As an evolutionary biologist I have had yelling fights, and even trod the boundaries of physical confrontation, just for reminding others that human beings have instincts. Of course, those people clench their fists and bare their teeth at me just like any other primate, LOL! I love the irony.
@@DIABOLICAL-6I would make the case that academically trained Christians are more open to ideas and less threatened by opposing positions than most tenured academics. Further, I assert that the Medieval, Catholic university (e.g. Paris, Cambridge, Cologne, etc) was far more open to divergent ideas than are modern Western universities.
Those two points are well thought of, because they're also regulating each other from going too far. I was first thinking there should be a third point about not having too much of high ideals against our humanity. But then I realised that's already included in the first point.
What seems too often overlooked is the fact that we are a social species. By confining our vision to the individual we misread the real selective system shaping/driving behavior.
Pinker's point about music is half wrong and poorly expressed. Evolution selects for adaptive behaviors/traits, but the hereditary mechanism it acts through is genetics, and the relationship between genetics and behavior/traits is 1:N, not 1:1, so there are lots of "unintended consequences". In fact it's more messy than that, since genetic changes tend to accumulate as long as they are not majorly detrimental, and it may only be when something in the environment changes that some of the traits conferred by this basket of accumulated changes become significant and are selected for (or against). This is the theory (inevitable, but also observed in the fossil record) of "punctuated equilibrium". So generally we're talking about an M:N relationship between genetic changes and resulting changed traits (i.e. a bunch of accumulated changes, and a bunch of resulting affected traits), and what matters therefore is whether this full set of changed traits are of net benefit or not. e.g. It may be that only one of them is beneficial, and the rest merely harmless. In the case of music (which a number of animals also clearly also enjoy - not just humans) it seems that the genetic underpinnings is something related to rhythm and timing, and that the trait really being selected for was something more profound than love of music which is just one of those M:N "unintended consequences" that came along as part of the package deal. One could speculate as to what the timing/rhythm based trait(s) were that were really selected for - I'd guess something pretty deep such as timing-based sequence recognition/generation. So, is love of music part of human nature? Well, yes, but that doesn't mean that it is what drove evolution to select for it's genetic underpinnings. That's not to say that there is no evolutionary benefit to love of music, and in the modern world there probably is, but that's not what drove the changes that caused it in the first place. In summary, it's complicated, which means that any simplistic answer is wrong.
to me music (or rhytim and timing a you say) has an evolutionary advantange because it probably helped humans in the past to better coordinate their attacks to beat another group or may be it help them to reach acertain state of mind that better served a particular use, like the anger for a fight or calmness or empathy to better bond with your group.
Agreed. And it gets even more complicated when you factor in epigenetics which allows some genes to be expressed and some to be suppressed based on environment and even environment of near ancestors like parents and grandparents. The complexity boggles the mind and definitely leaves massive space for "unintended" consequences and behaviors.
Excellent! I've believed this for 50 yrs. Some are born with gifts of intelligence, strength, physical superiority, beauty, charisma far beyond the average.
And some are not. More likely these “gifts” are not all expressed in one person or group but are randomly scattered. You probably know someone who is handsome but dumb as a doorstop, ugly but strong, smart but weak.
As a biologist (and, incidentally, a musician :)), I could not agree more with this analysis. I very much like the way the synopsis is delivered as well, as the intellectual brilliance of the speaker presents with a gentleness often absent in those endowed (and, yes, there indeed are differences in endowment, not just opportunity) with a brilliant mind. Steven is a refreshing representative of the intelligentsia, and there is a very important critique of modern culture trends nested within the arguments.
What Pinker uses is optimistic-backed data. So in his books, he skips the study of the kind nature of bonobos, which is a closer relative to us than chimpanzees.
Thank you for this analysis. Great arguments are made by those who are not antagonistic or wanting control. We are at the level of near-mass hysteria, which is magnified by that control and antagonistic behavior that encourages toxic culture. We need the who, what, where, when and how questions answered to assist those who may be lacking in prefrontal cortex cognition, as this may be what our culture needs to be focused on. The greed and toxic politics are a symptom of the problem, as they are correlated but cannot be proven causal.
As a non-biologist average Joe, I appreciate this blip we're experiencing right now. I appreciate my car and being able to drive it coast to coast without checkpoints and having everything I need along the way. Spending hours looking out of a window on a jet plane. Soloing an airplane alone. Calling my sister only to find out she's in Spain, not the next town over like normal. A lifetime of store shelf's full of enticing products. Education. The Internet. Phil Spector's The Wall Of Sound. I also understand this is a blip in our history soon to go away forever.
Could be. After all, empires have fallen and dark ages followed. Or we could continue on the enlightenment trajectory for a while longer (I hope). Watching what's happening in the States lately I lean towards your perspective.
I suppose it all depends on what aspects of this 'blip in history' you care about. Since the development of writing, our understanding of the world has built on what has gone before. That has dramatically increased with the development of the scientific method. Neither of those are likely to disappear. SO education should be good, for most moderately comfortable societies. Planes and cars may not be as common once oil runs out, but that is not the only way to trade or travel. I know there are a myriad of ways things could fall over, but there are also billions of people invested in keeping them going. The USA's desent into madness (how a convicted felon and sex offender is even in the running for President, let alone reverently supported by so many is beyond me!) is not necessarily the worlds. For all this to fade away would require the whole world to go mad. Not sure that is as likely as you think.
Yep. It's an aberration. Yet for how many more years or generations or centuries it can be prolonged is an open question. We mustn't become resigned to a backslide or at some point the resignation itself will cause one.
Regarding music: It could be something related to hemispheric dominance for language (usually left hemisphere) where there is clearly a set of hard-wired abilities to analyze sound as needed to support language comprehension and production. Things like formants, object identification to separate conversations, etc that are used in the left hemisphere might well be present in the right hemisphere where the mechanism that specializes the hemispheres creates different analyses in the right hemisphere that manifests as music appreciation. For example, identifying melodic voices in counterpoint and canons might be related to identifying different speakers in left-hemisphere processing, along with differing harmonically related sounds in the right hemisphere as belonging to different instruments as they relate to different speakers in the left. Because there is some internal reward and reinforcement for learning and producing language, "the language instinct", the same circuitry in the right hemisphere could tap into reward and appreciation of activating the same processing circuits in the right hemisphere when "appreciating" music. Just a half-baked idea I wanted to throw out there . A functional MRI study of hemispheric activation for language versus music, (probably already done) might show this.
My pet theory is that music, song and dance evolved because they are a powerful means of submerging the individual into the group. Singing and dancing in a group helps us transcend ourselves and become part of a greater whole, making our group identity more salient than our individual identity. This has massive benefits in terms of inter-group competition and intra-group co-operation.
Doesn't need to be that complicated. Is the ability to recognize various wavelengths of light an adaptation? Yup. See how we are done already? Notes are variations in wavelength of sound. And harmonies and harmonics are recognition of resonance within. Same damn thing. Not to mention the social aspects inherent. The balm and soothing of a mother's voice singing lullabies. The group bonding of singing and dancing around a campfire, or carrying a rhythm on drums together. He is just DEAD wrong about the music. Even the smart ones make stupid mistakes sometimes. Marching IS a form of rhythm. Rhythm is used to "synch" groups together in mind and body through marching and organized movement. Rhythm is an ESSENTIAL core of music, and rhythm IS music with or withou notes. I'm afraid that Pinker's understanding of what music IS, must be terribly flawed.
@@MatthewCleere Sorry, but I don't understand what you are getting at. "Harmonies and harmonics are recognition of resonance within" - I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I was working under the assumption that music has no demonstrable evolutionary advantage as Pinker mentions, but needs an explanation. How about "Is the ability to recognize various wavelengths of light an adaptation? Yup. See how we are done already?" But we don't, really, recognize various wavelengths of light. What we perceive are colors, which are based on the outputs of three types of cone cells. Colors are brain-produced qualia that are not directly related to wavelengths; there are many colors that are not produced by a single wavelength of light, and scanning through all visible light wavelengths does not produce all possible colors. Colors are an adaptation that allows humans to tag visual objects with an attribute that can be helpful and thus confers an evolutionary advantage.
@@jonahansen Our eyes detect light, right? More than just light, but varying intensities and wavelengths. It doesn't matter how. It happens to be through our brain's manufacturing of color qualia. These do correspond to actual wavelengths. They are not arbitrary. It does not matter that our rods and cones are attuned to only 3 wavelengths, because the combination of those, processed through our visual cortex, much slower than sound is processed, by the way, adds up to an ability to repeatedly recognize specific wavelengths. Sure, there are visual illusions and imperfections in the process, but it is in no way random. Just as the "ear" can be trained to recognize perfect pitch, so can the eye be trained to recognize colors by name. As far as the "harmonies as resonance", I am talking about specific notes that "go together" in what we call musical keys and produce "chords" together. A very strong argument could be made that language sprang from music, and not the other way around. Considering that millions of species on this planet make music and recognize each other for mating purposes via either rhythm or tone or both, and millions of species were doing this LONG before language was "created" by man, i honesty have no idea how an evolutionary biologist could possibly see this any other way. Language was quite clearly evolved over time after the senses used within it were sufficiently adapted to such use. Music is clearly a form of language used by innumerable species. This fact alone kills Pinkers argument dead. Add the way that we use music in dance, story telling, physical training, cadence for TIMING, warning, joy, and, most of all, shared bonding experiences with fellow human beings, and frankly, this is why a smart guy like Pinker is either trolling us with this absurd statement, or stuck in some personal bias loop of idiocy with regard to the topic. Maybe he just has trouble admitting when he is wrong. Cheers.
@@MatthewCleere Dude, I don't know where you get your information or how you think logic works, but consider: Vision and light wavelengths work very differently than sound and acoustic wavelengths (equivalently frequencies). In sound, the ear essentially performs a Fourier decomposition of a sound, so a chord having three frequencies is perceived as such - each of the three frequencies are heard and can be identified and named. Vision is much different. Say we have three light sources of pure, monochromatic wavelengths that are perceived as green, yellow, and red. The green alone is perceived as green, the yellow as yellow, and the red as red. When all three are displayed, you don't "see" a "chord" where you can identify the green, yellow, and red wavelengths. You see only a yellow light. In fact, just the red and green will combine to produce yellow even though there is no pure light with a yellow wavelength present, while the yellow wavelength light alone also produces a yellow perception. So you can't tell the underlying wavelengths from the color you perceive. Very different indeed than audition. This is a result of the fact that color is an "illusion" or quale that the brain produces because it really only samples three integrated sets of wavelengths that each of the red, green, and blue cones respond to. Your ear samples ten thousand wavelengths that are kept separate well into cortical processing, and so can be identified and named. Vision does not support chords and harmonies - they map into single colors, often time colors that can't even be produced by a single monochromatic light source.
Thank God---if there really is one---for Steven Pinker. What a professor for the world writ larg!, Professor Pinker has been an inspiration and an example of what higher learning is all about. We are all richer and our darkest thoughts have been able to be weeded out and replaced by logic by a man of words and wisdom whom has made the earth a better place.
Thank Mother Nature. Now you may describe, define that as you may, but really you should not. Mother Nature is Mother Nature, it does not require any description etc, just an acceptance it is!
He's an example of what pop-academic celebrities are all about on TH-cam -appeal to the political biases of the audience with scientific-sounding gibberish, and let the fawning commence. There are thousands, tens of thousands, of academics who are publishing excellent research and advancing their fields. Pinker isn't one of them.
