Is cancel culture real? | Steven Pinker | Big Questions

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In Rationality, Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply an irrational species - cavemen out of time fatally cursed with biases, fallacies and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives and set the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, he explains, we think in ways that suit the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we have built up over millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, causal inference, and decision-making under uncertainty. These tools are not a standard part of our educational curricula and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book - until now.

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Thanks for having him on! He's an honest intellectual whom I might not completely agree with, but is an open-minded and good-faith thinker.

therealnafis

Reddit is leading the front rank of the vanguard of cancel culture, cancel culture was devised and perfected on that site before being exported to the world at large. They were the first to do blanket bans with zero hope of appeal for a whole raft of once popular subreddits for even visiting controversial communities to disagree with them, they were the first to have a shared name and shame mass tagger browser add-on that affixes a mark of shame to people who post in controversial subreddits that invites abuse and incivility towards the marked. Reddit is a horrible site for horrible people. And cancel culture is one of their CORE VALUES.

Washu

If everyone is thinking alike, no one is thinking

FeWolf

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ― George Orwell, 1984

JK_JK_JK

I have read Prof Pinker's book "The Language Instinct" over and over again.

benjiang

It's weird when such otherwise rather obvious truths become controversial. Pinker speaks Truth to Power in ways that are persuasive and illuminating. The work he has done is amazing, entertaining, and inspiring. Ever since "The Mind is what the Brain Does", he has had "Rock Star" status in my esteem.

jmarty

Steven Pinker is excellent, his books are fantastic reading.

jonroads

There are a lot of new ideas but, as usual, many of them are bad (just the law of averages), complicated by the recent phenomenon that all opinions are now somehow considered equally valid and everyone is entitled to their own facts.

Malt

Even when I disagree with this guy, I like what he says. He always illuminates, clarifies and informs.

littlerainyone

Some popular singer said that in old Hollywood it was obvious that if some singer would sing even better than Sinatra, the management would come to him, as soon as possible make a contract, and pay big money, before someone else would make a contract with him to make him famous.
and tell to him to never perform so people will never hear the guy because the king can be only one.
Or if there were 50 singers who are like Elvis and one of them was better than Elvis singing better dancing better.
The management would buy him, so he will never be heard by any audience because it's a shallow way to convince the public that King is only one, and its an interesting tricky
way of business itself to gain millions. Because they invest so much money in Elvis that they can not afford to have some other singer, who is better.
He is probably right. It's like Nike is just the best merchandise. Nobody is better than them except Adidas.
But nobody else is supposed to be as corporate as them. I was always wondering why we never hear the singers of the American Idol. Why they didn't become famous if they are so good, or just few of them were a little bit famous and made a CD recording.
So maybe the public is tired of manipulation so they made a cancel culture because they changed their opinion about famous people.
People started to realize that television is as fake as it gets, just to buy their products, without conscious thinking.
They convince you that its not on you to choose what product you want but they choose it for you. Then they blame people if they stop caring about culture.
But people should have their own values.

alaalfa

Steven by expressing it's opposition to cancel culture, has attracted the attention of a demographic to whom some of his previous opinions were not as appealing. This group is relatively more conservative overall. At te same time, this same position probably has deterred some of his old more left leaning followers. All in all, I hope his work can reach specially people on both extremes and allow them to appreciate Steven's arguments without the veil of tribalism blurring their view.

JOAKINGtube

And guess who does the canceling? The powerful. Its corperate culture! Spread out the power, you spread out. And i have no smpathy for people who make public comments who are ill prepaired for the consecquences for public statements.

MrQuinn-tcuo

Sometimes I am stunend by some Western intellectuals that gather a huge fanbase.

Especially when I compare them to someone like Steven Pinker.

ottofrinta

@ThePixel1983 No one has claimed that cancelling is entirely new in *every* respect. But it is new in *some* respects - hence the new name. Dictatorships are given different names. Types of racism are given different names. The term "far right" was hardly used until recently and yet it often simply refers to what people take to be Nazis or fascists. So what's so different here?.... The power of social-media activists is certainly new. Etc. Also, it's not just "conservatives" who call out cancel culture. (The term "conservatives" keeps on being used in this thread like a tribal thought-stopper.) Steven Pinker is not a conservative. And neither is Chomsky or Zizek. All these people have a problem with cancel culture... Unless you use the word "conservative" to apply to everyone who has a different view to your own... And your use of the words "saying despicable things" raises a mountain of questions.

paulaustinmurphy