Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. He grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and his Ph.D. from Harvard. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his nine books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and The Sense of Style. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, and one of Foreign Policy’s “World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” He is Chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and writes frequently for The New York Times, The Guardian, and other publications.
His tenth and most recent book is Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.
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Big Think Books
Why income inequality is not the injustice we perceive it to be
"The starting point for understanding inequality in the context of human progress is to recognize that income inequality is not a fundamental component of well-being."
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Steven Pinker
AI Won't Takeover the World, and What Our Fears of the Robopocalypse Reveal
Steven Pinker believes there's some interesting gender psychology at play when it comes to the robopocalypse. Could artificial intelligence become evil or are alpha male scientists just projecting?
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Steven Pinker
Is World History Becoming More Peaceful or More Violent?
If you want to understand trends in the history of global violence, look to data, not headlines, says Harvard psychology professor and linguist Steven Pinker.
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Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker: How Soon Will Genetic Enhancement Create Smarter Humans?
Today's video is part of a series on genius, in proud collaboration with 92Y's 7 Days of Genius Festival.
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Steven Pinker
How We Speak Reveals What We Think, with Steven Pinker
Professor Steven Pinker illustrates how the study of linguistics can give us a rare window into the conscious mind.
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Steven Pinker
How Children Learn Language
In this selection from his Floating University lecture, Professor Steven Pinker deduces the nature of language acquisition by examining the generative use of grammar in children.
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Steven Pinker
Language Is a Window into the Mind
Psychologist Steven Pinker studies the interface between language and human computation, which he argues is the key to understanding human nature.
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Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker on Human Nature
The experimental psychologist discusses the quest for understanding what makes us tick.
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