I have no idea what he is talking about. I'm pretty sure we had the Nature-Nurture model in place when I was in High School back in the 70s. Nature-Nurture was discussed extensively in my University courses. WTF is he talking about? Through my education the notion of Nature-Nurture was well established. Is he not keeping up or does he just like to listen to himself talk.
I like Pinker he talks eloquently and many of his points are spot on. Unfortunately I am far more pessimistic than he is about human nature and the decline of moral values. Which includes the inability to look at the past without any personal agendas.
Decline of moral values is, IF defined as having reduced or absent empathy or understanding of another organism's validity, increased incidence of cold, callous psychopathy. The latter is a word , while no longer used in DSM 5 or TR, but useful for definition of one of the three to four subtraits of ASPD, which occurs in about 1-2% of human individuals worldwide, with differential male-female diagnostic incidence. One MUST absolutely be careful to NOT impute such decline exclusively to others than oneself, as that is cognitive error. MOST of our behaviors are situational, rather than universally expressed toward all other organisms, or even other homo sapiens. THAT, too, the presumption of overgeneral trait change, is cognitive error. It might be HIGHLY instructive, even important, for you to explore cognitive errors, and biases, as it may be that you or anyone, overgeneralizes and steroeotypes , MISATRTRIBUTES , traits as existing only outside oneself, or intimates.
For anyone interested in the struggle between inborn nature and the demands of human society, I strongly recommend a short work by Sigmund Freud, _Civilization and Its Discontents._ Its intellectual calorie density is through the roof and it offers a great deal even to people hostile to his psychoanalytic vision concerning neuroses.
My only gripe about this essay is that he attributes views to the “we” in the title that I think few people actually hold. I think the number of people who hold an absolute “blank slate” view is rather small. I would have preferred he start with a quote from a prominent person who holds the view he objects to. Instead he starts with a straw man that he ascribes to all of us.
Agreed. He's says it is his most controversial book, yet this view would be held by almost every evolutionary biologist, and I'd suggest by anyone with a basic understanding of human biology and evolution. And by most parents… there are behaviours that are never taught, yet children around the world do them. Is there anyone who actually holds to the 'blank slate' hypothesis for more than a few moments?
@@AJPemberton "yet this view would be held by almost every evolutionary biologist" True, but its not the evolutionary biologists that are opposing nature, its every University Humanities department. Post Modern philosophers also oppose it, as it goes against the Post Modern ideological core. Post Modernism doesn't work if humans have a nature. I agree that it's still only a small cohort of people living in fantasy land, but the problem is, these utopian dreamers have a really LOUD voice, as in they run the Universities and DEI departments. ;)
I think it might have been better to point to the blank slate hypothesis as one end of a spectrum of possible hypotheses, the other end being the notion that human nature determines everything in us. That would have defined said spectrum and he could have followed up asking where on it we actually are?
In my opinion, we are born with a blank 'spreadsheet'. A spreadsheet begins with blank cells, waiting for input, but all of the rules, formulas and formatting already exist in the background (genetic predisposition).
More or less but yeah. Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind explained that we are born with “learning modules”. Think of them as switches in our brains that are turned on given certain stimuli. For example, we aren’t born fearful of snakes but we are prone to be afraid of them (key word: prone). So, when we have a bad experience with snakes this switch is turned on - which makes us avoid any further danger related to snakes. This predisposition, like you say, comes through adaptation. This switch is activated through patterns that were relevant for our survival - it’s embedded in our being.
Thank you Mr Pinker for providing some balance and follow on from Nature vs Nurture :) You did really well with this episode :) > 1:50 I agree. We touched upon this in the Nature vs Nurture episode. We are born with natural native characteristics that are evolutionary and them learn to temper those instincts via education and culture. “Every human being is born a barbarian, and only culture redeems them from the bestial.” ― Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom > 3:42 reconfirmed. > 5:06 Unlike many other creatures our human brain/head is too large to carry too much genetic information forward through birth. We as humans rely very heavily upon nurture to add in the extra information for the brain to finish developing after birth. Morals, ethics, culture, politics, religion etc. all come in from that social structure that we are grown into. This doesn't eliminate our fundamental traits/nature that we are born with, it just tempers them to some extent. We are still prone to Fight, fright or flight unless specifically trained to suppress it. > 5:54 We do have the personal capacity to choose how we behave in a particular circumstance. Unfortunately most are taught that they have no choice and thus never expend the energy to exercise conscious choice. "I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor." - Henry David Thoreau > 8:50 This is one of the issues/difficulties regarding personal responsibility and the idea of determinism also plays into it. At some point in our maturity we need to stop being reactive to the information imposed upon us from the external world and our genetics and become "More than the sum of our parts or experiences". A point where we become self determined and choose our own creation within the self. Unfortunately many seam to miss the memo on that and it does require education/instruction. > I agree fully with the last part. Even a rock has purpose when consider it for long enough.
@@owengreene382 As studied as I am I am not a psychologist, but to your question. > My learned opinion says 40, 60, 80 should not make much difference. But like the old dog learning new tricks, or the leopard changing spots, do we still have the drive and motivation to learn new skills or put in the effort to change our beleif systems or paradigm (The subjective lens though we we interpret the world) at that age? I am not sure what text is recommended outside of Australia but Candida Peterson "Looking Forward Through Lifespan: Developmental Psychology" is gold standard for understanding our development milestones throughout life, to get a sound starting base line of our common developmental stages of maturity. > As far as malleability and concrete thinking goes, we tend to mature (settle) into more set (concrete) beliefs through our mid 20s maturity milestone. The mind still remains malleable although a little more stubborn about change. Many (often unethical) studies about the malleability of the mind were conducted in both medical and military environments last century. If we look around you will find that it is not unusual to change our political or religious beleif systems as we age. In some examples this change can be sudden such as as religious conversion as a common example. In the above I have covered external influences that may have an impact on an individual. "become self determined and choose our own creation within the self" We can take charge of that malleability of the mind (with care) and be the director (the one that chooses) our beleif systems. A little like those small aha light bulb moments when we realize how something significant actually works, but it is not just that one experience as it also effects the way we will now view past and new experiences. Our beleif about that (our paradigm) has changed, and how we view many other things in life change with it after that moment. Paradigm shift are natural and often happen slowly and without the individual noticing the change in how we think about thing through a life time, or paradigm shift can be quite sudden and even unsettling (imaging near death experiences etc) > Are we determined by the natural laws of the universe and have no say in it, are we determined in who and what we are by others around us, or are we self determined :) > It is a complex area of thought, and being your own director takes thought and effort. Many good authors have covered part of that topic such as Robert Bolton and Stephen Covey (paradigms). Steven Pinker is extremely good at explaining human perception when considering our native subjective reality[s] > Life is about the journey, the experience, not the destination. Ultimately we may not be able to choose the end destination of our life journey or where the universe progresses to (determinism) but I believe we can choose the different pathways along the way, even at 70 :) > "Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you're alive it isn't. Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" > P.S. I am not religious. Maybe border line Deist via science and philosophy, but not really.
@@axle.studentyou, my friend, have a wonerful vocabulary, explaining the human mindset. You like me, love the scenic view to explain human behaver in this rigorous life we live. Your a breath of fresh air, my friend. Please keep in touch. Owen on the West coast of Ireland.
@@owengreene382 Thank you for your vote of confidence :) I hope you are fairing well sir. Axle (Alex) FNQLD Australia. Decedent from the Madron county of Cornwall.
@@axle.student Thank you for your generous reply's. I believe Cornwall is a most beautiful county. I have sister living in London, 40 years. She said "it's changed, not for the better, since Brexit arrived at their doorstep. And wishes she had made the move home to Donegal 20 years ago. But, Its to late now."
I think it’s the best critique is less that human nature is nonexistent, and more that it’s inaccessible. How would you go about separating real human nature - permanent conditions of human existence - from the temporary contingencies of a certain historical age? If human nature is meant to describe some sort of human attribute that we can say existed amongst all humans in the past and will continue to exist throughout all humans in the future, then I think it’s reasonable to say there’s too much background noise to describe anything but the most basic stuff like acquiring culture or feeling fear or playfulness as human nature. We’d need to keep adding caveats like “most societies experience this” and “generally humans are like this”, and the more caveats we add the less useful those generalizations are. Prioritizing an abstract model of human nature over the messiness of the real world seems like just as flawed of an approach as assuming we’re each a blank slate.
Human nature can reasonably be thought of as largely being our core emotions, the degree to which they're experienced (frequency and severity), and associated motivations; direct and indirect. Other aspects of human nature would include cognitive and physiological capacities, etc. But the factors listed can explain responses to "temporary contingencies".
Human beings have instincts and a range of cognitive and physiological abilities that are generally shared across the human race. No need for too much Foucaultian/constructivist argumentation here.
"[T]here’s too much background noise" Background noise, or "the messiness of the real world" as you also put it, is what research psychologists like Pinker are around to deal with. (Also, up to a point, evolutionary biologists and cultural anthropologists.) There's a lot of it, to be sure, but it can be chipped away at.
Haidt has long been quite active in controlled experiment as well as observational research. Make SURE, you DO read his peer-reviewed work, BEFRE being excited about what i here presume desire for debate.
Best video I’ve seen on TH-cam in a long time. The problem with human nature, and I agree with Pinker we definitely have one, is that it contradicts Enlightenment principles. Or we are, as Pinker says, not clear about what those principles are. This is the essence of the political and cultural turbulence we are now experiencing. Human nature is competitive and aggressive and doesn’t do well with being told to be equitable and tolerant. This is not the best news, but I’m sure we’ll figure out what we’re willing to put up with.
One again, please AVOID applying "we" to strangers. although if you are using the royal we, referring solely to yourself, I apologize, though NOT abjectly.
You went beyond pleasure principle here, didn't you? Quite fundamental and concise. Sigmund Freud and Joseph Campbell in conversation. Thanks and Follow your bliss!
Music shares around 75% of Charles Hockett's design features of language, features like duality of patterning, etc., which is a higher percentage than for any animal system of communication that I can think of. I think this strongly suggests that music is a byproduct of language or that the two systems share a common ancestor. Deserves a closer look.
People tend to conflate good/bad with right/wrong. Bigotry is not wrong, it is bad. Statistical differences between groups exist, that is right. Discrimination of individuals on the basis of groups they belong to is bad conduct. The first assertion is about a state of the world that can conform or not to observation and about which we can say that it is either right or wrong. The second is about the expected outcome in the future of a certain way of conduct about which we can have an opinion of wether it will be beneficial or not, i.e. good or bad. This confusion is common among most people for whom the Good is what is important. The True/False, right/wrong is subservient to the Good for most of them and they can easily deceive themselves about what's true/right in order to keep coherence in their model of the Good. Scholars tend to be truth seekers and have hard time understanding why people argue about facts.
good is EXTREMELY relative to the individual organsim expressing the concept. Say, rather, Self-serving," to more accurately define the concept that you capitalize as "good"
@@briseboy Self-serving is too narrow. I prefer the term beneficial that I used. It keeps room for both self-centred and altruistic / idealist conceptions of the Good.
I agree with most of this. However, we are most certainly programmable. It's important that we as society and its policy makers are very intentional about the values (programming) we institutional choose and in business, allow.
Why do some people deny their lineage? This belief can be damaging to the environment by artificially separating us from our place and responsibilities.
If our current lives were only a fraction of our existance, would that really devalue them? If there was only one book, movie or song, would that make them more valuable? Perhaps. But I cannot help but notice that people who value those things tend to create them abundantly and/or consume them frequently. I think you could just as likely turn it around and say the abundant things are the most valuable. Air is pretty valuable for instance. We value life because of the experiences it affords us. The more experiences the greater the life most of us seems to think, so why would those experiences be less worth if they continued beyond our short lifespans?
