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The rules of friendship are tacit, unconscious they are not rational. In business, though, you have to think rationally.

Steven Pinker

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Steven Pinker
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 18
Anthropologist
Linguist
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
Psychologist
University Teacher
Montreal
Quebec
Steven Arthur Pinker
Unconscious
Rational
Rules
Friendship
Though
Business
Think
Tacit
Thinking
Rationally

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Disgust is intuitive microbiology
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As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones.
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We're living in primate heaven. We're warm, dry, we're not hungry, we don't have fleas and ticks and infections. So why are we so miserable?
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For one thing, before the 20th century, there were plenty of genocides. We tend to forget about them, partly because they weren't as well documented and partly because, until recently, people didn't care. We used euphemisms like 'sackings' and 'sieges' instead of calling them 'genocides.'
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The world has far too much morality.
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Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture.
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Evolutionary psychologists seem to want to unmask our noblest motives as ultimately self-interested - to show that our love for children, compassion for the unfortunate and sense of justice are just tactics in a Darwinian struggle to perpetuate our genes.
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We can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision.
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As long as your ideology identifies the main source of the world's ills as a definable group, it opens the world up to genocide.
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Conventions are unstated agreements within a community to abide by a single way of doing things - not because there is any inherent advantage to the choice, but because there is an advantage to everyone making the same choice.
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Most wars are not fought over shortages of resources such as food and water, but rather over conquest, revenge, and ideology.
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When time permits, I try to see interesting people in the cities I visit. In Seattle, I met Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, who is shy in personality but flamboyant in his philanthropy.
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Today we take it for granted that war happens in smaller, poorer and more backward countries.
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Consciousness surely does not depend on language. Babies, many animals, and patients robbed of speech by brain damage are not insensate robots they have reactions like ours that indicate that someone's home.
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I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.
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The human capacity for compassion is not a reflex that is triggered automatically by the presence of another living thing.
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In our society, the best predictor of a man's wealth is his wife's looks, and the best predictor of a woman's looks is her husband's wealth.
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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.
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Northeastern and most coastal states will vote for the candidate who is more closely aligned with international cooperation and engagement, secularism and science, gun control, individual freedom in culture and sexuality, and a greater role for the government in protecting the environment and ensuring economic equality.
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If anything, Powerpoint, if used well, would ideally reflect the way we think.
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