Steven Pinker: Enlightenment Now

Today’s world is characterized by people clinging to beliefs, hyperpolarization and the degradation of discourse. However, acclaimed author and psychologist Steven Pinker argues the very opposite: The world is actually improving, and there’s never been a safer and better time to be alive.

In his book Enlightenment Now, Pinker makes the case that Enlightenment principles of reason, science and humanism are directly enhancing the quality of life for everyone—not just the West. However, a number of Anti-Enlightenment practices threaten the progress of human development. According to Pinker, dedication to romantic ideologies, political affiliations and religions have protected unscientific arguments, preventing resolutions on issues ranging from gun violence to climate change.

Join one of the world’s leading thinkers for a powerful conversation about human nature, a defense of knowledge and the case for science, reason, humanism and progress.

[DaytakTV]

I highly recommend the book, but it is nice to see these ideas discussed in person as well. Thank you for hosting this.

[JasonWindsor]

Thanks very much for uploading. This was fantastic.

[martinfederico]

What a great “interview” (no sarcasm here) . The host/interviewer is impeccable, no interrupting, no stupid questions, adapts to the flow of the conversation and doesn’t let Pinker get away with any of his weak points.

[OwenandMario]

His new book is awesome; almost done reading it. He's brilliant.

[RustySuffering]

It's very refreshing to hear Dr. Pinker talk. It does seems like the world is turning away from facts and we are being fed all kind of anti-facts nonesense nowadays in the media. The world is changing, and the transfer and manipulation of information is changing. This is very grounding to listen to because it looks at the facts. Love it.

[PoeRacing]

Delightful!!! I really enjoyed their little comedic riffing interludes. Pinker is brilliant!!

[seanwebb]

Does the Commonwealth Club have its own production unit? Many groups try to produce videos like this but the production values are horrible. These are quite good.

[kimlowe]

I read Laurence Krause, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari as well as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and these show me that science is not dogma. Science is seeking answers to questions by reason and logical enquiry, assessing its credibility before accepting it. There are no Authorities in science. Everything is open to question by everyone. This is what The Enlightenment refers to. It is the exact opposite of religious dogma, regardless of the religion.

[Toxinomist]

He does not speak of the problem of debts, private and public. Every one has more stuffs but don't really own them.

[colinmccavitt]

Stop using the word "unpack" First off its douchey, secondly you use it far too much. Be original and come up with another term.

[pbredder]

ENERGY has a multiplier effect on the connection of human effort to objectives, as does INFORMATION -- the latter as CATALYSTS for applying energy to human objectives..

[roadfart]

So many people are just regurgitating what they read in his new book, with the most common assertion being that 'things are improving across the board, in every way', but there is so much wrong with it. You can lower the level of income that is nationally considered to be the poverty line, but that doesn't take people out of poverty. He didn't do that, obviously, but, there so many convenient omissions in his book and clever navigation around the whole truth.

[ilja]

Whoah, I haven't seen such a huge pseud since the times when Dawkins was popular.
I am 7 minutes into the video, but he already stated that "our socienty is guided by logic, reason and science". Does Harvard hand out professor degrees for having a cool hair?

[davidwilkie]

"Faith is believing in something (that others have no conviction for) without a reason", or the actual cause-effect phenomenon is as yet improperly defined, ie in adequate for comprehensible trust in an obvious truth. (?)

Religions should continue self questioning and moral discussion, but with a better/enlightening understanding of Actuality.

[ianlonergan]

Progressing towards our ability to destroy ourselves and our world economy and ecosystem is teetering upon collapse ...all I hear is that things are much improved ...he selects examples which support his view of the best of times but humanity via capitalism and neoliberal economics and inherent contradictions detailed as obvious corruption ...our political system is the voice of power and privilege not of the people and is squeezing the last few drops which keep the system ticking over ., by keeping growth and the metrics of growth the fabled GDP and unemployment figures that are redefined to cite numbers lower that a sociological proof suggests...
The standards of advance he continues to show as examples glosses over the suffering tidied away in an idealistic narrative ...if your wealthy then yes if not then it is the wealthy who place that burden of failure as an individual failure ..to say ..you are poor because you deserve to be and infinite growth and a steady march towards an ideal society ...and here and there when his argument becomes untenable then he talks about the flaws of humanity ..so really he is saying nothing ...only that in the realm of ideas are we are within a golden age we know more about how gruesome our situation is ...