Agreed. People's preconceived ideas about whether or not there is a God, an underlying consciousness behind creation are a sort of paradigm at the base of our perspectives. This is the first I've seen of this man, and he's pretty clearly an atheist and speaking from that POV; his failure to understand how faith can enrich the value of temporal existence for the faithful comes from his atheism. This in itself is neither good nor bad until he makes a blanket statement that belief in any sort of existence beyond physical death devalues life. To people of faith it's quite the opposite! I thought most of this was spot-on. An important thing that this little segment doesn't address is that the friction between religion and science is totally unnecessary. Each side seems to forget that God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved. The problems come when scientific claims are used to try to prove the non-existence of a Universal Consciousness and religious claims are made as attemps to deny scientific fact.
@@Nothingcanbeaprettycoolh-ct7ws I have seldom recieved a more intelligent and thoughtful reply to a comment on TH-cam. Thank you for that. I also agree with you and I have been thinking about these topics (belief, knowledge, science, spirituality and faith) for over three decades now. Even though Pinker is one of the foremost scientists and thinkers in the world, he - like many others like him - seems unable (or maybe unwilling) to consider metaphysical possibilities. I have great respect for the scientific method and its ideals, but far to often the scientists themselves fall short of those ideals. Take the topic of ufos/uaps. They are completely irrational, ignorant and narrowminded. They refuse to even consider the possibility of the presence of an intelligence not from our civilization. There is no curiosity whatsoever. They don't know what it is and therefore, according to themselves, have no desire to investigate. They demand the end result (proof) before they are prepared to engage in the very process (scientific inquiry) which is the very thing that could potentially provide those proofs. It boggles the mind. Of course, this attitude is rapidly changing now, but it's a disgrace that it's taken this long. Well, this is a pet peeve of mine. 😄 Anyway, as a spiritual and intellectual person it pains me that the discussion of these topics so often are held at such an infantile and stupid level, so thanks again for your sharing your interesting thoughts.
@@rasmuslernevall6938 Thank you for the compliment. So I'm probably older than you since I've been thinking about these things since my early teens half a century ago. I majored in religious history at a state university where it was straight history without agenda or dogma. And hey - gotta use that major somewhere! :) Pinker quotes Spinoza in this. A favorite quote of mine is: "I believe in the God of Spinoza." ~Albert Einstein I too reject a personal God. Maybe the most influential person on my thinking has been the mythologist, Joseph Campbell. If you're not familiar, his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces is an important read, especially the beginning where he outlines his "monomyth" model. He also did a fascinating series of interviews with Bill Moyers called "Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth." It's on YT and I think might still be on Netflix. Campbell also rejected a personal deity. When he was called an atheist because of this he smiled and said, "I don't see how anyone can call me that because I believe in so many Gods!" Interesting that you bring up UFOs as it's also been an interest of mine since my late teens. I agree with you on it too. There are literally thousands of credible eyewitness accounts from all over the world, many of which come from pilots and police - people who are trained in the skills of accurate observation. A lot of these accounts are also corroborated by civilian and/or military radar. You'd think finding an explanation for these phenomena might be a good place to start. Or maybe they'd start with the work of nuclear physicist, Stanton Friedman, or the work of once head of the astronomy department at Ohio State, J Allen Hynek, but no. Where does the scientific community start? SETI! 😆
@@Nothingcanbeaprettycoolh-ct7ws Presuming preconception is a cognitive error. Dissociated nonphysical bosses, lords, or other entities acting in antisocial HUMAN ways, that is, rewarding or exacting retribution from humans, is astonishing schizophrenic delusion. My own early subadult life was SEVERELY distorted and made incoherent by extremist parental religious delusions, along with one's brutal and brutish GABAergic inducing alcohol. BOTH are severely abusive, and BOTH should be COMPLETELY removed from human social interaction. My own life was devastated by the two, very much TWIN delusions - GABA is a synaptic neural signaling suppressant, useful as naturally produced within neurons. Additional GABA narrows perceptions due to overexpression of signal suppression. Think "narrow-minded" and you will have exactly described the reduction fo cognitive capacity into only limited neural channeling of signaling. THERE you have religion, dogma, and the depressant effect of that and alcohol.
"I don't think there's anything particularly uplifting about belief in an after-life because it devalues life on earth". Pretty well describes Nietzsche's fundamental critique of Christianity. One of the greatest mistakes people can make in their one and only life is to overlook the meaning of existing now.
There is no meaning to existing now. It’s all empty and meaningless. Which, once you get that, gives you the blank slate to create whatever meaning in your life that you desire.
Seeing the faults in religion and stepping away doesn’t necessitate stepping away from a Great Creator. I think many atheists don’t want there to be a Great Creator/Force for ego reasons just as many choose religion because they want to know all the answers (religion boiling down to “because it says right there.” To me, Great Creator is Love & Mystery and I see people on both sides (religious and atheist) aren’t content without pretending to have certainty, to know it all.
My father reflected with me on religion and spirituality. He stated that there were, at that time, about 7 billion folks on this old rock, and absolutely no two of them have the same views about God, or creation. Atheists don't know how it all started, so they make up bizzar stories of explosions and such. God fearing people don't know, so they say God made it. I guess I'll just let the mystery be. If one believes in God, I hope you are right. If one does not, I hope your are right. I've got my belief and it's private.
Anything seen in all societies and cultures is part of our nature. Music is one of those things. We don't all do it the same way, but we don't all speak the same language or make and use the same tools.
Burying the dead with some form of ritual is seen in all societies nowadays, but we seem to have become anatomically modern long before we started ritual disposal of the dead. If burying the dead isn’t part of human nature despite being present in every society we have records about, I don’t think we can say that something which appears to be present throughout all societies is part of human nature. Human nature, if it’s even accessible to us in the first place, would seem to be more elusive than that.
@ecta9604 you know that inhumation, burial, is not the only way that humans, or even white Americans, dispose of their dead. When you say anatomically human, do you mean more than Homo sapiens? I assume that Neanderthals and thei cousins were fully Homo sapiens. What groups do we have evidence that they disposed of their own dead, and not outsiders, members of othet groups, like trash?
"Trading Places" is still one of my favorite movies. It doesn't settle the problem, but the people making the bet are the real test of human nature (and sadism and racism actually!)
I like how Steven Pinker thinks. I think the "philosophy" he explains in the last moments of his video is also what the TH-cam channel Kurzgesagt explains in its "Optimistic Nihilism" video. I think Prof Pinker is also describing what Richard Dawkins calls Cultural Christianity, in my opinion. That is, do good works where good might be defined by, for example, how Christianity defines good.
We're taught to deny it. And our economic system benefits hugely from all the human malfunction. But where we need to go is in the understanding of human nature, and move from there in a reasonably healthy direction of holism. For instance, we can be spiritual without being religious.
The point about equality (among people), is the reason I use the word "equity" instead. I think this is no small matter, and the common use of the word "equality" reinforces a falsehood.
I believe that we are not born completely blank. Studying human behavior, I’ve seen innate goodness in some and hateful tendencies in others. If you have siblings, I’m sure you’ve seen this in your own family. Same parents. I truly believe that some people are born with negative traits. Now, can there be other influences? Yes. Drugs and alcohol during pregnancy, early childhood trauma , etc. I’m not an academic or a scientist so I will continue to study and research this debate. Pinker presents a very interesting and fascinating discussion that should make everyone curious so we can have a thoughtful discussion. Read: Plato and Aristotle.
Evolution equipped us for all the environments our ancestors thrived in and all the challenges they overcame. Human nature is a mixed bag of tools we might need. We aren't a blank slate, but experience determines what tools we take out of the bag and put on the workbench. Life causes detection of which environment we're in and which traits we will need to activate.
Answering the title cold: Because history shows us that there is very little as malleable as human nature. "there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do. Vorbis loved knowing that. A man who knew that, knew everything he needed to know about people.” Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
It sounds like the unspoken assumption of these objections is that "human nature" is identical to material processes and entirely explainable by material processes.
Pitbulls, as a subspecies, do have certain traits, and it generally serves I've well to "generalize" about them, as generalizing is about probabilities and pattern recognition. As with pitbulls, so too with the subspecies of humans, of which the differences between the nervous systems is even much more defined by differences than with dogs.
Was this recorded with two mics spaced quite a distance apart? The audio has a really awkward stereo field. I always enjoy your work Mr Pinker. Maybe chat to an audio engineer though. Cheers.
Not a fan of everything Pinker, but totally agree with him here. What possible adaptative advantage does piano virtuosity have? And what would it have had during our long evolutionary history?
And how long until people will freely enter their neighbours' home to, e.g, destroy their piano, because "We don't have one in our house, so it's wrong for you to have one"? Clearly that's the direction which the balance of emerging forces is taking us. We are mistaken if we think _It can't happen here._
@@dixonpinfold2582Both of these assumptions are extremely overwrought and have little to do with this post. And “many people’s “ is laughable. Which people? How many people? Come on, Donald.
@@paulcolson3220 Why are you complaining to me about what someone else wrote? Pay attention to what you're doing. And don't call his opinion an "assumption."
That is where his science collides with his dollars. He would happily admit that this aspect of his psyche is a product of his environment. What he won't tell you is that his brand of atheism (not atheism in general) will definitely pass away when his generation does. In some ways the naiveté reflected in his words will be missed.
When I finally realized there are no gods, it was a bit strange not having to talk to my imaginary friend anymore. But I got better very soon. I see it as growing up. cheers Mr Pink
@@robertwarner-ev7wp OK logical writer's error. Insert "most probably" before "are no gods". Of course, in the end, nothing can be proven, we only know that we exist (think). So far I have not seen evidence for the existence of gods. It is not a claim. What is your position?
good to hear, many thanks.I grew up in the Netherlands, and the concept of a blank slate never occurred to us. Psychlogists wanted to believe that intellegence us somwthing we learn...
Both are true. Plus intelligence is situational. See how long you would last in a Peruvian rain forest if you suddenly found yourself there. You probably wouldn't last a day and yet, three small indigenous children who did find themselves in the rain forest survived for weeks until rescued by, you guessed it, other indigenous people. In that situation you would be incredibly stupid and they would be incredibly smart.
The blank slate is historically rooted in the doctrine that was opposed to innatism. The book Essays Concerning Human Understanding written by John Locke around 1690 or so. Locke's main thrust was his criticism of the philosophy of innatism - that is humans are born with knowledge at birth. Obviously innatism was false - name me one 2 week old baby would could do algebra. The scope of Locke though was limited - he did not discuss emotional systems such as the fight/flight system - which almost certainly is innate. Locke's main points were about ideas & understanding. And in the scope that Locke talked about - that "ideas", "beliefs", etc are not innate - he is almost certainly correct. Some simply introspection in my own life history I can prove him correct. Every step of the way I had to "learn" everything I know today at some point - and before that learning - I simply did not know... Hence the ideas that I learned were not innate at least to me. Maybe there are people out there who from birth on day 1 possess expert knowledge of mathematics, language, being a car mechanic, etc - but I have serious doubts about the doctrine of innatism. There are some things that psychologists know that are not innate - such as the well studied concept of object permanence. Object permanence is learned through what Locke would refer to as sensation and perception. Complicated topic. Personally I find Locke's writings fascinating. But it is important to realize that the scope is defined in the title - "understanding". Locke also correctly pointed out that belief in god was not innate - since his time was the time of the early colonial era, and he correctly observed that cultures across the world had wildly different ranges in beliefs, and that ideas clearly were not inscribed on the mind at birth - because that would tend to produce a global homogenous culture, in which people across the world were all born with ideas inscribed on the mind at birth - which is clearly false. Beliefs of course are learned. Of course where the blank slate concept gets really interesting is how it interacts with the truth of how reality actually works. Knowledge of steam engines, chemistry, airplanes, etc was also not innate. John Locke and Francis Bacon are two of my favorite philosophers for a reason. There ideas mesh well with how reality actually works.
