Steven Pinker vs John Mearsheimer debate the enlightenment | Part 1 of FULL DEBATE
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- John Mearsheimer and Steven Pinker go head to head on Enlightement ideals.
Watch the full debate at iai.tv/video/the-enlightenmen...
The Enlightenment advocated reason, science, democracy, and universal human rights as a grounding for human morality and social organization. In the quarter millennium since, to what extent have these ideals been realized? Has the Enlightenment in fact been successful in bringing about moral progress? Are there viable alternatives to the Enlightenment vision?
#TheEnlightenment #JohnMearsheimer #StevenPinker
Sophie Scott-Brown, Director at Gresham College, hosts a debate between two of the most influential thinkers of our time. Join John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, as they discuss the Enlightenment and its alternatives.
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Mr Pinker said in the intellectual sphere there ie not a lot of people that would say war is heroic, no, but whenever the US political establishment decides their next war for democracy there is no shortage of intellectuals to deffend the "humanitarian" reasons for the war, spreading freedom and the whole thing
Manufacturing of elite consensus, to kind of quote Chomsky. It is incredible how they coalesce around an idea-war is always moral when they say it is-and mainstream is the conduit for propagating the propaganda.
It’s why I struggle to take Pinker seriously despite having read his Angels book. He seems to inhabit an ethereal realm that’s impervious to “reason” regarding the state of the world and the regression of the West into corrupt oligarchies that profit from a succession of manufactured crises like Covid and Ukraine at the expense of their citizens and the rest of the world.
War can be heroic, yes.
@@donkeychan491there's no regression of the west into oligarchies.
The West i.e. America is a plutocracy concerned with end stage capitalism.
Most of what Pinker mentions in the first argument is due to technology, not moral or intellectual growth.
And ironically it is turning out to be a hinderance to both of those things.
You can't have new tecnologies without intelectual growth.
@@gonx9906 First of all: that is simply 100% wrong. You can use the same level of intellect in a new application. Working through the available options is a product of time and luck as much as anything.
Secondly, we are talking about society, not the 1% of the population that invents and modifies technology. That 1% could theoretically be growing their intellect (although they are not) while the rest of society gets even dumber and we'd still have more and more tech advances.
And, if you look around we actually see tech making people dumber. Many thought processes needed to live in less technologically advanced times are never used any more (in the 1st world at least).
We're dumber people with better machines.
His charts can also be incredibly misleading or short term, As mortality goes down consumption of resources goes up, biosphere degrades and pollution is at all time high.
@@georgechristiansen6785 it depends. An operating machine in the 1800th was far simpler than the ones we have today. Also, we have seen intellectual growth - at least if we measure it as IQ. Check out the Flynn effect
The first question that Steven replied to looked very scripted as if he had spent a lot of time preparing for just that one question. John on the other hand was probably given short notice of the discussion.
Mr. Pinker is not aware of that liberalism is also an ideological paradigm. Equating the truth with liberalism lead us to think that all non-liberal approach to truth is a deviation from the truth, which is not true.
its basically the snobby suit and tie version of of the redneck yelling "hhhwite power!" All it is, in a nutshell. Exceptionalism.
He is, but he, like most of the western "thinkers" has job to do
And that is exactly the sort of sub-Foucauldian melange of poorly worked-out ideas that Pinker warns against.
Very true- the biggest issue with liberals is, that they really believe that they are better than anybody else, because they are the biggest utilitarians.
Some frameworks are more effective than others for discovering truth. Can you name one that has a better track record than Western liberalism?
Pinker's view is correct only if Western colonialism & imperialism, which made the West so powerful to bring about peace, prosperity, education, and all the other positive results that he mentions, can be morally justified. Would all the positive things Pinker mentions come about without the West overwhelmingly using its hard power to subjugate other peoples and silence their alternative views of human flourishing? I do not think so. I think the progress he talks about only holds from the point of view of a liberal who does not question the illiberal and oppressive ideology and hard power that makes what he calls "progress" possible.
Both arguments fail to accept that the majority of the woes in our society now and historically are caused by a very small minority of people who run to their own agenda and who have no interest in intellectual debate. We should be discussing how we can stop these people rising to positions of prominence, whether in the political, social, national, religious or economical realms.
Ideally democracy safeguards against that, but democracy has been hi-jacked by oligarchs in many places. I am hoping that we are at an inflection point when it comes to revitalizing TRUE democratic principles.
@@stevej.7926 Hah okay so do you disagree with the opening comment or not? It's not clear. Ideally democracy safeguards but then you concede that it's been hijacked. So if hijacked then first part is a moot point. You don't have it therefore...
We most certainly are not at an inflection point. We are probably at the worst possible point in history now. Washington is staring down the barrel of the return of multi-polarity which they are desperately trying to stop and reverse. The more desperate they get the more dangerous. Insofar as democratic principles, well I would submit to you that so long as you have an apathetic and mostly stupefied citizenry this is also a moot point. How much time do you spend per week on civic duties? And how much time do you spend on the economic treadmill securing the basics for you and your family? It is probably 100% for the latter and 0% for the former. I rest my case.
Hi-jacked for sure. Yet I feel democracies have at best become lazy and at worst just turned a blind eye. Hubris another factor in the mix. @@stevej.7926
🧂
The myth of woke doesn't exist, you're wrong.
It seems to me that Steven is simplifying the issue, putting himself in a superior position. This is what the ancient Greeks called hubris.
Does Pinker ever speak to people outside of academia? His idea of what everyone agrees on seems way off.😅
Recent events would indicate that Stephen is overly optimistic. Including events at his own institution.
Fun editing, i like the reaction shots.
The state of the world today strengthens John's critique contra Steven.
You are right
I have to agree with John. Pinker live in a la la land = never live in poverty before.
Preach
So you’re opposed to Reason?
One doesn't need to live in poverty to show the facts
experience of poverty is important if you want to talk about poverty. Experience of driving is important if you want to talk about how to drive a car @@lubu2960
eh?: 'never live in poverty'...'before'?
