What may be the most important thing that has ever happened in human history is that violence has gone down, by dramatic degrees, and in many dimensions all over the world and in many spheres of behavior: genocide, war, human sacrifice, torture, slavery, and the treatment of racial minorities, women...

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html, displays event video and both PowerPoint presentations in line with text. Pinker slides: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/pinker.slides.html Spelke slides: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/spelke.slides.html

In this personal and reflective event, Pinker looks back at twenty plus years at MIT and shares his deep appreciation for the place where "ideas and content always come first." Recalling his earliest work at the MIT Center for Cognitive Science, he describes the maddening problem of how children...

The Better Angels of Our Nature @ Google video

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Our conceptions of human nature affect every aspect of our lives, from the way we raise our children to the political movements we embrace. Yet just as science is bringing us into a golden age of understanding human nature, many people are hostile to the very idea. They fear that a biological...

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