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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
Way
Prevents
Presentation
Consistent
Content
Style
Getting

More quotes by Steven Pinker

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The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress.
Steven Pinker
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We can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision.
Steven Pinker
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As a graduate student, I wrote a long paper connecting the dots between mathematical models of learning and language development in children. It was published in a major journal.
Steven Pinker
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Journalists say that when a dog bites a man, that is not news, but when a man bites a dog, that is news ... Thanks to the mathematics of combinatorics, we will never run out of news.
Steven Pinker
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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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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.
Steven Pinker
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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!
Steven Pinker
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With violence, as with so many other concerns, human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution.
Steven Pinker
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My opinions about human nature are shared by many psychologists, linguists, and biologists, not to mention philosophers and scholars going back centuries.
Steven Pinker
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All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain. There is no reason to believe there is any magic going on.
Steven Pinker
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'Capitalism' is a dirty word for many intellectuals, but there are a number of studies showing that open economies and free trade are negatively correlated with genocide and war.
Steven Pinker
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Language is a window into human nature, but it is also a fistula, an open wound through which we're exposed to an infectious world.
Steven Pinker
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Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture.
Steven Pinker
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All over the world, belief in the supernatural has authorised the sacrifice of people to propitiate bloodthirsty gods, and the murder of witches for their malevolent powers.
Steven Pinker
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Gossip is certainly one of the things that language is useful for, because it's always handy to know who needs a favor, who can offer a favor, who's available, who's under the protection of a jealous spouse. And being the first to get a piece of gossip is like engaging in insider trading: You can capitalize on an opportunity before anyone else can.
Steven Pinker
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Regardless of its causes, thoughtlessly blaming the present is a weakness which, even if it is never outlawed, ought to be resisted. Though commonly flaunted as a sign of sophistication, it can be an opportunity for one-upmanship and an excuse for misanthropy, especially against the young.
Steven Pinker
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We are visual creatures. Visual things stay put, whereas sounds fade.
Steven Pinker
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The elegant study... is consistent with the themes of modern cognitive neuroscience . Every aspect of thought and emotion is rooted in brain structure and function, including many psychological disorders and, presumably, genius. The study confirms that the brain is a modular system comprising multiple intelligences, mostly nonverbal.
Steven Pinker
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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.
Steven Pinker
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The reason I'm not a neurobiologist but a cognitive psychologist is that I think looking at brain tissue is often the wrong level of analysis. You have to look at a higher level of organization.
Steven Pinker