Intelligence is definitely situational. To use a different example with myself as an example in a real world setting. I wouldn't last a day working in an automobile factory, because I know nothing about automobile manufacturing. Every institution, factory, farmer, church, social group, you name it, produces its own knowledge that its group members use to continue the function of that factory, church, social group, farmer, institution, etc. Knowledge and understanding is the bed rock of any organization, whether that knowledge and understanding is actually beneficial or not is another issue entirely though. There is one person who became famous for hacking the knowledge necessary to get into positions - he is called the great imposter. He had an uncanny ability to see the unused power in any organization and weasel his way into organizations with his amazing insight. He operated at a level far superior to the average person though and had a different view of power than most anyone I have ever read. His name was Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr if you want to look into it. Fascinating character if your interested in the subtle aspects of power in every day life.
I am startong to despise arguments over existence and non-existence. People who have problems to solve in life will not find time to think over these things and people who do not havr problems to.solve will probably have already created new ones for themselves.
Evolutionary selection is OFTEN involved with selection of proxy traits, rather than concisely genetic protein expression variation. See Pleiotropy, polygenetic traits, epigenetic and transcriptional alteration. While I happen to disagree with any preservation of epiphenomenal traits over ANY significant time period - selection occurs on EVERY possible variation that occurs - retention of signal perception is a good question. The brain uses not only specific synaptic learned neural connective networks retained, enhanced, prioritized for utility, electrical signaling along neural (ads well as some nonneural glial signaling) cells. That form the different "waves: noted in neurological science, which also correlate with comprehensional variations. This is too extensive to cover in comment, but Associations not always directly linked through memory or associational activity (cerebra cortex alone, has two general ranges of associational processing, as well as the signaling to and from brainstem and body vitally important to immediate survival, which inform our cognitive salience, creating emotions. that mass of multisyllabic words should describe to you just HOW music may exercise signaling, juxtacrine, endocrine, exocrine, and thus emotional, signaling, including self-signaling. I am enamoured of music, in ALL its world and temporal forms from as long ago as notation or imitation has preserved it. I realized recently how MANY musical courses I took , as many as majors in other disciplines have in their cv's. Strange variations in what we call consonance occur across the human world, and having sent some years closely studying the Wolf, I recognize different communicative aesthetics and meanings. Cetaceans have increasingly been found to have and use signature calls, and many bird species communicate states, traits, and territories, as well as even health, age, and other individual variations. The world is music, signaling meanings BEYOND what Pinker and others with limited backgrounds, may perceive. I cannot touch teh subject of even one species substantially, even should i attempt it, in comment.
I, for the most part, enjoy listening to Steven. Today, I'm disappointed a bit by his simple thought on an afterlife. That, to me, is a very complex subject. Christianity teaches, that if one is good on Earth, they will enjoy a good afterlife, and suicide is a mortal sin. Einstein's theories on physics could be used to support an afterlife, with the unlimits of time and space, who knows? perhaps my molecules could rejoin down the road a few billion yrs. from now.
Culture is our collective adaptation to rein in the extremes of human nature. From an evolutionary perspective it can be argued that storytelling, mythology and religion evolved to pass knowledge about human nature down generations.
I, too, am at the very least, skeptical of the notion of a soul, but the belief is VERY old, and is one of the ways that people have found to keep themselves accountable, even when they did not agree with whatever tyrant dominated them at the moment. Plus, you have to factor in that not all humans are intellectual, considering ideas such as the perfectibility of nature very often. They are too busy finding food or defending against invaders to philosophize much. Thus, belief in a soul is at worst, harmless, and at best, socially useful. And the basis for some of our most cherished traditions, such as the Commandments.
@@virtualalias That's true. I think the OP is making value judgements, such as, "more intelligence is an improvement." Of course, human intelligence has enhanced our survival, but superior human intelligence isn't as important to evolutionary forces as physical beauty. Our sex symbols are objects of desire because of their superior beauty, not their superior intellects. So, he's not wrong in that sense. It all depends on what you consider an improvement. Evolution favors survival and propagation, a point hilariously made by the movie "Idiocracy."
As a classic liberal I accept the most basic problem with liberalism, that once people are free then they will make different choices, and as soon as they make different choices there will be different outcomes. And as soon as there are different outcomes there will be inequality. It is inevitable, and one must accept certain limits and do their best to mitigate the inevitable inequality a free society will bring. The corollary to this is people who want equality, and their refusal to admit that equality demands a lack of choice, because a lack of choice is the only way you can stop different outcomes. But what if you could not stop people from making different choices? What if their very natures compelled them to make different decisions? If that is the case then equality is impossible. And it is that fact that compels them to deny that human nature exists or that men and women are different, because if it is true their belief in an equal society is an impossibility. And that would destroy their faith in the society that they pretend can be real.
There's a difference between cause and effect and right and wrong or the academics of something and the evaluation of it with the resulting moralities. For instance, the academics state: "This is a dog and that is a cat." The evaluation might be, "I like dogs and don't like cats;" with the resulting morality being, "There shall be no cats in the house!" Aren't values (at their core) determined by how we feel? The social problem we have is that values change person to person.
The moral point that we are not a blank slate that can be programmed (by religion or government) is made in the masterpiece Anthony Burgess book by and the masterpiece Stanley Kubrick film "A Clockwork Orange."
Human, the greatest formation to ever occur :). Also, prejudice is rational when predujice is aimed at you, the impulse evolved to create barriers between enemies, I'm beginning to learn this important lesson. Hate is justified 100% in certain senerios.
Iain McGilchrist provides an interesting hypothesis that language evolved from music, and that music more closely resembles the unfiltered patterns of reality.
I agree, to me, it is what a certain percentage of us would do, when presented with a certain situation. Like, if a earthquake hits LA, how do most of the people react. Or, if a shooter enters a crowd, what do most of the people in the crowd do. Make up a situation and think how people would react. that is what human nature is to me, I suppose there's other things to it also. If something nice happens, most people smile. Human Nature.
Habits and patterns have shaped us, and we are the first animal to escape nature to the extent that we are privileged enough to choose our habits and patterns for ourselves. We need to learn collectively that we have taken the reins of our own evolution. We have been subconsciously designing ourselves for aeons and we are on the cusp of making it a conscious decision. Our politics/nations are fundamentally a lack of consensus.
Although i dropped out of virology class, there are a GREAT number of inert possessors of DNA and RNA, who constantly take issue with your cognitive error. Expect MORE, with some likely to be highly successful in their disagreement with arrogant humans.
Our ecological awareness is nil & I think that’s the issue, We don’t even understand evolutionary adaptations, etc. & this cannot see it in ourselves. We need a class on human ecology. 🌲
The Blank Slate : The Modern Denial of Human Nature is one of the greatest books I have ever read. Most of the criticisms I read suggest that many such critics have not actually read the book.
Males are not more aggressive than females, Steven. We have unsavoury individuals capable of the very worst of things and they are male and female in the same proportion. If you were correct, jealousy, anger, fear would be seen less in females than males. My sister recently tried to strangle her youngest child (an adult) on the floor leaving my niece covered in bruises. British police said they don't get involved in cases like this, what they mean is they have a narrative that gets them 'results' in court, that domestic violence is male on female. They will do everything to preserve that narrative. About 7 years ago I protected my 15 year old niece from assault by my sister and got charged and found guilty for stopping my sister, my niece wouldn't testify but my other niece sided with her mother. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. My sister has over 30 convictions for burglary, shoplifting and car stereo theft. But has never seen the inside of a prison cell ... because she's female. Smoked hard drugs while pregnant. I knew she was evil: lying and assaults when we were children. I didn't know she was beating my niece up throughout her childhood. I know the British police are looking for a big case in regards to my sister, where she finally does something, I think she's already done it, she worked in a carehome, the woman who bragged about burglarling an old man.
![PASULOL รามเกียรติ์ ตอนที่ 4 นนทกพบรัก [Ramakien Ep.4: Nonthok in love]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tMUQgmZzf_A/mqdefault.jpg)
As an evolutionary biologist I have had yelling fights, and even trod the boundaries of physical confrontation, just for reminding others that human beings have instincts.
Of course, those people clench their fists and bare their teeth at me just like any other primate, LOL!
I love the irony.
Fellow academics ? 🤣
Its funny untill you remember that these people vote. Secular version of religious people.
Maybe it's you bud. Everyone knows that people have instincts
@@DIABOLICAL-6I would make the case that academically trained Christians are more open to ideas and less threatened by opposing positions than most tenured academics. Further, I assert that the Medieval, Catholic university (e.g. Paris, Cambridge, Cologne, etc) was far more open to divergent ideas than are modern Western universities.
Yessaaahhh!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉
...all the while face glowing red yelling how wrong you are! Lol!😂😂😂
100% agree, we deny our ugliness and make it worse by not accepting it. You can't work on your faults, if you don't want to know them.
It's so calming and intellectually stimulating to hear Prof. Pinker!!
We need to separate two things here. 1. Denying human nature 2. Using human nature as an EXCUSE for poor performance.
Those two points are well thought of, because they're also regulating each other from going too far.
I was first thinking there should be a third point about not having too much of high ideals against our humanity. But then I realised that's already included in the first point.
What seems too often overlooked is the fact that we are a social species. By confining our vision to the individual we misread the real selective system shaping/driving behavior.
That’s very true-the narrative today is that we’re only a sea of individuals, but that’s not how we have evolved.
Pinker does not understand or represent human nature. His work is only a grandiose projection of his own values and experience.
@@azalia423 Accent on the word, "grandiose".
@@azalia423 whose work is NOT a projection of their own values and experience?
are you self-reporting as unemployable?
@@azalia423But isn't everyone's to an extent
Pinker's point about music is half wrong and poorly expressed.
Evolution selects for adaptive behaviors/traits, but the hereditary mechanism it acts through is genetics, and the relationship between genetics and behavior/traits is 1:N, not 1:1, so there are lots of "unintended consequences".
In fact it's more messy than that, since genetic changes tend to accumulate as long as they are not majorly detrimental, and it may only be when something in the environment changes that some of the traits conferred by this basket of accumulated changes become significant and are selected for (or against). This is the theory (inevitable, but also observed in the fossil record) of "punctuated equilibrium".
So generally we're talking about an M:N relationship between genetic changes and resulting changed traits (i.e. a bunch of accumulated changes, and a bunch of resulting affected traits), and what matters therefore is whether this full set of changed traits are of net benefit or not. e.g. It may be that only one of them is beneficial, and the rest merely harmless.
In the case of music (which a number of animals also clearly also enjoy - not just humans) it seems that the genetic underpinnings is something related to rhythm and timing, and that the trait really being selected for was something more profound than love of music which is just one of those M:N "unintended consequences" that came along as part of the package deal. One could speculate as to what the timing/rhythm based trait(s) were that were really selected for - I'd guess something pretty deep such as timing-based sequence recognition/generation.
So, is love of music part of human nature? Well, yes, but that doesn't mean that it is what drove evolution to select for it's genetic underpinnings. That's not to say that there is no evolutionary benefit to love of music, and in the modern world there probably is, but that's not what drove the changes that caused it in the first place.
