Last Wednesday, the Center for Science Writings within the College of Arts and Letters hosted a fireside chat with Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of recent bestseller, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. In a question and answer session led by Professor John Horgan, Director of the Center for Science Writings, Pinker provided reasons on how optimism has helped humanity achieve substantial progress in science, society, and technology.
In an introduction led by Horgan, attendees learned about Pinker’s career. His early career focused on writing about language and cognition while recent years focus on learning and teaching about human progress. Pinker mentions in the meeting that his book Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature sheds light on the fabulist view of human nature. Human nature is extremely complex where we find ourselves constantly fighting self control over our dark sides. He mentioned how people are likely to not be at peace with their dark sides in fear that acknowledging vulnerabilities in their nature could cause chaos like wars. Pinker hopes to encourage people to change their preconceptions about progress.
To get the audience acclimated to this focal point for the remainder of the talk, Pinker displayed a wide array of analytical diagrams — from the effect of antibiotics on the Spanish Flu to freedom and rights before and after the Enlightenment era. With these examples, Pinker pointed out to the audience that with human ingenuity we succeed. He emphasized how when progress happens, it is not monotonic. As attendees saw the reduction of extreme poverty, he mentioned how we also see the rise of income inequality. He stressed that trends like these are not usually news headlines and encouraged individuals to seek data rather than headlines to alter how they view progress in other world events.
For the remainder of the talk, Horgan enabled a conversational question and answer session with Pinker. Questions ranged from discussions about Pinker’s recent book to questions on the impact that social media, elections, and even climate change can have on our optimism.
On the topic of climate change, Pinker suggests that we have the means of progressing and combating climate change, but it is up to our willingness to change our mindset. Combating climate change seems like a topic that seems easier said than done. However, Pinker highlighted positive milestones in other social issues, such as poverty, to encourage us to realize that while we can’t guarantee any immediate changes related to climate change, progress is possible and inevitable. According to his research on climate change, he suggested that we can make clean energy so cheap that it becomes part of simple economics. When thinking about wealth and affluence, that requires energy. He suggested making dirty energy more expensive so that it becomes economical to use clean energy. When thinking about a carbon tax, Pinker also suggested that this is politically toxic and might not be the best method of addressing problems.
An interesting point made by Pinker relevant to the Stute community is how to make cultural journalism more data-driven, which could drive more optimism and progress in the issues that matter to us. There is a choice to look down on people that merely focus on what is going wrong in the world. While Pinker suggests that while we cannot solve a problem without recognizing it, there should be a shared understanding of possible and tractable solutions. He critiques how journalism today is anecdote driven which can make us more pessimistic than optimistic. However, if we looked at the relevant data, we would be empowered to improve situations and take action on those problems that keep us up day and night.
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