'Pinker live' - lives in...
Professor John Mearsheimer is a highly respected academic, renowned for his foundational work in offensive realism. Meanwhile, Steven Pinker, a proponent of liberal internationalism, has seen his idealistic ideas face considerable challenges when tested against empirical evidence. I align myself with Professor Mearsheimer.
Yeah. It's pretty clear Pinker is an academic living in mostly fantasy land of theories. Maybe this is what happens when you spend all of your life in academia I don't know.
You could have not written your last sentence and i would have guessed it to be true regardless.
Realism and materialism are becoming increasingly suspect in the face of incontrovertible evidence that our fundamental identities are not in fact grounded in our nationalities, ethnicities, skin color, etc. Idealism is the clearest path towards spiritual transcendence and transformation. Mearsheimer echoes a tired approach.
@@stevej.7926 Yeah. He's just echoing what is. I don't agree that's the way forward but he is far more in touch with how things actually work vs Steven who is almost entirely trapped in some idealized version of potentiality.
@@Screaming-Trees very possibly
Thank you, the Theory of Holistic Perspective helps us clearly distinguish between personal, shared, and universal truths.
On women's equality - how would Mr Pinker fix the collapse in the birth rate?
He might deny that’s a problem
@mckernan603 That's the usual response I've noticed from academics.
For every effort globalism has made to curtail climate change, it has made an equal and opposite effort to ignore or repress discussion into the fast falling human birth rate.
@@mckernan603 The elite live conservatively. It's not a problem for him what others can't get but what he can. It would be a problem if it affected him personally. Is it a problem to live a life where you forego your biological imperative for a lonely life as a corporate product to fix overpopulation?
@@alwynraynott7303 that’s one side of the spectrum, but the extremely poor have 8 deliveries just to birth 4 children, and that’s the sort of reduction in fertility we’d all welcome
Just stop using medicine amd modern technology. Lol a good biological phenomenon. Higher infant mortality equals higher birth rates!!! Learnt this a while back ago it happens in animals and humans. Nothing to do with women equality so to speak its all nature. Notice no one in this comment section or anywhere with a brain points out we have less child mortality and overall death compared to 100 years ago when death rates were higher and guess what?? We had high birth rates. Religion plays a role but not significant to defy nature in most cases. Irrelavent womens decision or not to have kids. Much like when you burn your hand you dont choose to move it off the stove youe brain instinctively reacts
Thank you for the quality debate.
So refreshing to listen to a debate that doesn't devolve into personal attacks.
I'm so tired of seeing comments like this. There are 1000's of hours of videos just like this one online that isn't between two fools. This isn't a rarity
Beautiful discussion, I'll go on to part 2. But that's definitely not the effect of the concluding recorded voice. That gave me chills
I thought it was kind of odd too lol
What a fantastic debate!!
One thing I find missing in these debates is someone saying "You know what? That's a good point, I never thought of that." We see entrenched views with facts and figures, but we never see that the other guy or gal has pointed out even a small detail that gives one pause for thinking that maybe I could modify my beliefs. What is important is that we have two great thinkers in the world like Steven Pinker and John Mearsheimer.
I think it’s because these debates are for us the viewer not an actual debate. These are both highly published academics, they are having this debate daily in much more detailed terms than what you see in this video already. This is less of a debate and more an opportunity for two views of the world to educate the public about what’s happening in academic circles.
Yes it's a big problem with formal debate, Graham Oppey is someone who will do this,
but I think your point favours interviews and discussions where the goal is mutual understanding and pursuit of truth rather than to "win" or to "convince".
@@FartPanther I think its as simple as a debate is more entertaining and they want as many eyeballs as they can. Its not like its a debate between a nazi and rabbi. They're not angry at eachother they're gonna go get a beer after. Its just an opportunity to educate the general public about their work in an entertaining way. They basically just stated the thesis of their major works. Its a performance for an audience in other words. Its like saying why not just have the WWE wrestlers talk out their differences instead of pretending to fight. Because then wheres the entertainment for the viewer.
Again they already know eachother's positions on the topic backwards and frontways.
@@thegreen2504 nice, I'd not thought of it like that.
John didn't make any specific points though. He basically said that he doesn't like the word "liberal" and that other people also don't like the word "liberal" so therefore progress doesn't exist.
Interetsing discussion. I'd love to see discussion between Prof Pinker and some historians doing in depth detailed archival work. It would be interesting to see the extent to which the historians agreed that all the things Prof Pinker talks about can be connected with 'enlightenment' in the sense of how they developed historically. Big categories can sometimes blur the edges of our knowledge of human experience too much. Thanks
Thing is though, the "Enlightenment" as a conceptual framework is a largely 19th century historiographical innovation. The people living in it definitely knew things were changing but few ever conceived of their own time the way that historians centuries later would. (Largely for ideological reasons)
@@codyvandal2860 Thanks for the reply. Yes I think this is definitley part of what I mean. I also wonder about how we use the historical data and how we generalise about it. Some of this data may appear very clear cut and some of it no doubt is but there is also a lot we need to be cautious with. Historical data is always incomplete
the biggest crux with these historical narratives is that they give us the impression that things radically changed from one period to the next. Historians like narratives and love logical narratives.
As if people before the 17th century didn't use reason to make the world better (they did). It's mostly a matter of degree and a combination of historical eventualities that led to significant technological and economical development.
The enlightenment goes hand in hand with the industrial revolution as human rights go along with economic development in the long term overall picture.
@@bobs182 I'm not sure that claim holds up to scrutiny. China for instance make it perfectly clear that economic growth and democratic values/human rights are not necessarily linked.
Seems to me that alot of (although perhaps not all ) of Pinker's claims about progress are simply correlative rather than causal. Most of what he presented can simply be explained by the industrial revolution and the scientific revolution, both being separate events. Ppl "voting with their feet" is simply economics rather than lofty ideals.
Wars have been less destructive simply because , they've become too costly for all sides. Not to mention that war isn't even necessary when you can just employ other methods to get your way (economic sanctions, coups, subversion..etc). He also fails to note that there's no objective way to measure "happiness" despite what positive psychologists would love to tell you!
