751 Quotes by Steven Pinker

If all abstract thought is metaphorical, and all metaphors are assembled out of biologically basic concepts, then we would have an explanation for the evolution of human intelligence. Human intelligence would be a product of metaphor and combinatorics. Metaphor allows the mind to use a few basic ideas-substance, location, force, goal-to understand more abstract domains. Combinatorics allows a finite set of simple ideas to give rise to an infinite set of complex ones.

The decline of violence may owe something to an expansion of empathy, but it also owes much to harder-boiled faculties like prudence, reason, fairness, self-control, norms and taboos, and conceptions of human rights. This.

If crime is going down, you shouldn’t be increasing resources for crime prevention. Or you should be taking note of what has worked and concentrate the crime-prevention methods on policies that have a track record of success.

The Moralization Gap consists of complementary bargaining tactics in the negotiation for recompense between a victim and a perpetrator.

In a high tech world the cure for the tragic shortcomings and perilous fallacies of human intuition is education, but education in economics, evolutionary biology, probability and statistics – unfortunately most High School and College curricula have barely changed since Medieval times!

Astrology had an important role in the ancient world. You can’t understand many things unless you know something about astrology – the plays of Shakespeare and so on.

Forcing modern speakers of English to not – whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn’t done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of England to wear laurels and togas.

We can shape events in each other’s brains with exquisite precision.

The culture of science is based on the opposite belief. Its signature practices, including open debate, peer review, and double-blind methods, are designed to circumvent the sins to which scientists, being human, are vulnerable. As Richard Feynman put it, the first principle of science is “that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.