In summary, it's complicated, which means that any simplistic answer is wrong.
to me music (or rhytim and timing a you say) has an evolutionary advantange because it probably helped humans in the past to better coordinate their attacks to beat another group or may be it help them to reach acertain state of mind that better served a particular use, like the anger for a fight or calmness or empathy to better bond with your group.
nit picking, an essential activity for primates exposed to nits.
Very interesting
An interesting hypothesis.
Agreed. And it gets even more complicated when you factor in epigenetics which allows some genes to be expressed and some to be suppressed based on environment and even environment of near ancestors like parents and grandparents. The complexity boggles the mind and definitely leaves massive space for "unintended" consequences and behaviors.
He has a wonderful way of getting you to consider his ideas, whether you think they are "controversial" or not. 💛💙💛💙💛💙
Excellent! I've believed this for 50 yrs. Some are born with gifts of intelligence, strength, physical superiority, beauty, charisma far beyond the average.
Everything is a combination of nature and nurture.
@@bobs182 Including epigenetics - the influences of our environments and our choices on genetic expression.
Karma ❤🎉
And some are not. More likely these “gifts” are not all expressed in one person or group but are randomly scattered. You probably know someone who is handsome but dumb as a doorstop, ugly but strong, smart but weak.
@@glyphics1943No they're white traits i am gonna add hidden racism there.
Steve nailed it here. He structured thoughts I’ve had in the topic for some time (or increasingly developed over time), so well.
As a biologist (and, incidentally, a musician :)), I could not agree more with this analysis. I very much like the way the synopsis is delivered as well, as the intellectual brilliance of the speaker presents with a gentleness often absent in those endowed (and, yes, there indeed are differences in endowment, not just opportunity) with a brilliant mind. Steven is a refreshing representative of the intelligentsia, and there is a very important critique of modern culture trends nested within the arguments.
What Pinker uses is optimistic-backed data. So in his books, he skips the study of the kind nature of bonobos, which is a closer relative to us than chimpanzees.
Thank you for this analysis.
Great arguments are made by those who are not antagonistic or wanting control. We are at the level of near-mass hysteria, which is magnified by that control and antagonistic behavior that encourages toxic culture.
We need the who, what, where, when and how questions answered to assist those who may be lacking in prefrontal cortex cognition, as this may be what our culture needs to be focused on.
The greed and toxic politics are a symptom of the problem, as they are correlated but cannot be proven causal.
As a non-biologist average Joe, I appreciate this blip we're experiencing right now. I appreciate my car and being able to drive it coast to coast without checkpoints and having everything I need along the way. Spending hours looking out of a window on a jet plane. Soloing an airplane alone. Calling my sister only to find out she's in Spain, not the next town over like normal. A lifetime of store shelf's full of enticing products. Education. The Internet. Phil Spector's The Wall Of Sound. I also understand this is a blip in our history soon to go away forever.
Could be. After all, empires have fallen and dark ages followed. Or we could continue on the enlightenment trajectory for a while longer (I hope). Watching what's happening in the States lately I lean towards your perspective.
I suppose it all depends on what aspects of this 'blip in history' you care about. Since the development of writing, our understanding of the world has built on what has gone before. That has dramatically increased with the development of the scientific method. Neither of those are likely to disappear. SO education should be good, for most moderately comfortable societies. Planes and cars may not be as common once oil runs out, but that is not the only way to trade or travel.
I know there are a myriad of ways things could fall over, but there are also billions of people invested in keeping them going. The USA's desent into madness (how a convicted felon and sex offender is even in the running for President, let alone reverently supported by so many is beyond me!) is not necessarily the worlds. For all this to fade away would require the whole world to go mad. Not sure that is as likely as you think.
Yep. It's an aberration. Yet for how many more years or generations or centuries it can be prolonged is an open question. We mustn't become resigned to a backslide or at some point the resignation itself will cause one.
Shelves. You're welcome.
Glad to see SP revisit what I think is his best work that I've read.
he should write a follow up book. he said himself that denial of human nature is even worse now than it was when he wrote it
Regarding music: It could be something related to hemispheric dominance for language (usually left hemisphere) where there is clearly a set of hard-wired abilities to analyze sound as needed to support language comprehension and production. Things like formants, object identification to separate conversations, etc that are used in the left hemisphere might well be present in the right hemisphere where the mechanism that specializes the hemispheres creates different analyses in the right hemisphere that manifests as music appreciation. For example, identifying melodic voices in counterpoint and canons might be related to identifying different speakers in left-hemisphere processing, along with differing harmonically related sounds in the right hemisphere as belonging to different instruments as they relate to different speakers in the left.
Because there is some internal reward and reinforcement for learning and producing language, "the language instinct", the same circuitry in the right hemisphere could tap into reward and appreciation of activating the same processing circuits in the right hemisphere when "appreciating" music.
Just a half-baked idea I wanted to throw out there . A functional MRI study of hemispheric activation for language versus music, (probably already done) might show this.
My pet theory is that music, song and dance evolved because they are a powerful means of submerging the individual into the group. Singing and dancing in a group helps us transcend ourselves and become part of a greater whole, making our group identity more salient than our individual identity. This has massive benefits in terms of inter-group competition and intra-group co-operation.
Doesn't need to be that complicated. Is the ability to recognize various wavelengths of light an adaptation? Yup. See how we are done already? Notes are variations in wavelength of sound. And harmonies and harmonics are recognition of resonance within. Same damn thing. Not to mention the social aspects inherent. The balm and soothing of a mother's voice singing lullabies. The group bonding of singing and dancing around a campfire, or carrying a rhythm on drums together. He is just DEAD wrong about the music. Even the smart ones make stupid mistakes sometimes. Marching IS a form of rhythm. Rhythm is used to "synch" groups together in mind and body through marching and organized movement. Rhythm is an ESSENTIAL core of music, and rhythm IS music with or withou notes. I'm afraid that Pinker's understanding of what music IS, must be terribly flawed.
@@MatthewCleere Sorry, but I don't understand what you are getting at. "Harmonies and harmonics are recognition of resonance within" - I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I was working under the assumption that music has no demonstrable evolutionary advantage as Pinker mentions, but needs an explanation.
How about "Is the ability to recognize various wavelengths of light an adaptation? Yup. See how we are done already?" But we don't, really, recognize various wavelengths of light. What we perceive are colors, which are based on the outputs of three types of cone cells. Colors are brain-produced qualia that are not directly related to wavelengths; there are many colors that are not produced by a single wavelength of light, and scanning through all visible light wavelengths does not produce all possible colors. Colors are an adaptation that allows humans to tag visual objects with an attribute that can be helpful and thus confers an evolutionary advantage.
@@jonahansen Our eyes detect light, right? More than just light, but varying intensities and wavelengths. It doesn't matter how. It happens to be through our brain's manufacturing of color qualia. These do correspond to actual wavelengths. They are not arbitrary. It does not matter that our rods and cones are attuned to only 3 wavelengths, because the combination of those, processed through our visual cortex, much slower than sound is processed, by the way, adds up to an ability to repeatedly recognize specific wavelengths. Sure, there are visual illusions and imperfections in the process, but it is in no way random. Just as the "ear" can be trained to recognize perfect pitch, so can the eye be trained to recognize colors by name. As far as the "harmonies as resonance", I am talking about specific notes that "go together" in what we call musical keys and produce "chords" together. A very strong argument could be made that language sprang from music, and not the other way around. Considering that millions of species on this planet make music and recognize each other for mating purposes via either rhythm or tone or both, and millions of species were doing this LONG before language was "created" by man, i honesty have no idea how an evolutionary biologist could possibly see this any other way. Language was quite clearly evolved over time after the senses used within it were sufficiently adapted to such use. Music is clearly a form of language used by innumerable species. This fact alone kills Pinkers argument dead. Add the way that we use music in dance, story telling, physical training, cadence for TIMING, warning, joy, and, most of all, shared bonding experiences with fellow human beings, and frankly, this is why a smart guy like Pinker is either trolling us with this absurd statement, or stuck in some personal bias loop of idiocy with regard to the topic. Maybe he just has trouble admitting when he is wrong. Cheers.
@@MatthewCleere Dude, I don't know where you get your information or how you think logic works, but consider:
Vision and light wavelengths work very differently than sound and acoustic wavelengths (equivalently frequencies). In sound, the ear essentially performs a Fourier decomposition of a sound, so a chord having three frequencies is perceived as such - each of the three frequencies are heard and can be identified and named. Vision is much different. Say we have three light sources of pure, monochromatic wavelengths that are perceived as green, yellow, and red. The green alone is perceived as green, the yellow as yellow, and the red as red. When all three are displayed, you don't "see" a "chord" where you can identify the green, yellow, and red wavelengths. You see only a yellow light. In fact, just the red and green will combine to produce yellow even though there is no pure light with a yellow wavelength present, while the yellow wavelength light alone also produces a yellow perception. So you can't tell the underlying wavelengths from the color you perceive. Very different indeed than audition. This is a result of the fact that color is an "illusion" or quale that the brain produces because it really only samples three integrated sets of wavelengths that each of the red, green, and blue cones respond to. Your ear samples ten thousand wavelengths that are kept separate well into cortical processing, and so can be identified and named. Vision does not support chords and harmonies - they map into single colors, often time colors that can't even be produced by a single monochromatic light source.
Thank You so much Dr. Pinker! Brilliant!
Thank you Mr. Pinker. Your books have saved my life.
Thank God---if there really is one---for Steven Pinker. What a professor for the world writ larg!, Professor Pinker has been an inspiration and an example of what higher learning is all about. We are all richer and our darkest thoughts have been able to be weeded out and replaced by logic by a man of words and wisdom whom has made the earth a better place.
Thank Mother Nature.
Now you may describe, define that as you may, but really you should not.
Mother Nature is Mother Nature, it does not require any description etc, just an acceptance it is!
He's an example of what pop-academic celebrities are all about on TH-cam -appeal to the political biases of the audience with scientific-sounding gibberish, and let the fawning commence. There are thousands, tens of thousands, of academics who are publishing excellent research and advancing their fields. Pinker isn't one of them.
@@themaskedman221 care to nominate people that write texts more agreeable?
@@themaskedman221 Quite correct. Good insight.
I have no idea what he is talking about. I'm pretty sure we had the Nature-Nurture model in place when I was in High School back in the 70s. Nature-Nurture was discussed extensively in my University courses. WTF is he talking about? Through my education the notion of Nature-Nurture was well established. Is he not keeping up or does he just like to listen to himself talk.
Such great insight. Thank you Dr. Pinker!
I like Pinker he talks eloquently and many of his points are spot on.
Unfortunately I am far more pessimistic than he is about human nature and the decline of moral values. Which includes the inability to look at the past without any personal agendas.
Decline of moral values is, IF defined as having reduced or absent empathy or understanding of another organism's validity, increased incidence of cold, callous psychopathy.
The latter is a word , while no longer used in DSM 5 or TR, but useful for definition of one of the three to four subtraits of ASPD, which occurs in about 1-2% of human individuals worldwide, with differential male-female diagnostic incidence.
One MUST absolutely be careful to NOT impute such decline exclusively to others than oneself, as that is cognitive error.
MOST of our behaviors are situational, rather than universally expressed toward all other organisms, or even other homo sapiens.
THAT, too, the presumption of overgeneral trait change, is cognitive error.
It might be HIGHLY instructive, even important, for you to explore cognitive errors, and biases, as it may be that you or anyone, overgeneralizes and steroeotypes , MISATRTRIBUTES , traits as existing only outside oneself, or intimates.