Agree with the first part of your statement, not so much with the second part, it is precisely in the period of the enlightenment that we had the most destructive wars of mankind and the biggest massacres for ideological reasons ... this doesn't show moral progress, but the opposite ..
@@huveja9799 I think I agree but I guess i was more referring to the post 1945 period which Pinker focuses on as demonstrative of progress.
But you’re right the post 1680 era was the most destructive in terms of war death tolls, famines…etc . I guess Pinker likes to frame it as a rate of death rather than an absolute number which underlies the dry materialistic way he thinks of humankind.
@@hansfrankfurter2903
I suppose it is very convenient to forget about all the massacres of the World Wars, and the holocausts in the Soviet Union and China (all due to ideological issues arising from the Enlightenment)..
But even if we start only counting from 1945, we continue to have millions and millions of deaths, we have the Genocide of Cambodia (also with ideologies coming from the Enlightenment), the millions of deaths from direct conflicts caused by the USA (this includes the death of civilians due to US economic sanctions against those countries and the destruction of civilian infrastructure), and, of course, the wars we have now in Europe, the Middle East, Africa .. and, don't forget, the millions and millions of abortions, etc. ..
Never before have so many millions of human lives been sacrificed by human hands. But it is evident that individual life doesn't have much value for Pinker, the important thing is the ratio .. given the Enlightenment's focus on individualism, that carelessness seems a little ironic, right? or .. totally coherent if you think about it a little .. as long as I'm fine, what do I care about the rest ..
That's putting lipstick on a pig. What Pinker does is tell lies about the benefits and successes of industry groups and investments behind the financial well-being of Harvard. You'll find that's a common theme amongst the Harvard Boomer crowd, such as himself and Malcom Gladwell. He's an industrialist apologist in the mold of tobacco lawyers and intellectuals from Europe and the U.S. who used to argue against slavery abolitionists.
there were no holocausts in china and the soviet union. that's like saying there were US and UK led holocausts in asia and latin america. Bad policies that unintentionally lead to large scale starvation or death are not holocausts, particularly when the same regimes intentionally massively increase wealth, life expectancy, economic output, etc . Crimes? Sure. But not holocausts. Stalin's regime did intentionally execute a million innocent people over time, but they really had nothing in common other than being targetted - that's certainly murder, but it isn't a holocaust. The further ten million who died simply due to bad policy, neglect or civil war is horrible but again not a holocaust. There is a reason that the holodomor has not been rule genocide. And most of USSR deaths were not ideologically driven, but geopolitical and domestic political paranoia, rivalry, etc. The problem with claiming holocaust is you have to explain why the same type of populations who died via some state actions also were given massive increases in health, literacy, wealth, life expectancy by others. @@huveja9799
For some people Enlightenment for others….Endarkenment.
the world is darkening indeed since spiritual laziness has taken over ( acedie for st thomas)
only P........ has emphasized that a NATION has a SOUL
where is the soul of the americans??????????
millions of people are killed everyday by kleptocrats( americans) and people watch football games ????????
you wanna talk about ETHICS????? my god
Indeed, especially those with a romantic notion of the past.
And here I was thinking I'd be the only one to put in a good word for medievalism.
@@bd7913 "Indeed, especially those with a romantic notion of the past."
All radicals, both from Left and Right, romanticize the past.
The West has entered into a new dark age regarding honesty, transperancy, accountability and the sharing of non biase information.
Excellent conversation
I have to ask, how much of "progress" is an off-shoot of technological progress versus social progress? e.g., is the reduction in famine a result of more productive agricultural practices and better international shipping of food-stuffs from countries more suited to produce a given product?
It’s a shame that Pinker’s claim about the fact of slavery’s eradication went unchallenged in the face of considerable evidence in the US and abroad, in favor of comfortable (if still intellectually significant) theoretical disputes.
But he didn’t say its been eradicated, he is saying its not legal anywhere in the world anymore. Which is quite different statement
I don't recall a time during my lifetime when my country wasn't at war somewhere, and I utterly disagree with your assessment on slavery. Its changed form and freedom from it is no longer tied to skin color, but rather if you happen to be alone, or easy to isolate, in order to TRAFFICK.
Absolutely true
Yeah but trafficking people has been around for thousands of years. The argument is that it has DECREASED, not disappeared.
Incredible. Thank you.
Great stuff!
There has been technological and scientific progress but social progress is hard to say. Because of the progress we have established as humans have been like medications where there has been side effects. When addiction and mental health illness are at an all time high and rising it is hard to say that socially humanity has progressed. It is possible to say that there has been a general increase with irregularities in some very important aspects of social life such as mental health and health specifically related to social health such as loneliness, addiction and mental health as a whole.
I think Pinker addresses this in his book enlightenment now. Happiness cannot be objectively measured, but we have it very good these days, and people self report a higher level of life satisfaction today. Our standards of what we find acceptable have risen to very high levels, so we still complain a lot.
The idea of measure addiction and mental health illness is a product of the enlightenment. You couldn't imagine, for example, the Ottoman Empire even having a concern for such a thing as a "mental health policy". I shouldn't have to say that when you measure something youre going to have more of it than when you dont measure it. I'm not denying that modern society doesn't have massive issues that are unique to itself. In most cases, this is issue of abundance and rapidity in change, without a growth in wisdom. To an extent, the enlightenment respresents an advance in wisdom, but a not practical popularization and application of it.
Exactly!!
@@nathanmcmath We have a much higher under 70 suicide rate now than we did in the past.
@@borgers7909 Actually, no. The suicide rate in 1900 was almost double what it is now. That is despite much greater stigma around reporting suicides, with the result that the actual rate was almost certainly significantly higher.
The suicide rate is only higher now relative to 25 years ago, and is only a little higher than it was in 1975. The post-2000s surge is very connected to one major phenomenon, the prescription narcotics epidemic.
24:25
"is that a convincing argument for you?"
