Experimental psychologist interested in all aspects of language, mind, and human nature.
Steven Pinker conducts research on a variety of topics in psychology and cognitive science, including common knowledge (things that everyone knows everyone knows), language acquisition, emotion, the moral sense, rationality, and trends in violence.
Latest News and Updates
- The Times: 1984 revisited: George Orwell would be relieved at how we’ve done
- The Free Press: The Golden Age of Humanity? We’re Living in It
- Stereoscopy Magazine Member Highlight
- Wall Street Journal: Charles Murray’s Unscientific Case for the Soul
- Air Mail: The Last Enlightenment Man
- The New Yorker: Do You Know What I Know?
- The Times: Beware the novel problems of our success
- The Times - Steven Pinker: I’m pinned between cancel culture and Trump
- The Guardian: When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows by Steven Pinker review – communication, broken down
- New York Times: The Right’s Post-Kirk Crackdown Has a Familiar Mob Logic
- New York Times: Harvard Derangement Syndrome
- The Harvard Crimson: From CAFH Leadership: Harvard Must Not Submit to a Hostile Takeover
- The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter: Top 20 Steven Pinker Quotes
- Quilette, Sage of Sex and Psyche, Remembering Don Symons (1942–2024).
- 2 1/2 D: The Stereoscopic Photography of Steven Pinker. Review in Whitehot Magazine, April 2024
- Call Magazine, OOOM 100: The World’s Most Inspiring People 2024
- Quillette, "There's Nothing Mystical About the Idea that Ideas Change History"
- Nautilus: Psychology Lost a Great Mind
- Boston Globe: New faculty-led organization at Harvard will defend academic freedom
- Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning: Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate 20+ years later
- BBVA Foundation: The Frontiers of Knowledge Award goes to Steven Pinker and Peter Singer for innovative academic contributions in the domains of rationality and moral progress that have achieved a widespread impact in the public sphere
- Port Magazine: Steven Pinker: Things I like / Things I Dislike
- The Harvard Gazette: Will ChatGPT supplant us as writers, thinkers?
- IAI News: Pinker on the power of irrationality - Why it can be rational to be irrational
- Persuasion: Reason To Believe - How and why irrationality takes hold, and what do to about it.
- Skeptical Inquirer Magazine: Reason’s Valiant Champion
- Financial Times: Steven Pinker: ‘Putin’s invasion won’t lead to a return to the age of warring civilisation’
- Now in Paperback - Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
- Symposium: Enlightenment 2.0 - A Review of “Rationality,” by Steven Pinker
- Collate: Steven Pinker and Scott Aaronson Debate AI Scaling!
- Skeptic: ESP Debate - Is Belief in ESP Irrational?
- A Night @ the Opera with Steven Pinker: Is Music a Universal Language?
- The Blog of Scott Aaronson: Steven Pinker and I debate AI scaling!
- Bicycling: This Scientist Can't Stop Thinking About Cycling
- Boston Globe: Is Russia’s war with Ukraine the end of the Long Peace?
- Why IBB Translated Steven Pinker’s New Book RATIONALITY for the Middle East - Ideas Beyond Borders
- BBC News: Three ways to be more rational this year
- BBC Radio: Think with Pinker
- Quillette: The Need for Rationality in a Hostile World
- Steven Pinker : "L'irrationalité actuelle ne signifie pas que notre espèce débloque"
- The Weekly Dish: Steven Pinker on Rationality In Our Tribal Times
- The Next Big Idea Podcast: Steven Pinker's Love Song to Critical Thinking
- Behavioral Scientist: The Monty Hall Problem (Finally) Explained
- The Washington Post: The power of rational thinking in a world that seems unreasonable
- Penguin: Where to start with Steven Pinker
- Richard Hanania: Rationality Requires Incentives: An Interview with Steven Pinker
- Steven Pinker: 'A generation has to watch every word... It could cripple intellectual life'
- The Times: Rationality - Steven Pinker's war on conspiracy theories
- New York Times Magazine: Steven Pinker Thinks Your Sense of Imminent Doom Is Wrong
- Effective Altruism: An Interview with Steven Pinker
- How humans gained an "extra life" (Review Steven Johnson’s “Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer.”)
- Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
- Intro to Psych Science: Lecture 6, The Brain
- "What is human nature?" Panpsychast podcast (June 7, 2020)
- "Can we build a more rational world?" The Good Fight podcast
- The pandemic exposes human nature: 10 evolutionary insights
- Freakonomics podcast - People I (Mostly) Admire Ep. 1: Steven Pinker
- Responses to the Letter to the Linguistics Society of America
- Twenty Questions with Steven Pinker
- From Verbs to War: In Conversation With Steven Pinker
- Lectures on Rationality
- Maimonides’ Ladder: States of Mutual Knowledge and the Perception of Charitability
- A critical period for second language acquisition: Evidence from 2/3 million English speakers
- Get Shorty: Steven Pinker on the Enlightenment
- Universality and diversity in human song
- "Dissecting Morality" podcast from the Ministry of Ideas
Featured Books
Twitter Feed
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ON THE KNOWS with Randall Kenneth Jones: 216: Rebecca Newberger Goldstein @platobooktour KNOWS Philosophy, Emotion, Education, Humanities & What it Means to Truly Matter t.co/d6HnuCDCWw
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Though rates of crime are at new lows, people feel it must be higher because they see signs of disorder like tent encampments, graffiti, litter, & boom boxers. But rates of these annoyances have, as best we can tell, not increased (possible exceptions in some parts of some
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The headline (like all "End of X," "Death of Y" and "Dawn of Post-Z Era" headlines) is cliched and hyperbolic, but trend is worth condemning: The glee on the right about eschewing "toxic empathy" is a license for cruelty and callousness. (Note that @paulbloomyale's book Against
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Gen Z, Guardians of Democracy t.co/EDbG4teSMt
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In an earlier Quillette essay, Stuart Doyle points out a neglected way in which our choices may be unpredictable (in addition to amplified quantum fluctuations or nonlinear dynamics aka chaos): they may implement an "undecidable" system, one which is both deterministic and
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It's not the case that every time we make a choice, a miracle happens in the brain. But this banality does not imply that free will does not exist and all is determined. @michaelshermer discusses why free will is compatible with a naturalistic world view.