For anyone interested in the struggle between inborn nature and the demands of human society, I strongly recommend a short work by Sigmund Freud, _Civilization and Its Discontents._ Its intellectual calorie density is through the roof and it offers a great deal even to people hostile to his psychoanalytic vision concerning neuroses.
My only gripe about this essay is that he attributes views to the “we” in the title that I think few people actually hold. I think the number of people who hold an absolute “blank slate” view is rather small. I would have preferred he start with a quote from a prominent person who holds the view he objects to. Instead he starts with a straw man that he ascribes to all of us.
Agreed. He's says it is his most controversial book, yet this view would be held by almost every evolutionary biologist, and I'd suggest by anyone with a basic understanding of human biology and evolution. And by most parents… there are behaviours that are never taught, yet children around the world do them. Is there anyone who actually holds to the 'blank slate' hypothesis for more than a few moments?
@@AJPemberton "yet this view would be held by almost every evolutionary biologist"
True, but its not the evolutionary biologists that are opposing nature, its every University Humanities department. Post Modern philosophers also oppose it, as it goes against the Post Modern ideological core. Post Modernism doesn't work if humans have a nature. I agree that it's still only a small cohort of people living in fantasy land, but the problem is, these utopian dreamers have a really LOUD voice, as in they run the Universities and DEI departments. ;)
Totally agree. He's using a bit of a straw man argument. I mean, even cultural anthropologists don't deny human nature.
I think it might have been better to point to the blank slate hypothesis as one end of a spectrum of possible hypotheses, the other end being the notion that human nature determines everything in us. That would have defined said spectrum and he could have followed up asking where on it we actually are?
In my opinion, we are born with a blank 'spreadsheet'. A spreadsheet begins with blank cells, waiting for input, but all of the rules, formulas and formatting already exist in the background (genetic predisposition).
That's a really useful analogy! Thanks.
More or less but yeah. Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind explained that we are born with “learning modules”. Think of them as switches in our brains that are turned on given certain stimuli.
For example, we aren’t born fearful of snakes but we are prone to be afraid of them (key word: prone). So, when we have a bad experience with snakes this switch is turned on - which makes us avoid any further danger related to snakes. This predisposition, like you say, comes through adaptation. This switch is activated through patterns that were relevant for our survival - it’s embedded in our being.
Pinker is an absolute treasure.
I needed to learn this 40 years ago.
Thank you Mr Pinker for providing some balance and follow on from Nature vs Nurture :)
You did really well with this episode :)
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1:50 I agree. We touched upon this in the Nature vs Nurture episode. We are born with natural native characteristics that are evolutionary and them learn to temper those instincts via education and culture.
“Every human being is born a barbarian, and only culture redeems them from the bestial.” ― Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
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3:42 reconfirmed.
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5:06 Unlike many other creatures our human brain/head is too large to carry too much genetic information forward through birth. We as humans rely very heavily upon nurture to add in the extra information for the brain to finish developing after birth. Morals, ethics, culture, politics, religion etc. all come in from that social structure that we are grown into. This doesn't eliminate our fundamental traits/nature that we are born with, it just tempers them to some extent. We are still prone to Fight, fright or flight unless specifically trained to suppress it.
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5:54 We do have the personal capacity to choose how we behave in a particular circumstance. Unfortunately most are taught that they have no choice and thus never expend the energy to exercise conscious choice.
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor." - Henry David Thoreau
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8:50 This is one of the issues/difficulties regarding personal responsibility and the idea of determinism also plays into it. At some point in our maturity we need to stop being reactive to the information imposed upon us from the external world and our genetics and become "More than the sum of our parts or experiences". A point where we become self determined and choose our own creation within the self. Unfortunately many seam to miss the memo on that and it does require education/instruction.
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I agree fully with the last part. Even a rock has purpose when consider it for long enough.
Your reply is interesting. I have a question. What is your opinion on ageing as our brains matures into our 70s?
@@owengreene382 As studied as I am I am not a psychologist, but to your question.
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My learned opinion says 40, 60, 80 should not make much difference. But like the old dog learning new tricks, or the leopard changing spots, do we still have the drive and motivation to learn new skills or put in the effort to change our beleif systems or paradigm (The subjective lens though we we interpret the world) at that age?
I am not sure what text is recommended outside of Australia but Candida Peterson "Looking Forward Through Lifespan: Developmental Psychology" is gold standard for understanding our development milestones throughout life, to get a sound starting base line of our common developmental stages of maturity.
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As far as malleability and concrete thinking goes, we tend to mature (settle) into more set (concrete) beliefs through our mid 20s maturity milestone. The mind still remains malleable although a little more stubborn about change. Many (often unethical) studies about the malleability of the mind were conducted in both medical and military environments last century.
If we look around you will find that it is not unusual to change our political or religious beleif systems as we age. In some examples this change can be sudden such as as religious conversion as a common example.
In the above I have covered external influences that may have an impact on an individual.
"become self determined and choose our own creation within the self" We can take charge of that malleability of the mind (with care) and be the director (the one that chooses) our beleif systems.
A little like those small aha light bulb moments when we realize how something significant actually works, but it is not just that one experience as it also effects the way we will now view past and new experiences. Our beleif about that (our paradigm) has changed, and how we view many other things in life change with it after that moment. Paradigm shift are natural and often happen slowly and without the individual noticing the change in how we think about thing through a life time, or paradigm shift can be quite sudden and even unsettling (imaging near death experiences etc)
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Are we determined by the natural laws of the universe and have no say in it, are we determined in who and what we are by others around us, or are we self determined :)
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It is a complex area of thought, and being your own director takes thought and effort. Many good authors have covered part of that topic such as Robert Bolton and Stephen Covey (paradigms). Steven Pinker is extremely good at explaining human perception when considering our native subjective reality[s]
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Life is about the journey, the experience, not the destination. Ultimately we may not be able to choose the end destination of our life journey or where the universe progresses to (determinism) but I believe we can choose the different pathways along the way, even at 70 :)
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"Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you're alive it isn't. Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah"
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P.S. I am not religious. Maybe border line Deist via science and philosophy, but not really.
@@axle.studentyou, my friend, have a wonerful vocabulary, explaining the human mindset. You like me, love the scenic view to explain human behaver in this rigorous life we live. Your a breath of fresh air, my friend. Please keep in touch. Owen on the West coast of Ireland.
@@owengreene382 Thank you for your vote of confidence :)
I hope you are fairing well sir.
Axle (Alex) FNQLD Australia. Decedent from the Madron county of Cornwall.
@@axle.student Thank you for your generous reply's. I believe Cornwall is a most beautiful county. I have sister living in London, 40 years. She said "it's changed, not for the better, since Brexit arrived at their doorstep. And wishes she had made the move home to Donegal 20 years ago. But, Its to late now."
I think it’s the best critique is less that human nature is nonexistent, and more that it’s inaccessible. How would you go about separating real human nature - permanent conditions of human existence - from the temporary contingencies of a certain historical age?
If human nature is meant to describe some sort of human attribute that we can say existed amongst all humans in the past and will continue to exist throughout all humans in the future, then I think it’s reasonable to say there’s too much background noise to describe anything but the most basic stuff like acquiring culture or feeling fear or playfulness as human nature. We’d need to keep adding caveats like “most societies experience this” and “generally humans are like this”, and the more caveats we add the less useful those generalizations are. Prioritizing an abstract model of human nature over the messiness of the real world seems like just as flawed of an approach as assuming we’re each a blank slate.
Human nature can reasonably be thought of as largely being our core emotions, the degree to which they're experienced (frequency and severity), and associated motivations; direct and indirect. Other aspects of human nature would include cognitive and physiological capacities, etc. But the factors listed can explain responses to "temporary contingencies".
social constructivist
Human beings have instincts and a range of cognitive and physiological abilities that are generally shared across the human race. No need for too much Foucaultian/constructivist argumentation here.
"[T]here’s too much background noise" Background noise, or "the messiness of the real world" as you also put it, is what research psychologists like Pinker are around to deal with. (Also, up to a point, evolutionary biologists and cultural anthropologists.) There's a lot of it, to be sure, but it can be chipped away at.
Would love to see a talk between SAPinker and JonHaidt on morals :)
Haidt has long been quite active in controlled experiment as well as observational research. Make SURE, you DO read his peer-reviewed work, BEFRE being excited about what i here presume desire for debate.
Best video I’ve seen on TH-cam in a long time. The problem with human nature, and I agree with Pinker we definitely have one, is that it contradicts Enlightenment principles. Or we are, as Pinker says, not clear about what those principles are. This is the essence of the political and cultural turbulence we are now experiencing. Human nature is competitive and aggressive and doesn’t do well with being told to be equitable and tolerant. This is not the best news, but I’m sure we’ll figure out what we’re willing to put up with.
One again, please AVOID applying "we" to strangers. although if you are using the royal we, referring solely to yourself, I apologize, though NOT abjectly.
The Blank Slate is a fascinating book, I recommend it
It's so tempting to deny one's own imperfect nature
Hi Steven, thank you for the insight!
Would you do a discussion/debate with Robert Sapolsky? I find both of your views very interesting.
You went beyond pleasure principle here, didn't you?
Quite fundamental and concise. Sigmund Freud and Joseph Campbell in conversation.
Thanks and Follow your bliss!
Thanks for this ! Was listening to The Blank Slate yesterday on audible .
Music shares around 75% of Charles Hockett's design features of language, features like duality of patterning, etc., which is a higher percentage than for any animal system of communication that I can think of. I think this strongly suggests that music is a byproduct of language or that the two systems share a common ancestor. Deserves a closer look.
People tend to conflate good/bad with right/wrong.
Bigotry is not wrong, it is bad.
Statistical differences between groups exist, that is right. Discrimination of individuals on the basis of groups they belong to is bad conduct.
The first assertion is about a state of the world that can conform or not to observation and about which we can say that it is either right or wrong. The second is about the expected outcome in the future of a certain way of conduct about which we can have an opinion of wether it will be beneficial or not, i.e. good or bad.
This confusion is common among most people for whom the Good is what is important. The True/False, right/wrong is subservient to the Good for most of them and they can easily deceive themselves about what's true/right in order to keep coherence in their model of the Good.
Scholars tend to be truth seekers and have hard time understanding why people argue about facts.
good is EXTREMELY relative to the individual organsim expressing the concept. Say, rather, Self-serving," to more accurately define the concept that you capitalize as "good"
@@briseboy
Self-serving is too narrow. I prefer the term beneficial that I used. It keeps room for both self-centred and altruistic / idealist conceptions of the Good.
Intelligent discussions focused on this topic is basic to promoting more independent thinkers regarding our personal reality.
Subject = plural, verb must be plural - "ARE basic" is the only comprehensible, therefore correct usage.
I agree with most of this. However, we are most certainly programmable. It's important that we as society and its policy makers are very intentional about the values (programming) we institutional choose and in business, allow.
Why do some people deny their lineage? This belief can be damaging to the environment by artificially separating us from our place and responsibilities.
@@campbellpaul Their lineage as apes not regional. Many religious people want to believe we come from fables, not filthy apes.
This is really interesting !! I like his viewpoint on life.
a sobering and refreshing point of view
Amazing! waiting for more videos like this.
Rhythm. The best explanation he can provide. Normal doesn't exist. Who has the same normal as you? Music, poetry etc.
If our current lives were only a fraction of our existance, would that really devalue them? If there was only one book, movie or song, would that make them more valuable? Perhaps. But I cannot help but notice that people who value those things tend to create them abundantly and/or consume them frequently.