"No. but.." 😂
Thank you very much...
John pointed out incoherences & contradictions in Steven’s worldview. His reply was promissory arguments & statistics rather than engage John’s argument.
Spoken like someone choking with confirmation bias.
You hate evidence and reality
00:02 Enlightenment values advocate reason and progress for human flourishing.
02:28 Enlightenment ideals focus on human flourishing and progress.
06:54 Debate on Enlightenment's impact on moral and political progress
09:42 Identity and interests are tied to nations, making consensus on moral and political answers difficult.
14:40 Enlightenment's commitment to democracy and individual disagreement within nations
16:54 Progress is tied to the concept of Truth.
20:59 Academia and great thinkers hindering progress.
23:04 Progress is not guaranteed; we push back with reason and evidence.
27:06 Debate about differing views in international politics
Oh dear. Pinker was excellent at publicising linguistics and the brain but utterly out of his depth on history . What a shame that he has decided to devalue his genuine scientific contributions with his man in pub waffle about stuff he really knows nothing about.
Oh he believes in strong leaders as long as there not in the middle east and under the control of the US
Very interesting topic and wonderful debate. From France.
Epic. Thank you.
John's arguments are simple but more persuasive.
totally disagree. all of the arguments can be refuted by one sentence
@@yonaoisme Then try.
@@jansvoboda4293 i'm not that well versed in mathematical logic at all. but until you can't give me an inconsistency of liberalism, i will believe that there are none, since that's the most likely thing to be true.
@@yonaoisme Are you sure, you are answering to the correct thread? Because no one argues consistency of liberalism here. Here someone finds John's argument persuasive and you declare it can be refuted in one sentence, so the ball is on your field to prove it.
@@yonaoisme " but until you can't give me an inconsistency of liberalism, i will believe that there are none, since that's the most likely thing to be true"
Surprising chain of thoughts right there, but that aside, and regarding the underlying claim, how about:
Liberalism leads to an overestimation of the importance of the individual at the expense of the group and its internal cohesion? Or: Liberalism with its extreme emphasis on individual freedom and personal property leads to a system wherein whoever has more property also has more freedom?
Or: Liberalism is the reification and perpetuation of established social power hierarchies whereby a few specific people win and everybody else loses? Liberalism leads to a system where we think there's only a market solution to any given problem, and that every aspect of society and human activity should be privatized, owned and managed by corporations?
Not to mention, if you think about it, what the war in Ukraine and Palestine demonstrate to the whole world in real time is that liberal democracy is NOT the solution, rather ostensibly the problem. Ask yourself this: who are historically the biggest purveyor of terrorism worldwide, autocratic dictatorships, or liberal democracies?
Now I'm neither condoning or justifying, just pointing out that there's plenty to say about the specific breed of "liberalism" that is practiced in the West as opposed to other socio-politico-economic paradigms in other parts of the world.
I think Pinker's conception of enlightenment is fairly superficial and he seems to believe in contemporary Western propaganda. Kant, for example, who is one of the most important figures of the enlightenment, described enlightenment in terms of being able to think for yourself. I cannot think of any society where people really think for themselves. Pinker is too focused on standard of living improvements. He is very British in that regard. The best enlightenment thinkers were from France and Germany, but that vision of the enlightenment, which values reflective self-understanding is largely dead.
Politically speaking, enlightenment should require that rulers should rule for the benefit of the ruled rather than for their own benefit. This promise has also been broken, as we saw with the eradication of the welfare state. The welfare state was supposed to be a compromise between the interests of the elites and those of the people. It represented a moderate impropriation the enlightenment, but the elites broke the deal after they were no longer afraid that the people might embrace communism and eat the rich.
We live in a world where most of us do still care about enlightenment ideals, but socially and politically it is on life support.
People who think that the enlightenment is doing well are effectively in the service of the ruling class. They want us to think this is as good as it gets and any change will just result in tyranny.
"People who think that the enlightenment is doing well are effectively in the service of the ruling class." I totally agree with this statement.
A simple observation to show the hypocrisy or ideological blindness of Pinker, he says that the values of liberalism are shown in human flourishing, and an example he gives is "kids no dying" ... well, only in the USA (not counting Europe and other parts of the world), after Roe vs. Wade, an estimated 80 million abortions were performed ... of course, they are not called kids, so they do not appear in the statistics ...
Pinker is not British.
I've lived in both Britain and America, and in my opinion the reason why America has a tyrannical government, and high incarceration rates, is actually because their people go around behaving like sovereign citizens, and having a similar relationship to truth and education as a cult leader.
In other words, Americans are getting the over bearing government they deserve.
There's individualism, then there's unenlightened individualism. America has always had a tenuous relationship with enlightenment. It's still largely a religious country, and skepticism of the scientific method abounds.
There's some amount of education and cooperation you need to have an actual democracy. I'm totally unconvinced America is culturally democratic anymore.
When it comes to enlightenment thinking, it's the scientific, instrumentalist approach to epistemology that's the critical part. Everything else I could take or leave, as long as it passes the empirical test.
You could have just said "I am a commi" save yourself typing this nonsense dribble.
@@ywtcc Yes, that is right. I am not sure why I was under the impression that Pinker was British for some reason. I believe, however, that the empirical instrumentalist by itself does not constitute enlightenment. I mean, a totalitarian or fascist nation can produce plenty of good scientists.
"There is absolutely no presumption that everyone has the same values or beliefs. That's why you need democracy."
Mr. Pinker, belief in democracy is one of the beliefs you're talking about.
there is no such thing as pure data. you have to pick which variables you care about and then you have to interpret the data on those variables. the issue is in picking variables and when you do it you beg the question about what is good / bad / irrelevant / neutral
on the other hand an optimally rational use of data sets, such as Pinker's in The Better Angels or Enlightenment Now etc, does at least have optimal objectivity as a goal. Unlike the tribalism and more or less irrational rationalizations of absolutely everybody, his buddies and the cognitive biases inside their noggins.
