorn pretty much says the exact same thing
Whaaaaat, a slaveowner trying to justify being a slaveowner??? Wow, how insightful! I'll have to pick this up, thanks based anon

[Anonymous No.17529148]

>>17529120
oh and he was raping them, too. Why am I not surprised he convinced himself that they enjoyed it?

[Anonymous No.17529347]

>>17528113
>>17528538

I just want to drop in to say that you're a deeply cynical person who has obviously read none of Pinker's work (You know you haven't, don't even try deny it) and has wilfully distorted your fellow anon's understanding - who seems like a genuinely curious, thoughtful guy - so you could feel empowered and play pretend as the reasonable intellectual. At no point anywhere in either The Better Angels Of Our Nature or Enlightment now does Steven Pinker life is better because we have access to material goods like big televisions. Nowhere. Give me a specific page number where he says this. He doesn't. To act as though Pinker doesn't dedicate large swathes of his arguments to directly addressing improvements in the average person's interior life is just a flat out lie - obviously his books address well being in thorough detail. If he didn't, it would be absurd. But then again you and I both now you haven't read the books. You watched a two minute Zizek clip while you shoved Doritos into your face and fiddled with your testicals.

To the other Anon: Please ignore this internet board charlatan and just read Pinker's books and make up your own mind.

And to the Anon I'm criticising -

I mean this, from the bottom of my heart:

Fuck you.

[Anonymous No.17529374]

>>17529347
LMAO DAMN

[Anonymous No.17529383]

>>17529347
thanks anon... not sure if that guy was the same one later advocating for slavery here >>17528815 but after that I'm kind of inclined to actually read better angels (which has been sitting on shelf for a while)

[Anonymous No.17529504]

>>17528005
the arch neoliberal

[Anonymous No.17529677]

>>17529347
Thanks anon
I have a feeling 90% of the people here just watch YouTube clips about books/philosophers/whatever instead of actually reading. Just enough to be smug.

[Anonymous No.17529798]

>>17529677
this became so much clearer to me after I actually started reading the things discussed here then tried to have a discussion

[Anonymous No.17529833]

>>17529120
>Another great point that he brings up is that whites actually give blacks meaning by giving them work.
Is this the new /pol/ strategy? Selling "meaning" like a product?
>bro just become Christian Orthodox embrace fascism and be a slave and kill niggers it like... Gives life meaning and stuff!! Join my cult!!!

[Anonymous No.17529841]

>>17529347
>"Even for wealthy Western urbanites, who always had the run of the palaces of culture, access to arts and letters has expanded tremendously. When I was a student, a movie buff had to wait years for a classic film to be shown at a local repertory theater or on late-night television, if it was shown at all; today it can be streamed on demand...Cheap hi-fi headphones and, soon, cardboard virtual-reality glasses enhance the aesthetic experience well beyond the tinny speakers and muddy black-and-white reproduction of my youth."
>"But are we any happier? If we have a shred of cosmic gratitude, we ought to be...He or she can spend that leisure time reading on the Web, listening to music on a smartphone, streaming movie son high-definition TV, Skyping with friends and relatives, or dining on Thai food instead of Spam fritters."

I'm not with the pro-slavery dude but this does actually seem a lot like material pleasure=more happy. Also, wtf is up with his "if you aren't happy, you should be" declaration? Does he really think this argument will cheer all the people who are depressed? Why is anti-natalism gaining so much popularity? Are they just not grateful enough for the things they have? Don't all these material things encourage a sedentary lifestyle which actually leaves us sad and unhealthy? I don't think the lack of gratitude approach really explains these issues. This is the real reason why Pinker fails to connect to so many people, his complete gaslighting tactic of "shut up things are better rather than worse" are trying to prove a point, not cheer anyone up.