I think you could just as likely turn it around and say the abundant things are the most valuable. Air is pretty valuable for instance.
We value life because of the experiences it affords us. The more experiences the greater the life most of us seems to think, so why would those experiences be less worth if they continued beyond our short lifespans?
Agreed. People's preconceived ideas about whether or not there is a God, an underlying consciousness behind creation are a sort of paradigm at the base of our perspectives. This is the first I've seen of this man, and he's pretty clearly an atheist and speaking from that POV; his failure to understand how faith can enrich the value of temporal existence for the faithful comes from his atheism. This in itself is neither good nor bad until he makes a blanket statement that belief in any sort of existence beyond physical death devalues life. To people of faith it's quite the opposite!
I thought most of this was spot-on. An important thing that this little segment doesn't address is that the friction between religion and science is totally unnecessary. Each side seems to forget that God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved. The problems come when scientific claims are used to try to prove the non-existence of a Universal Consciousness and religious claims are made as attemps to deny scientific fact.
@@Nothingcanbeaprettycoolh-ct7ws I have seldom recieved a more intelligent and thoughtful reply to a comment on TH-cam. Thank you for that. I also agree with you and I have been thinking about these topics (belief, knowledge, science, spirituality and faith) for over three decades now. Even though Pinker is one of the foremost scientists and thinkers in the world, he - like many others like him - seems unable (or maybe unwilling) to consider metaphysical possibilities. I have great respect for the scientific method and its ideals, but far to often the scientists themselves fall short of those ideals.
Take the topic of ufos/uaps. They are completely irrational, ignorant and narrowminded. They refuse to even consider the possibility of the presence of an intelligence not from our civilization. There is no curiosity whatsoever. They don't know what it is and therefore, according to themselves, have no desire to investigate. They demand the end result (proof) before they are prepared to engage in the very process (scientific inquiry) which is the very thing that could potentially provide those proofs. It boggles the mind. Of course, this attitude is rapidly changing now, but it's a disgrace that it's taken this long. Well, this is a pet peeve of mine. 😄
Anyway, as a spiritual and intellectual person it pains me that the discussion of these topics so often are held at such an infantile and stupid level, so thanks again for your sharing your interesting thoughts.
@@rasmuslernevall6938 Thank you for the compliment. So I'm probably older than you since I've been thinking about these things since my early teens half a century ago. I majored in religious history at a state university where it was straight history without agenda or dogma. And hey - gotta use that major somewhere! :)
Pinker quotes Spinoza in this. A favorite quote of mine is:
"I believe in the God of Spinoza." ~Albert Einstein
I too reject a personal God. Maybe the most influential person on my thinking has been the mythologist, Joseph Campbell. If you're not familiar, his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces is an important read, especially the beginning where he outlines his "monomyth" model. He also did a fascinating series of interviews with Bill Moyers called "Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth." It's on YT and I think might still be on Netflix.
Campbell also rejected a personal deity. When he was called an atheist because of this he smiled and said, "I don't see how anyone can call me that because I believe in so many Gods!"
Interesting that you bring up UFOs as it's also been an interest of mine since my late teens. I agree with you on it too. There are literally thousands of credible eyewitness accounts from all over the world, many of which come from pilots and police - people who are trained in the skills of accurate observation. A lot of these accounts are also corroborated by civilian and/or military radar. You'd think finding an explanation for these phenomena might be a good place to start. Or maybe they'd start with the work of nuclear physicist, Stanton Friedman, or the work of once head of the astronomy department at Ohio State, J Allen Hynek, but no. Where does the scientific community start? SETI! 😆
@@Nothingcanbeaprettycoolh-ct7ws Presuming preconception is a cognitive error. Dissociated nonphysical bosses, lords, or other entities acting in antisocial HUMAN ways, that is, rewarding or exacting retribution from humans, is astonishing schizophrenic delusion.
My own early subadult life was SEVERELY distorted and made incoherent by extremist parental religious delusions, along with one's brutal and brutish GABAergic inducing alcohol.
BOTH are severely abusive, and BOTH should be COMPLETELY removed from human social interaction. My own life was devastated by the two, very much TWIN delusions - GABA is a synaptic neural signaling suppressant, useful as naturally produced within neurons. Additional GABA narrows perceptions due to overexpression of signal suppression.
Think "narrow-minded" and you will have exactly described the reduction fo cognitive capacity into only limited neural channeling of signaling.
THERE you have religion, dogma, and the depressant effect of that and alcohol.
"I don't think there's anything particularly uplifting about belief in an after-life because it devalues life on earth". Pretty well describes Nietzsche's fundamental critique of Christianity. One of the greatest mistakes people can make in their one and only life is to overlook the meaning of existing now.
There is no meaning to existing now. It’s all empty and meaningless. Which, once you get that, gives you the blank slate to create whatever meaning in your life that you desire.
"Common sense is not that common"
- Voltaire
How is it in French original? Also a pun that works perfectly like in English?
Seeing the faults in religion and stepping away doesn’t necessitate stepping away from a Great Creator. I think many atheists don’t want there to be a Great Creator/Force for ego reasons just as many choose religion because they want to know all the answers (religion boiling down to “because it says right there.” To me, Great Creator is Love & Mystery and I see people on both sides (religious and atheist) aren’t content without pretending to have certainty, to know it all.
My father reflected with me on religion and spirituality. He stated that there were, at that time, about 7 billion folks on this old rock, and absolutely no two of them have the same views about God, or creation. Atheists don't know how it all started, so they make up bizzar stories of explosions and such. God fearing people don't know, so they say God made it. I guess I'll just let the mystery be. If one believes in God, I hope you are right. If one does not, I hope your are right. I've got my belief and it's private.
Anything seen in all societies and cultures is part of our nature. Music is one of those things. We don't all do it the same way, but we don't all speak the same language or make and use the same tools.
Or is it an emergent property that was not selected for?
@@zombywoof1072 I don't know what that means in the context of universal human nature
Burying the dead with some form of ritual is seen in all societies nowadays, but we seem to have become anatomically modern long before we started ritual disposal of the dead. If burying the dead isn’t part of human nature despite being present in every society we have records about, I don’t think we can say that something which appears to be present throughout all societies is part of human nature. Human nature, if it’s even accessible to us in the first place, would seem to be more elusive than that.
@ecta9604 you know that inhumation, burial, is not the only way that humans, or even white Americans, dispose of their dead. When you say anatomically human, do you mean more than Homo sapiens? I assume that Neanderthals and thei cousins were fully Homo sapiens. What groups do we have evidence that they disposed of their own dead, and not outsiders, members of othet groups, like trash?
"Trading Places" is still one of my favorite movies. It doesn't settle the problem, but the people making the bet are the real test of human nature (and sadism and racism actually!)
I like how Steven Pinker thinks. I think the "philosophy" he explains in the last moments of his video is also what the TH-cam channel Kurzgesagt explains in its "Optimistic Nihilism" video. I think Prof Pinker is also describing what Richard Dawkins calls Cultural Christianity, in my opinion. That is, do good works where good might be defined by, for example, how Christianity defines good.
We're taught to deny it. And our economic system benefits hugely from all the human malfunction. But where we need to go is in the understanding of human nature, and move from there in a reasonably healthy direction of holism. For instance, we can be spiritual without being religious.
Some music can be uplifting etc..And in my opinion, we don't have that. Our popular culture, in my opinion, has become toxic.
The point about equality (among people), is the reason I use the word "equity" instead. I think this is no small matter, and the common use of the word "equality" reinforces a falsehood.
I believe that we are not born completely blank. Studying human behavior, I’ve seen innate goodness in some and hateful tendencies in others. If you have siblings, I’m sure you’ve seen this in your own family. Same parents. I truly believe that some people are born with negative traits. Now, can there be other influences? Yes. Drugs and alcohol during pregnancy, early childhood trauma , etc. I’m not an academic or a scientist so I will continue to study and research this debate. Pinker presents a very interesting and fascinating discussion that should make everyone curious so we can have a thoughtful discussion. Read: Plato and Aristotle.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
Good or evil is nice, clean, and easy to understand and manipulate. So tidy!
Evolution equipped us for all the environments our ancestors thrived in and all the challenges they overcame. Human nature is a mixed bag of tools we might need. We aren't a blank slate, but experience determines what tools we take out of the bag and put on the workbench. Life causes detection of which environment we're in and which traits we will need to activate.
Answering the title cold: Because history shows us that there is very little as malleable as human nature.
"there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do. Vorbis loved knowing that. A man who knew that, knew everything he needed to know about people.”
Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
I need to know what microphone he's using because it's amazing.
It sounds like the unspoken assumption of these objections is that "human nature" is identical to material processes and entirely explainable by material processes.
Pinkers comments on the physical nature of the brain make that point clear.
Pitbulls, as a subspecies, do have certain traits, and it generally serves I've well to "generalize" about them, as generalizing is about probabilities and pattern recognition. As with pitbulls, so too with the subspecies of humans, of which the differences between the nervous systems is even much more defined by differences than with dogs.
Not a blank slate, more an open PC application, so it mostly depends on the imported data.
You once said that when you lived in Montreal, you did not think all hell would break loose when the police went on strike.
Thanks! Truth.
We're all genetically unique, with differently wired brains changed by epigenetic evolution.
Yes we all are perfectly imperfect.
We are also genetically wired to have common human traits.
Was this recorded with two mics spaced quite a distance apart? The audio has a really awkward stereo field. I always enjoy your work Mr Pinker. Maybe chat to an audio engineer though. Cheers.
@@imusmoedegrasse
Ooof! Don’t slap too hard!
Totally agree, even if I don't. Being happy is not scary at all.✌🏼🕺🏼
Not a fan of everything Pinker, but totally agree with him here. What possible adaptative advantage does piano virtuosity have? And what would it have had during our long evolutionary history?
Like Pinker, you are confusing human instinct with human nature.
Increasingly, many people’s idea of equality is a quota system.
And how long until people will freely enter their neighbours' home to, e.g, destroy their piano, because "We don't have one in our house, so it's wrong for you to have one"? Clearly that's the direction which the balance of emerging forces is taking us. We are mistaken if we think _It can't happen here._
@@dixonpinfold2582Both of these assumptions are extremely overwrought and have little to do with this post. And “many people’s “ is laughable. Which people? How many people? Come on, Donald.
@@paulcolson3220 Why are you complaining to me about what someone else wrote? Pay attention to what you're doing. And don't call his opinion an "assumption."
Human nature is a fact: reason, emotions, free will, etc.
He couldn't resist. He had to bring in the soul. He loves selling books.
That is where his science collides with his dollars. He would happily admit that this aspect of his psyche is a product of his environment. What he won't tell you is that his brand of atheism (not atheism in general) will definitely pass away when his generation does. In some ways the naiveté reflected in his words will be missed.
Forgive my simplistic and, possibly, cliche comment: brilliant!
When I finally realized there are no gods, it was a bit strange not having to talk to my imaginary friend anymore.
But I got better very soon.
I see it as growing up.
cheers Mr Pink
@@robertwarner-ev7wp So you're saying I'm religious? eh?
@@robertwarner-ev7wp OK logical writer's error.
Insert "most probably" before "are no gods".
Of course, in the end, nothing can be proven, we only know that we exist (think).
So far I have not seen evidence for the existence of gods. It is not a claim.
What is your position?
Thanks 👍
Evolution is change, often, improvement.
good to hear, many thanks.I grew up in the Netherlands, and the concept of a blank slate never occurred to us. Psychlogists wanted to believe that intellegence us somwthing we learn...