@@TracyPicabia Pinker's major flaw is that he doesn't recognise the paradigm that he operates under - i.e, white liberal capitalism - brings its' own inherent biases. I am an ecologist and Pinker's section on biodiversity in Enlightenment now is very weak and guilty of a lot of cherry picking. He basically parrots ecomodernist talking points because he has little knowledge and credibility in that field of study. So no, not optimal objectivity at all. He is explicit, he is defending what he sees as the cause of the Englightenment, which brings bias into his analysis...and it shows.
@@mrweasel Not just ecology, he's woefully ill informed about my own area of production ((contemporary (neo-constructivist) painting)). Did you mean Enlightenment AS a cause (ideology) or its causal root ? Because you might be sounding a bit anti-rational or a bit straw-manny.
It is surprising for me to realize that during the discussion John, by advocating that there are different truths for different people and we should respect that, comes out to be more democratic than his opponent that argues for democratic values, however supports the idea that there is only one universal truth. It's mind boggling!
Universal truth is always presented as if it’s somehow obvious even though it’s the most bizarrely retrograde idea that pretty much none of the world’s greatest thinkers have believed. Indeed thinkers like Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche would have nothing to write about if there was an obvious “universal truth”.
@@donkeychan491 absolutely. You can hear Steven say "but the children!" and then "autocrats bad" as if he truly believes any autocrats even wanted for his nation to have less children. It's bizzare. Better medical care? Sure. But what about the birth rate? We have better healthcare but our birthrate is much lower than in Africa, India or Latin America. By that margin we are a retrograde culture! There is no universal truth yet somehow this obvious thought eludes him.
@@AntPictures I have a sneaking suspicion that the type of liberalism Pinker represents is inherently short-termist and shallow in how it arrives at policy prescriptions and doesn't consider longer-term trade-offs. Your example of healthcare is apposite in that regard.
Liberalism is always looking for the glib soundbite and facile framing of an issue to gain a sense of (unearned) moral superiority. Jonathan Haidt's analysis of the moral differences between liberals and conservatives is interesting in this regard, since his work explicitly shows that liberals lack certain moral faculties.
I'm not necessarily arguing in favour of what passes for conservatism nowadays, but I think Haidt's work explains why people like Pinker seem to have so many blind spots that they just cannot perceive: maybe he's just lacking some genes!
Western hegemonic thinking. I sure he only accept Liberal democracy aswell no other form of democracy is acceptable
Because we shouldn't respect anti democratic ideas. Pretty simple.
As Kant observes: “Power is fatal to the free use of reason”. So, John’s observation that reason doesn’t seem to lead to consensus, does not count as a critique of the capacity of reason to lead to consensus. Reason simply is not leading the way. It is rather serving interests.
Reason serves the Will as post-Kantians Schopenhauer and Nietzsche would understand it
@@user-hu3iy9gz5j eactly, reason is not "free reason", its not objective...people always use "reason" for their self-interest
Which reasonings? The ones we are subjected to by the news cycle? Most people are not capable of reason. They want coformity.
@@33333Tarun What did you use to arrive at your questions?
@@michaelkurak1012 TH-cam!! lol
Very interesting debate.
Part 1? Where's the rest of it?
I'm thinking about Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
John Mearsheimer and Steven Pinker ❤
Why is everything we consume foreign?
Because nobody is allowed to decouple upon seizing the means of production
Thank you gentlemen!
Please can you expan on:
- Where are the 2 WW in the graphics?
-how do dr. Pinker nuance different pools of civilizations worldwide in the Growing Enlightenment?
-how about ponzu schemes circles of fiat values (money) in sustainability of the Growth?
Pinker should read up on his history. Many so-called Enlightenment thinkers were sharply opposed to contemporary forms of democracy, preferring liberal oligarchy instead. The franchise, in their mind, was to be restricted to narrowly defined educated and propertied classes
Pinker should then read up on his history of political thought. 'Liberalism' has competing traditions and perspectives. Free speech is one of these 'values', sure. The ruthless pursuit of profits and protection of property rights at the expense of broader social, economic, and indeed democratic aims, is another. And they can't be so easily bundled together
Liberalism inevitably leads to decadence.
Liberalism assumes you can exploit someone.
This is more interesting than I thought it would be.
Its great to discuss something like this, and I see a lot of arguements in the comments in support of Mearsheimer's positions. If that's true, what time period in the past do you want to time travel to? Pretty easy to see this discussion is really about negativity bias, and how pessimism is seen as erudite and wise while optimism is seen as delusion and fanciful.
I agree with Mearsheimer, with a more simple explanation, man is a beast and was given a “software” by his creator. Man will never change, his behavior is defined by this software. The best you can do as an individual is to recognize this fact and structure your life to protect yourself from man’s inevitable behavior.
Or change the software. We know we can do this - rewire the brain to be less fearful, angry, sad. And before you scream, "Brave new world!", what we've been doing for the past 250 years has massively rewired *everything else*. We just forgot about the brain or more generally the mind and consciousness until very recently as a field of legitimate study. We should have started studying it 500 years ago along with everything else.
You said absolutely nothing, and you didn't even use "software" in a manner appropriate for your attempted analogy.
@@hadronoftheseus8829 Hardware then. You know what I mean.
20 years in Buddhism. I know very well what I'm talking about.
I think you really WANT the human condition to be 'fixed', for emotional reasons, even though you know very well it will be so easy to radically change many things about human subjective experience once we understand the neurological underpinnings of it, as we are learning rapidly and with many modalities. Neurofeedback, focused ultrasound, photobiomodulation, deep brain stimulation, Neuralink and associated invasive BCI's.
Uh-oh. It's starting to sound like I could continue this conversation for a LONG time, isn't it? So you'd better run if you want out now.
@@squamish4244 I'm a computational neuroscientist, and you've now said nothing twice, and the fact that you can say it with such prolixity leaves me neither impressed nor intimidated.
I'm smirking from ear to ear that you think Neuralink is a thing or ever will be.