[Anonymous No.17530006]

>>17529841
He's not saying you should be happy, he's saying that you are almost definitely happier than you would be without those things.
He does mention a lot of material things, but they're not all bad. A lot of what he's describing is a removal of obstacles from things people already wanted to do, and already did, but less well. Have photos made my life the best thing ever? No. But I get immense satisfaction and happiness from going over photo albums from past vacations with friends and family. I see in vivid color moments from a decade or more ago and I'm brought immediately back in a way that I never would be without a photo. Similarly, spam is disgusting to eat. Not every meal needs to be the most exciting thing ever, but getting to go out to eat at an exciting restaurant occasionally definitely does add happiness to most people's lives. And the ability to Skype with friends and relatives is invaluable in maintaining relationships--which most people in the know consider the most important thing in life--as is the ability to talk to all of you folks online right now. My worldview would be so much smaller, so much less refined if not for my access to books and internet discussions. And that's not even to mention the past year, where, without access to internet, I am entirely convinced I would have killed myself.

No, consumerism doesn't make us happy, because it's still just seeking for happiness in vain places. But for someone with a well-developed ability to reject consumerism, all these options /do/ create a tremendous amount of value and can seriously improve your life.

[Anonymous No.17530222]

>>17530006
I see your point and appreciate what you are saying. I also feel your point about the internet being the only thing keeping me alive sometimes. At the same time, I want to complicate some of it. For example, we can now keep in touch with friends and family easily - but - isn't the fact that we need to do this at all because our capitalist system forces us to displace ourselves from our hometowns? 150 years ago, most people were born, lived, and died in one place thus there was never any struggle in the first place to maintain relationships. Those relationships (in my estimation) were extremely rich because of their longer duration.

I agree with you that things are better now, rather than worse, but I also maintain that maintain that many problems have been created by our modern age too.

[Anonymous No.17530233]

>>17528005
I like how he BTFOd leftists seething about muh inequality in enlighentment now. other than that he's a bit shallow.

[Anonymous No.17530290]

>>17530222
>internet being only thing keeping alive
I meant wrt to covid/quarantines. Don't know what it's like wherever you're at, but pretty much everything is locked down where I'm at, I saw a friend in person yesterday for 2 hours, and it was the first real human interaction I've had in 6 months that wasn't behind a computer screen. But I feel like even the interactions I have with family and friends behind a computer screen is better than the alternative.
>because our capitalist system forces us to displace ourselves from our hometowns?
No, it doesn't force us. We choose to move. Most people (at least in my experience) /want/ to, if they can. It's a choice. A choice we are free to decline.
>there was never any struggle in the first place to maintain relationships
I hope you're kidding. All four of my grandparents came across the ocean to America at a young age with their parents, siblings, and no one else. Their parents, my great grandparents, never saw their family again, and didn't exchange more than a handful of letters. In some ways, I appreciate the idea of not needing to form a permanent attachment with everyone I meet via something like facebook (which I don't have, for that very reason). But the /ability/ to contact anyone, anywhere in the world, if they also want to speak to you... it's pretty nice. It doesn't solve all problems. But it enables solutions that weren't possible without.
>many problems have been created by our modern age too
I agree entirely. However, I think the problems it creates are fixable by any given individual for their own life, if they so choose. In contrast, the problems of centuries past that no longer exist today were not fixable, no matter how much you wanted it. Can you imagine the feeling of knowing that half your children will die in infancy? I for one am very glad to know that is at best a slim chance for my own progeny.

[Anonymous No.17530294]

>>17530233
bbbased? did I prematurely resell that one?

[Anonymous No.17530306]

>>17530294
the book is worth a read imo.

[Anonymous No.17530340]

>>17528113
Having more stuff than I have now would be preferable, regardless of how much richer everyone else was in relation to me, to living in a society where nobody has more stuff than I have now. I'm not a ressentful person.

I could argue against his specific ethics and whiggism, but not on the grounds that he doesn't care enough about wealth inequality. Stuff like life expectancy and crimes are obviously better metrics for "progress", whatever that is, than egalitarianism offers.

[Anonymous No.17530533]

>>17530290
>I meant wrt to covid/quarantines
I also mean this, the internet is very important for me when I lack a social outlet.
>No, it doesn't force us.
I question this. Just because you could have chosen to be Jewish or Christian in medieval Europe does not mean that one is not heavily favored. People who willingly forgo/can't get economic success often feel alienated or looked down on in society.
>I hope you're kidding.
What you are saying AGREES with what I am saying. Mass migration and travelling far from family largely a result of modernity and the industrial revolution.
>I think the problems it creates are fixable by any given individual for their own life.
I agree with this and need to work on this myself.