Everything about us is a combination of nature and nurture.
Both are true. Plus intelligence is situational. See how long you would last in a Peruvian rain forest if you suddenly found yourself there. You probably wouldn't last a day and yet, three small indigenous children who did find themselves in the rain forest survived for weeks until rescued by, you guessed it, other indigenous people. In that situation you would be incredibly stupid and they would be incredibly smart.
@@wildfire60 I know some very intelligent people, it is impressive I wish I could learn it. Even writing symphonies is too much for my mind.
The blank slate is historically rooted in the doctrine that was opposed to innatism. The book Essays Concerning Human Understanding written by John Locke around 1690 or so. Locke's main thrust was his criticism of the philosophy of innatism - that is humans are born with knowledge at birth. Obviously innatism was false - name me one 2 week old baby would could do algebra. The scope of Locke though was limited - he did not discuss emotional systems such as the fight/flight system - which almost certainly is innate. Locke's main points were about ideas & understanding. And in the scope that Locke talked about - that "ideas", "beliefs", etc are not innate - he is almost certainly correct. Some simply introspection in my own life history I can prove him correct. Every step of the way I had to "learn" everything I know today at some point - and before that learning - I simply did not know... Hence the ideas that I learned were not innate at least to me. Maybe there are people out there who from birth on day 1 possess expert knowledge of mathematics, language, being a car mechanic, etc - but I have serious doubts about the doctrine of innatism.
There are some things that psychologists know that are not innate - such as the well studied concept of object permanence. Object permanence is learned through what Locke would refer to as sensation and perception. Complicated topic. Personally I find Locke's writings fascinating. But it is important to realize that the scope is defined in the title - "understanding".
Locke also correctly pointed out that belief in god was not innate - since his time was the time of the early colonial era, and he correctly observed that cultures across the world had wildly different ranges in beliefs, and that ideas clearly were not inscribed on the mind at birth - because that would tend to produce a global homogenous culture, in which people across the world were all born with ideas inscribed on the mind at birth - which is clearly false. Beliefs of course are learned. Of course where the blank slate concept gets really interesting is how it interacts with the truth of how reality actually works. Knowledge of steam engines, chemistry, airplanes, etc was also not innate. John Locke and Francis Bacon are two of my favorite philosophers for a reason. There ideas mesh well with how reality actually works.
Intelligence is definitely situational. To use a different example with myself as an example in a real world setting. I wouldn't last a day working in an automobile factory, because I know nothing about automobile manufacturing.
Every institution, factory, farmer, church, social group, you name it, produces its own knowledge that its group members use to continue the function of that factory, church, social group, farmer, institution, etc. Knowledge and understanding is the bed rock of any organization, whether that knowledge and understanding is actually beneficial or not is another issue entirely though.
There is one person who became famous for hacking the knowledge necessary to get into positions - he is called the great imposter. He had an uncanny ability to see the unused power in any organization and weasel his way into organizations with his amazing insight. He operated at a level far superior to the average person though and had a different view of power than most anyone I have ever read. His name was Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr if you want to look into it. Fascinating character if your interested in the subtle aspects of power in every day life.
I am startong to despise arguments over existence and non-existence.
People who have problems to solve in life will not find time to think over these things and people who do not havr problems to.solve will probably have already created new ones for themselves.
Pinker for president
Why can we remember a tune we've not heard for half a century? Let's keep searching for an adaptive explanation.
Evolutionary selection is OFTEN involved with selection of proxy traits, rather than concisely genetic protein expression variation.
See Pleiotropy, polygenetic traits, epigenetic and transcriptional alteration.
While I happen to disagree with any preservation of epiphenomenal traits over ANY significant time period - selection occurs on EVERY possible variation that occurs - retention of signal perception is a good question.
The brain uses not only specific synaptic learned neural connective networks retained, enhanced, prioritized for utility, electrical signaling along neural (ads well as some nonneural glial signaling) cells. That form the different "waves: noted in neurological science, which also correlate with comprehensional variations.
This is too extensive to cover in comment, but Associations not always directly linked through memory or associational activity (cerebra cortex alone, has two general ranges of associational processing, as well as the signaling to and from brainstem and body vitally important to immediate survival, which inform our cognitive salience, creating emotions.
that mass of multisyllabic words should describe to you just HOW music may exercise signaling, juxtacrine, endocrine, exocrine, and thus emotional, signaling, including self-signaling.
I am enamoured of music, in ALL its world and temporal forms from as long ago as notation or imitation has preserved it. I realized recently how MANY musical courses I took , as many as majors in other disciplines have in their cv's.
Strange variations in what we call consonance occur across the human world, and having sent some years closely studying the Wolf, I recognize different communicative aesthetics and meanings. Cetaceans have increasingly been found to have and use signature calls, and many bird species communicate states, traits, and territories, as well as even health, age, and other individual variations.
The world is music, signaling meanings BEYOND what Pinker and others with limited backgrounds, may perceive. I cannot touch teh subject of even one species substantially, even should i attempt it, in comment.
I, for the most part, enjoy listening to Steven. Today, I'm disappointed a bit by his simple thought on an afterlife. That, to me, is a very complex subject. Christianity teaches, that if one is good on Earth, they will enjoy a good afterlife, and suicide is a mortal sin. Einstein's theories on physics could be used to support an afterlife, with the unlimits of time and space, who knows? perhaps my molecules could rejoin down the road a few billion yrs. from now.
Richard V Reeves said that evolutuonary nature doesn't mean we should disregard culture, but that we should elevate culture.
Culture is our collective adaptation to rein in the extremes of human nature. From an evolutionary perspective it can be argued that storytelling, mythology and religion evolved to pass knowledge about human nature down generations.
I, too, am at the very least, skeptical of the notion of a soul, but the belief is VERY old, and is one of the ways that people have found to keep themselves accountable, even when they did not agree with whatever tyrant dominated them at the moment. Plus, you have to factor in that not all humans are intellectual, considering ideas such as the perfectibility of nature very often. They are too busy finding food or defending against invaders to philosophize much. Thus, belief in a soul is at worst, harmless, and at best, socially useful. And the basis for some of our most cherished traditions, such as the Commandments.
Evolution is change, not improvement.
This is a most important insight!
Adaptation is important to survival, and is therefore an improvement in that sense.
What works results in more individuals == improvement. First principle goal is propagation.
@@virtualalias That's true. I think the OP is making value judgements, such as, "more intelligence is an improvement." Of course, human intelligence has enhanced our survival, but superior human intelligence isn't as important to evolutionary forces as physical beauty. Our sex symbols are objects of desire because of their superior beauty, not their superior intellects. So, he's not wrong in that sense. It all depends on what you consider an improvement. Evolution favors survival and propagation, a point hilariously made by the movie "Idiocracy."
@@waynegrabert6839
The ability to breed before you die. Pretty much what its all about. All other improvements are peripheral.
The we stuff means the stuff we are made of, the biological homo sapiens without emblishments it means nature and nurture, the human being that's all😊
As a classic liberal I accept the most basic problem with liberalism, that once people are free then they will make different choices, and as soon as they make different choices there will be different outcomes. And as soon as there are different outcomes there will be inequality. It is inevitable, and one must accept certain limits and do their best to mitigate the inevitable inequality a free society will bring.
The corollary to this is people who want equality, and their refusal to admit that equality demands a lack of choice, because a lack of choice is the only way you can stop different outcomes. But what if you could not stop people from making different choices? What if their very natures compelled them to make different decisions? If that is the case then equality is impossible. And it is that fact that compels them to deny that human nature exists or that men and women are different, because if it is true their belief in an equal society is an impossibility. And that would destroy their faith in the society that they pretend can be real.
Love it
Very cogent arguments
There's a difference between cause and effect and right and wrong or the academics of something and the evaluation of it with the resulting moralities. For instance, the academics state: "This is a dog and that is a cat." The evaluation might be, "I like dogs and don't like cats;" with the resulting morality being, "There shall be no cats in the house!"
Aren't values (at their core) determined by how we feel? The social problem we have is that values change person to person.
I notice there is no checkmark next to the channel name.
Is this actually Steven Pinker's channel? seems unlikely with on 10 thousand subs
Give "Love and Power" by Paul Rosenfels a read. He addresses these issues on a scale that any human can understand.
Maybe someday we will replace "JAIL" with "REHABILITATION".
The moral point that we are not a blank slate that can be programmed (by religion or government) is made in the masterpiece Anthony Burgess book by and the masterpiece Stanley Kubrick film "A Clockwork Orange."
I thought it proved just the opposite?
Human, the greatest formation to ever occur :). Also, prejudice is rational when predujice is aimed at you, the impulse evolved to create barriers between enemies, I'm beginning to learn this important lesson. Hate is justified 100% in certain senerios.
Without transcendence conscience is made subject to chance and who, in their right mind, supposes we should obligate ourselves to chance?
Iain McGilchrist provides an interesting hypothesis that language evolved from music, and that music more closely resembles the unfiltered patterns of reality.
very good pink stephen, you answered all the questions, you're a pinkstar
A definition of human nature to begin with, would be helpful. There are many conceptual confusions in this presentation.
I agree, to me, it is what a certain percentage of us would do, when presented with a certain situation. Like, if a earthquake hits LA, how do most of the people react. Or, if a shooter enters a crowd, what do most of the people in the crowd do. Make up a situation and think how people would react. that is what human nature is to me, I suppose there's other things to it also. If something nice happens, most people smile. Human Nature.
Well said.
Habits and patterns have shaped us, and we are the first animal to escape nature to the extent that we are privileged enough to choose our habits and patterns for ourselves. We need to learn collectively that we have taken the reins of our own evolution. We have been subconsciously designing ourselves for aeons and we are on the cusp of making it a conscious decision. Our politics/nations are fundamentally a lack of consensus.
Although i dropped out of virology class, there are a GREAT number of inert possessors of DNA and RNA, who constantly take issue with your cognitive error. Expect MORE, with some likely to be highly successful in their disagreement with arrogant humans.
Our ecological awareness is nil
& I think that’s the issue,
We don’t even understand evolutionary adaptations, etc.
& this cannot see it in ourselves.
We need a class on human ecology. 🌲
The Blank Slate : The Modern Denial of Human Nature is one of the greatest books I have ever read. Most of the criticisms I read suggest that many such critics have not actually read the book.
Males are not more aggressive than females, Steven. We have unsavoury individuals capable of the very worst of things and they are male and female in the same proportion.
If you were correct, jealousy, anger, fear would be seen less in females than males.
My sister recently tried to strangle her youngest child (an adult) on the floor leaving my niece covered in bruises. British police said they don't get involved in cases like this, what they mean is they have a narrative that gets them 'results' in court, that domestic violence is male on female. They will do everything to preserve that narrative.
About 7 years ago I protected my 15 year old niece from assault by my sister and got charged and found guilty for stopping my sister, my niece wouldn't testify but my other niece sided with her mother. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
My sister has over 30 convictions for burglary, shoplifting and car stereo theft. But has never seen the inside of a prison cell ... because she's female. Smoked hard drugs while pregnant.
I knew she was evil: lying and assaults when we were children. I didn't know she was beating my niece up throughout her childhood.
I know the British police are looking for a big case in regards to my sister, where she finally does something, I think she's already done it, she worked in a carehome, the woman who bragged about burglarling an old man.
No, not even close, if what you say were even close to true, our prisons wouldn't be 90% male.
@@jerryw6699 Wouldn't be because of bigots like you excusing and denying a woman's crimes, while simultaneously lying about men.