@@hadronoftheseus8829 you dropped your fedora
It’s absolutely true that people can disagree about very fundamental things. The question is: how do we make collective decisions, and share the world with each other, in spite of that fact? It seems like liberal principles, that strive to give people the freedom to live as they want, provided they don’t restrict the freedom of others, provide the best framework in which to attempt this.
I agree. It's hard to understand what exactly John's position is. He points out people have different views which is obviously true...but democracy has that written into it's foundation (people disagree therefore we make decisions through collective vote). When Pinker pointed that out, John dodged and changed the subject.
@@danielm5161 His position is that liberalism is an effect not a cause of prosperity
@@Se7enth351 That statement is so broad it hardly means anything. John's obsession with the word "liberalism" is part of the reason he doesn't make any precise points in this video. Liberalism is a word that encompasses many things at once. Not only that but the word means different things to different people in different countries and time periods. It isn't the type of word that should be used as the foundation of an argument. The foundation of Pinkers arguments is measurable data, not a specific claim about "liberalism".
Jesus Christ…
@@danielm5161 Pinker argues egg came before the chicken while John is skeptical of the entire argument. One could make a deeper argument that Christianitys affect laid the groundwork for liberalism to occur and the prosperity that followed. Arguing that liberalism is the cause of prosperity would be ignoring the prior cause of Christianity in that case (not something I necessarily believe but one could make the argument)
It's an inherently post-modern position, John isn't putting forward an interpretation of history as much as he is putting forward skepticism of the whig historian view of "everyone became rational and moral and started working together to produce prosperity"
Fascinating! It’s noticeable that Professor Pinker has consistently failed to acknowledge the question about moral and political progress. I wonder how he would define those terms and proceed with his argument on that issue.
John is 2 levels above Steven in Critical Thinking
@DimitarBerberu. No, one is an optimist that looks at the positives. They have an impassioned view that whilst they realise the world is filled with horrors. Humankind can, with more productive ideas... strive for better outcomes.
"You can always be proved to be wrong, if you're an optimist"
The other is a negative realist, someone that has had all of their youthful ideals crushed.
They verge on being a misanthrope. Someone that sees no 'positives' within human history.
"You can never be truly wrong, if you are a naysayer"
Steven is regurgitating a “book”!
pinker made a power point presentation though!
No
In what?
Mearsheimer was clearly on top in this discussion
Nice discussion. I think John Mearsheimer had the more penetrating insights. I'd like to see more like this for sure.
Prof. Mearsheimer is the BEST!!!
Well, progress means reconciling or refuting contradictory reasoning or principles. That is progress in understanding, if you asl some questions and the answer is not well defined, either the question is not well posed, it is ambigous and is actually more appropriately reformulated as multiple different questions and we just didn't notice, or it isnt a question we can answer. Reason can only be yeilding one answer to a well posed question we can answer, or one of the former situations are at play. The world works as it does, there is no reason to get confused, because our understanding is incomplete, two seemingly mutually exclusive answers that both seem plausible are either both wrong, one is wrong, or both have to be modified in some way to be compatible as part of some better answer
John is conflating language agreement, with belief agreement.
Using adjectives such as "monstrous" or "pathological" to describe other people's opinions indicates, possibly, an engrained belief that one holds the correct view. Being convinced of one's rightness is in itself a rather frightening sort of pathology: frightening because such individuals often feel justified in imposing their will on others 'for their own good'.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C. S. Lewis
@@DiamondLil What a marvellous quote! So apt.
12:04 Thank you for mentioning that the only reason I didn't start writing an essay here was because I was eating at the moment 😂 and had to let it go. By his logic, Thanos and any other supervillains are justified if they achieve their goal of a better world as they envision it.
Good discussion. I am not convinced with Pr Pinkers argument. It seems a bit religious….democracy and autocracy. What is the definition of democracy here? The state of lots of people in Western democracies (human flourishing) has been in decline for decades….why is that? Democracy does not explain that. And how does one define flourishing - is it only measured in material outcomes? I am not convinced.
Well said and argued professor M.
I didnt hear John respond to any of Stevens points directly. Steven responded to John on each specific point, John just listened and when it was his turn to talk he changed the subject.
@@danielm5161 Exactly.
Prof Jeffrey Sacks and Prof John Mearsheimer are two old prostitution workers of Putin. Sacks has been since 2012 or so, Mearsheimer since 2013. John Mearsheimer really thought the Russian armies would take Kyiv in days, and Ukraine by end of March 2022. So he didn't lie at first (Jan 2022 to May 2022) - he was sticking to the NATO hoax, but when started beings explicit that Russia could even hold on any big cities it took over in 2022, he started lying. Why? Because Professor invested. Mearsheimer is Putin prostitution worker since 2013, he is get paid from taxes we pay in Russia. Now he can't stop lying. To be clear: No country on earth has ever threatened or attacked the thermonuclear superpower Russia since 1941, but China in 1969. Unlike Ukraine, Russia had a NATO base in Ulyanovsk, Russia. When Finland jointed NATO with its 1250km border with Russia and 64 F-35, Putin's moved all his troops and weapons to Ukraine from the Finnish border.
"I need democracy so I can subvert it."
--Free Will Argument 101
Where is the rest of it? This says "Part 1".
at their website (pay walled) link in description
Interesting. Pinker uses life expectancy as one metric of the progress we have made as a species -- progress he argues is the consequence of Enlightenment values becoming more pervasive. One such value, of course -- at least from his perspective -- has been instituionalised in liberal democracies. But I don't know that such metrics can be neatly aligned with the kinds of values he espouses. One only has to look at authoritarian China, which has a life expetancy of about 78 years, and compare it with liberal-democratic America, where life expectancy is about 77 years. This would seem to suggest that the connection is perhaps less straightforward than Pinker imagines, and that liberal democratic institutions are not necessary for such advancements.
Mearsheiner’s reasoning would lead one to conclude that mathematicians and scientists
require a coercive leader to achieve agreement.
I wonder what girls rejected Mearsheimer in high school, or whether he ever got his father's approval. The sourpuss. Good lord.