I hope I don't seem negative (since I know I am too negative and need to work on that), but I also feel that society has room for, and thus needs, critique.

[Anonymous No.17530554]

He's pretty bland

[Anonymous No.17530608]

>>17530533
nah, not negative. gave me some good stuff to think about. Good point about my grandparents, that's not so long ago that it's not modern, obviously. I don't have a very good impression of what life looked like on a day-to-day basis prior to the 19th century because I don't read much from before then (and the stuff I have read isn't exactly "day in the life" material, it's shit like Canterbury tales or shakespeare)

[Anonymous No.17530624]

>>17528016
underrated.

[Anonymous No.17530752]

>>17530608
You are definitely right that life now is better now than it would be, so I'm thankful that you reminded me of that.

[Anonymous No.17530765]

>>17528167
did you just spell chomsky wrong?

[Anonymous No.17530797]

>>17530752
I find that many of the "but humanity isn't happier than it was 1000 years ago" can be summarized with that statement people were criticizing earlier in the thread
>If we have a shred of cosmic gratitude, we ought to be...
You're right, we're probably not happier now than we were 500 years ago. But we are given the option to be happier, if we can only recognize all the beautiful things we have that we could live without, but don't have to.

[Anonymous No.17530810]

>>17530797
>You're right, we're probably not happier now than we were 500 years ago. But we are given the option to be happier, if we can only recognize all the beautiful things we have that we could live without, but don't have to.
lol cope harder faggot

Read Baudrillard

[Anonymous No.17530817]

>>17528034
Ever heard the phrase "clever silly"?

[Anonymous No.17530842]

>>17530810
Why don't you come up with an actual argument (or at least plagiarize one) rather than relying on your betters to do it for you
>read a book, it'll change your worldview
Sorry, anon, I'm not 16 anymore. I haven't read Baudrillard but I seriously doubt he has an ideas I haven't already encountered. Once you've read a few hundred things, you stop changing your worldview every book you read.

[Anonymous No.17530868]

>>17530797
technological progress doesnt mean progress....And are you aware that so called happiness( which is something that cant be measured in material goods but anyw)the rest of the world has to suffer hard?Most of the thinks that Pinker states are technological advances which are good ..ofc i want vaccines BUT he does that to force his radical believes.Iget it he is trying to make a persona so he can makey some money from some people with room temperature IQ .It worked in the past (peterson,neil degrasse tyson ,sam harris ) why not now .Basically he is a stupids man intellectual

[Anonymous No.17531010]

>>17530868
just read the fucking thread before posting dude

[Anonymous No.17531068]

>>17528005
>marries a used up roastie with two kids from a previous guy and doesn’t have any kids of his own.
>marries used up roastie solely out of tribal loyalty
You could have done so much better, Steven.

[Anonymous No.17531101]

>>17528127
Permaban all wojakers from /lit/

[Anonymous No.17532555]

>>17528005
pink sock

[Anonymous No.17532573]

>>17528005
Everything he did after The Blank Slate seemed like an attempt to "repent" for it.

[Anonymous No.17532582]

ass

[Anonymous No.17532598]

>>17528005
souless neo lib leftiod defender

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.17532618]

>>17528016
>>17532582
This

>>17532598
>leftiod
Like diamondiod

[Anonymous No.17532795]

>>17528005
A jew who screamed antisemitism instead of actually making an argument in refutation of Kevin Macdonald's work.

But he's totally against cancel culture and lack of free speech in academia, goyim.

[Anonymous No.17532822]

>>17531068
He only married his Jewess after failing at 2 marriages with SHISKAS.

> Pinker married Nancy Etcoff in 1980 and they divorced in 1992.
> He married Ilavenil Subbiah in 1995 and again divorced.
> His third wife, whom he married in 2007, is the novelist and philosopher Rebecca Goldstein.[27] He has two stepdaughters: the novelist Yael Goldstein Love and the poet Danielle Blau.

[Anonymous No.17532895]

>>17528016
based

[Anonymous No.17532974]

>>17532618
oid is in android to say easily replaceable and robotic

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.17533010]

>>17532974
Than no

[Anonymous No.17533258]

>>17528034
>zero evidence
Hard mode: Post in good faith