He says people are living longer ..rich people live longer poor people die earlier the average lifespan of people in the USA is declining ...so frustrating the space here to detail ..but when statistics detail 3.3 unarmed people of colour typically young males being killed every day must be proof ..the rights to affordable health care denied the costs of medications clearly price gouging as medications elsewhere in the world are remarkably cheaper ..the homelessness of people growing, the opioid addiction ..the failure to maintain your own infrastructure ....a heart ache beyond me ..oh and the evangelical churches promoting prosperity doctrine and who voted en masse 81% for your present President ..

So annoying this intellectual isn’t making for a clarity of understanding just stating arguments and backing away in then debasing the same leaving one to wonder apart from his calmly moderated educated middle class tones and a fashionable respectable appearance the hair the clothes the body language ..take these distractions away as a confirming bias to his articulations looking in detail at what he says as opposed to how it’s presented ..it’s just airways filling empty spaces with a rhetoric that says nothing apart from look at me ...promoting a further dehumanisation by maintaining things as they are

[davidrosane]

18:10: "The West itself hasn't really been that committed to Enlightenment ideals. Even as a philosophy, a creed, a set of ideals, no sooner did the Enlightenment emerge then there was a counter-Enlightenment, a romantic movement, a valorization of blood and soil and race and nation (Nazism, Trumpism etc) The West has had a tension between Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment ideals for 250 years and in fact it was really only after the Second Word War that we had Enlightenment ideals in the form of International organizations, a spread of Democracy, Globalization really become ascendant. Before that Nationalism was a major belief system and even today with the rise of authoritarian populism, these are florid counter-Enlightenment movements championed (it sounds like an Oxymoron to talk about the Intellectual roots of Trumpism, at first i thought it was an eruption of raw instinct) but there are intellectuals who defend Trump. They often allude to counter-Enlightenment ideals. There were 200 academics who signed a statement in support of Trump a couple of months prior to the 2016 election. According to this philosophy, there is no humanity, just tribes and zero-sum competition between tribes, to surrender to international globalism is to be a chump in the battle between tribes and races. These are ideas, although I think they are terrible ideas."

[cowboybeboop]

Honestly Pinker is kind of frustrating to listen to. He basically calls everything he likes Enlightenment and everything he doesn`t like anti-Enlightenment. Can`t we all just agree that the Enlightenment wasn`t perfect and there are a lot of bad things as well?!

[bluekron]

YOU CAN GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD AND LOSE YOUR SOUL...

[ianlonergan]

I must be missing something here ....this progress where is it and who has it and what abundance ...I hear the strength of ideas but yet ok at the world as it is ..the USA is teetering close to an economic collapse ...growth is predicated upon the natural world our ecosystem which sustains life upon this planet ..science details exactly a measurement of the ecosystem in collapse ...and our capitalist economy is dependent upon a continued systemic destruction of our natural world wealth continues to move increasingly so into fewer and fewer hands instead of developing the infrastructure necessary to maintain a healthy society and the bottom line is people are expendable in the business of moving wealth towards the elite..the industrial war machine of now endless wars enriches the businesses who manufactures these arms ...and the countries ravaged becomes in turn a means to further capitalise on rebuilding ruined structures and of course securing dwindling oil reserves..
That 100, 000 of people die and suffer and regional instability results the consequences of which are not entertained in our popular media...
How is this then a golden age ? In ideas perhaps we have the tools to reason with but that belies the facts before ones eyes ...it’s a discordant

[petervanzyverden]

Thank you Steven for sharing your mythology regarding the nature of the cosmos, good to see that you are able to create meaning from a dumb materialistic universe😁