Of course, people often get off on acting like this. Every time Mearsheimer thinks about how awful everything is, he gets a good dopamine jolt, then goes to lunch at a nice restaurant in the peaceful neighbourhood where he holds a high-paying job for life.
There is one in both fields: logic for math and the physical nature for all the others
Progress requires truth ... no. Counter evidence ... natural selection.
There is a coercive leader, it's called peer-reviewed research. Multiple people have to prove you right by trying to disprove you first. This is where I think John misses the point, disagreements of opinion actually enrich each side, so long as they are able to articulate their point coherently and listen to the opposing opinion constructively. Consensus building is what reasoning and liberal values promote, that's how we achieve progress. As opposed to autocracies where only one opinion is heard and the others supressed.
You do need a functional state to provide an environment for a lot of science to develop lol. The early scientists in the European sense were subsidized by states (Issac Newton comes to mind)
I agree with a lot of what Mearsheimer is saying, but I don't think it adds up to saying the Enlightenment has not been quite successful. He's more pointing out how its success still has a lot of holes in it, rather than how it has failed in a more complete sense.
Mearsheimer did point out those holes, but I understood his main point to be that liberalism as a worldview seems to contain inherent contradictions and that it will therefore never be a reliable compass toward truth and progress.
He's too polite to say that the industries Pinker typically shills for are the parties guilty of blowing those holes wide open. Who has time for somebody who regularly declares that developments in agritech, pharma, finance and media tech have in practice made the world a better place for humanity? Mearsheimer has the patience of Job.
@@christopherlees1134except that there are no contradictions
@@christopherlees1134 It is also rather vague what liberalism is as it is a word that has been changed several times in history. Today's US liberalism is something entirely different form classical liberalism. The negative concept of freedoms is rather coherent, it is positive freedoms doctrine that lead to inescapable contradictions.
@@yonaoisme Non-existence and your inability to perceive are two very different things.
I find the peculiar reverence for John Mearsheimer baffling.
Why? Do you prefer the delusions of Peter Zeihan.
When discussing reasoning and rational thinking, it's essential to highlight one figure : Ludwig Wittgenstein. He initially believed he had achieved the Unify - field of logical reasoning, associating himself with the "King of Science" and embracing retirement in rural Austria. However, realizing his mistake, he reemerged to teach in Cambridge, acknowledging that philosophy doesn't conform to linguistic reasoning.
The first tenet of enlightenment underscores the freedom to debate. Seeking consensus doesn't always yield the desired outcome. Importantly, ideologies like realism or communism aren't scientific; creating an atomic bomb involves scientific principles, but its use raises moral and political reasoning issues.
In ancient Chinese philosophy, the concept of "Heaven and Body as One" suggests a unity of reasoning. Scientifically proving the oneness of Heaven and Body is challenging. Linguistically, we advocate respecting nature-creatures, trees, flowers, water, sun, and moon-as equals to humans. This expression of reasoning is the essence of enlightenment.
Despite disagreements between individuals like John and Steve, the beauty of America lies in respecting the freewill of debate. Period.
One of the overlooked gifts of the enlightenment is that you own your own body.
Exactly
I’m not sure that this is fully true for people that have to work for an employer.
The United States, a country founding upon undeniably enlightenment ideals of government, kept slavery around for almost 100 years after its founding. You own your body in so far as an entity with more power to punish you says you do.
in very basic level you do not own it and have nothing to do with social concepts
Which is 99% of working population.@@nickthepostpunk5766
Pinker is what I always expect for a social liberal to look like.
I am enjoying this debate
The last argument of Prof. Mearshimer could be answered by 'Science'. Four hundred years ago it was discoveŕed that the only means of validating a well reasoned theory/hypothesis was by observation, prediction and ultimately experimentation. Difficult to do with social and political theories, but is it really impossible given modern computational metods/devices?
what we have today has almost nothing to do with enlightenment. we live in a post-enlightenment society (technically, enlightenment can be equated to modernism, while today we have post-industrial post-modernism). so, if Pinker is so positive about enlightenment, he lives in a wrong century.
the main problem of enlightenment is that the technologies it produced changed the values and the needs. so, vast majority of people profiting from technological base produced by the enlightenment-powered technologies degraded even more than their ancestors living in a less technical world thus having to use their brains in less standardized situations. so, paradoxically, enlightenment contributed to darkening of the overall mental capabilities.
true: technology=less need for individual mind power
and lately turn us (our attention) into a product.
And that's a euphemistic, best-case description@@gdaqian . Down at ground level, it means auto-immune disease, declining fertility, and neuro-degeneration. If we don't change our technologies drastically, we will have no autonomy to address anything in a real, biological sense.
Interesting how John redefines the original question. "Enlightenment values: do they help or do they hinder the world?" He moves the point to instead deal with their role in moral and political progress... Neat little sleight of hand allowing him to duck the points raised by Steven.
It's not "ducking the points raised by Steven." He basically agrees with those points. Mearsheimer was focusing on the point of disagreement. Pinker essentially continued to attack a straw man.
At the very beginning Mearsheimer said that he agrees that Enlighment has help the world tremendously his argument is that Enlighment has a limit on moral and political issues.
Actually, he narrows the definition of what it means to "help" the world by setting up those parameters, and Pinker did not dispute it.
The competition of the three apocalyptic religions surrounding the auspicious year, 2000 danged everything up.
No one is arguing that we haven't had technological advancement. The most important issue is human moral depravity. This has not changed since the beginning of humans.
The problem with Pinker is all his cases are based on percentages rather than real cases. Which means his essential style of argument lacks cogency.
exactly, he lives in an ivory tower out of touch with the world outside of his periphery
I basically agree. It's like he has never talked to an ordinary human being, has no sense of what politics are, but only dreams in the constant company of his arid unpersuasive versions of Locke and the philosophes which echo in his uncogent and unintelligent Kopfkino.
How can two such educated people be so wrong simultaneously
This actually speaks more to Mearsheimer's point against Pinker's position.
