The brain is not a bag of traits. It's startlingly complex. There are few or no single genes with a consistent effect on the mind. Steven Pinker More Quotes by Steven Pinker More Quotes From Steven Pinker Language mavens commonly confuse their own peeves with a worsening of the language. Steven Pinker peevesmavenslanguage Working out what it would take to program goodness into a robot shows not only how much machinery it takes to be good but how slippery the concept of goodness is to start with. Steven Pinker robotswork-outgoodness Language is a window into human nature, but it is also a fistula, an open wound through which we're exposed to an infectious world. Steven Pinker human-naturelanguageworld Most intellectuals today have a phobia of any explanation of the mind that invokes genetics. Steven Pinker geneticsmindtoday Like the early days of the Internet, the dawn of personal genomics promises benefits and pitfalls that no one can foresee. Steven Pinker benefitsdawnpromise Technology, ideology, and social and cultural changes periodically throw out new forms of violence for humanity to contend with. Steven Pinker technologyviolencehumanity Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of England to wear laurels and togas. Steven Pinker editinglatinwriting Students do everything on laptops these days, so I definitely think electronic books are a trend that's going to expand. Steven Pinker trendsbookthinking Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance. Steven Pinker numberspeopleworld People are under the impression that dictionaries legislate language. What a dictionary does is keep track of usages over time. Steven Pinker trackdoepeople We can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision. Steven Pinker vocabularyeventsbrain In fact, without a specification of a creature's goals, the very idea of intelligence is meaningless. A toadstool could be given a genius award for accomplishing with pinpoint precision and unerring reliability, the feat of sitting exactly where it is sitting. Nothing would prevent us from agreeing with the cognitive scientist Zenon Pylyshyn that rocks are smarter than cats because rocks have the sense to go away when you kick them. Steven Pinker rocksawardscat Paris Hilton, it turns out, is related to fellow celebrity jailbirds Zsa Zsa Gabor and G. Gordon Liddy. Steven Pinker relatedturnsparis The task of evolutionary psychology is not to weigh in on human nature, a task better left to others. It is to add the satisfying kind of insight that only science can provide: to connect what we know about human nature with the rest of our knowledge of how the world works, and to explain the largest number of facts with the smallest number of assumptions. Steven Pinker psychologytasksnumbers One of the perks of being a psychologist is access to tools that allow you to carry out the injunction to know thyself. Steven Pinker know-thyselfpsychologisttools It's the old idea that the process of evolution is some push in the direction of greater complexity--in particular greater intellectual complexity. In one twig of the tree of life, namely ours, having a big brain happened to have advantages. But that's just what worked for a particular species of primate 5 to 7 million years ago. Steven Pinker treeyearsideas I like ice hockey. No one is ever going to ask me to write about that as a metaphor for life. Steven Pinker hockeyicewriting Personality and socialization aren't the same thing. Steven Pinker socializationpersonality [Napoleon deployed] every available resource to inflict all-out defeats on [his] enemies. Steven Pinker resourcesdefeatenemy The problem with the emotions is not that they are untamed forces or vestiges of our animal past; it is that they were designed to propagate copies of the genes that built them rather than to promote happiness, wisdom, or moral values. Steven Pinker untamedanimalpast
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