Delete this comment, it says nothing
@@mckernan603 Huh? Did you watch the debate? Mearsheimer pointed out that a lack of consensus at the political level means you can't argue there's been enlightment "progress"
History is not linear. In other words, even if the European Renaissance, Colonialism, Enlightenment, etc. may have produced the illusion of progress in the form of liberal democracy, it is not the end of history. History may show that collective societies are better suited to address future problems than the individualistic societies that have evolved under liberal democracy. For example, life expectancy in the People’s Republic of China surpassed US life expectancy for the first time because the latter dropped by 3 years during the pandemic.
yuval noah harari needs to be on this panel for balance. I believe Pinker leans to heavily on technological advancement as a indicator of enlightenment, it is not. Technical social integration like the internet works only where it is allowed to work to build intentional communities that can wield power . Also new economic models and supply chains have created peaceful coexist not social consensus. Nations by their nature must be opposed to the openness of the internet and other media as it subverts their control.
The concept of the Liberal democracy has achieved a lot of progress and like many other ideas before it achieved its peak and now it is competing against emerging ideas.
one of the issues with liberalism is that there is no such a thing as a vacuum of power and liberalism wants to diminish the role of the state in shaping society, but something else will invariably fill in the gap doing it is finance capital that is exercising more and more control over the decisions made in liberal democracies and finance capital is not democratic nor it feels responsible for the well being of society quite the contrary, they just want to make money
Indeed. To the point that make us wondering do Liberals are that naive or they don't mind watching the system collapse.
ps. They act like religious people sometime.
The problem with intellectuals is they never suffer the causes of the words
Although I am only partially into the video, already I am stunned by the lack of reality in Pinker's presentation. The point about slavery was laughable.
John Mearsheimer shares some deep insights. Pinker is just repeating the every XYZ liberal claim
War is created by evilly ambitious and selfish leaders. War itself is not necessarily from people’s common morality
It's also created by purely rational factors.
This is all quite fascinating. Brilliantly outlined in their respective works. Nevertheless I can’t help but find, that John and Steven are in very different intellectuals spaces/ rooms. Maybe it could help if they came for a chat in the cafeteria…
Talk to me about Teddy Roosevelt's use of the exclamation "Bully", and if there is any 'versus' vis-a-vis the fuller phrase "Bully for you!" I'll stop here, for now anyway.
Mr. Pinker intervenes at minute 13 responding, "Of course, democracy!" However, democracy did not originate from the Enlightenment. For example, in the Iroquois Confederacy in North America, decisions had to be made unanimously, requiring consensus among all tribes. The tribal elders (women or men) were the ones who selected the representatives for each tribe. That's why it's said that the Iroquois women were the first suffragists.
In 1988, the United States Congress passed Resolution 331, recognizing the Iroquois influence on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Additionally, in Athens, women were not allowed to vote, so it wasn't a true democracy either.
I think John won the argument
Because you like to disregard data
@coimbralaw the data were red herrings, as John diplomatically addressed in his first response. also, what's not shared is that Pinker's data lead to overpopulation and climate crisis, which is the price of too much of a good thing, or raiding the pantry. What's out of sight is the very perilous future we face as a result of such temporary flourishing.
John wasn't even arguing though. Pinker systematically responded to each of Johns concerns. John listened like a student listening to a teacher. John's responses were more general statements about his over arching perception of Pinkers supposed view about liberals.
@@auditoryproductions1831 lollll
@@coimbralaw Here is the thing with data, who is to say data set A is of higher value than data set B?
How do you determine the value of data?
What does progress mean?
Reasonable people can disagree.
It depends on what you are oriented towards…the issue Pinker has is that he does not know where to orient his decision to get “progress.”
Our declaration says “We hold these truth to be self evident” that’s not a scientific statement. Yet, Pinker thinks science explains everything, including what “Progress” is.
Intellect can only take you so far in solving moral, social and economic problems. Possessive individualism leads ultimately to crass materialism,
without moral and spiritual guidance. Societies that deny emotional and spiritual intelligence are doomed to collapse. If hyper rationalists think technology is their sole saviour, they are in for a big shock in years to come. Human nature is complex and multidimensional and can’t be reduced to mere intellectualism.
the Russians and chinese and islamic world are FAR AHEAD in spiritual consciousness
they will save the world from collapse
What the heck is up with that outro?
Johnie you nailed it but Steve can’t get it. If today whatever Steve is talking about is so true then we will not have wars like you see today in Israel. As a liberal democracy you would think Israel would be in a better positions to grant the same rights to the Palestinians. Same today with Republicans vs Democrats… think about what went down with the Obama care or even minimum wage. Steve I like your optimism but like is not that simple. Presenter please, please next time frame the concepts to real world examples like they could have focused on US - then go broad exampling the concepts especially for the lay people like me
Pinker brought a shopping list. Mearsheimer brought philosophy.
*pinker brought evidence and stats
@@-morrow *shopping list
Pinker ignores more important statistics in favor of industry talking points@@-morrow .
Pinker hits what he’s told. Other dude from heart
@@-morrowevidence of what? Materialism. Material progress. If you're a vapid materialist, then this is evidence.
{أَفَلَمْ يَسِيرُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ فَتَكُونَ لَهُمْ قُلُوبٌ يَعْقِلُونَ بِهَا أَوْ آذَانٌ يَسْمَعُونَ بِهَا ۖ فَإِنَّهَا لَا تَعْمَى الْأَبْصَارُ وَلَٰكِن تَعْمَى الْقُلُوبُ الَّتِي فِي الصُّدُورِ} [الحج : 46]
( 46 ) So have they not traveled through the earth and have hearts by which to reason and ears by which to hear? For indeed, it is not eyes that are blinded, but blinded are the hearts which are within the breasts.
Thank you!!
That is beautiful
@@caveman1334 you're welcome. That's from surat Elhadj - the pilgrimage - of the Holly Quran.
Where there is disagreement, how do you create progress? What a dagger 🗡️. Nice one John.
That is a beautiful summation of the madness of the world 🌎 at large even outside academia.
Good one...very wise...