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Steven Pinker: The mechanics of trust in money and relationships

Steven Pinker: The mechanics of trust in money and relationships

If free will isn't a miracle, what is it? There's a complex process happening behind our ability to make decisions. | Big Think

If free will isn't a miracle, what is it? There's a complex process happening behind our ability to make decisions. | Big Think

16K viewsOct 11, 2019

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Why alpha males fear the rise of AI Steven Pinker states what our fears of the robopocalypse reveal... | Big Think

Why alpha males fear the rise of AI Steven Pinker states what our fears of the robopocalypse reveal... | Big Think

51K viewsAug 12, 2016

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WATCH: How We Speak Reveals What We Think, with Steven Pinker

WATCH: How We Speak Reveals What We Think, with Steven Pinker

Are guns to blame for America's high homicide rate? Steven Pinker weighs in. | Big Think

Are guns to blame for America's high homicide rate? Steven Pinker weighs in. | Big Think

6.5K viewsNov 30, 2019

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Steven Pinker: The case for letting go of identity politics

Steven Pinker: The case for letting go of identity politics

Harvard's Steven Pinker: how we speak reveals what we think

Harvard's Steven Pinker: how we speak reveals what we think

Steven Pinker: Linguistics as a window to understanding the brain

Steven Pinker: "There’s lots we don’t know, but the fact that we know the genetic code of life; that we know how old the universe is; that we know how the earth was formed; that we know the basic constituents of chemistry, this is mind boggling stuff. People in the 17th century would have given up anything for a glimpse of what we know today." | Big Think

89 viewsNov 13, 2015

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The surprising decline in violence

3.6M viewsSep 10, 2007

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For linguist and philosopher Steven Pinker, language is a window into the mind. | Big Think

144 viewsOct 24, 2015

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Human nature and the blank slate

1.8M viewsSep 26, 2008

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The potential of CRISPR technology is incredible, but the threats are too serious to ignore. CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) gives scientists the ability to alter DNA. This could mean the eradication of diseases, but it could also mean new biological weapons. Do the positives outweigh the potential dangers? How could something like this ever be regulated, and should it be? CRISPR co-inventor Jennifer Doudna and others weigh in. | Big Think

33.8K viewsApr 19, 2021

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Part 2 of my conversation on the Think Fast Talk Smart podcast. Full episode: https://fastersmarter.io/231-secret-signals-why-we-rarely-say-exactly-what-we-mean/ "The thing of swearing does is it elicits an involuntary emotional reaction. Your primitive part of your brain, maybe your amygdala, just gets pinged, usually with some, not just an offensive thought, excretion, feces, urine, cuckoldry, copulation, the disease, death, misfortune. Those are the subject matter of swearing across languages

2K views7 months ago

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I discuss common knowledge on Think Fast Talk Smart, the Podcast (https://fastersmarter.io). Effective communication isn’t always about being direct and blurting things out. Hear more in my conversation with Matt Abrahams: https://fastersmarter.io/231-secret-signals-why-we-rarely-say-exactly-what-we-mean/ “It’s long been known by anyone who studies language that, an awful lot of the time, we don’t just blurt out what we mean in so many words. We hint, we wink, we shilly-shally, we beat around th

1.7K views7 months ago

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How is it that human beings have come to acquire language? Steven Pinker's introduction to the field includes thoughts on the evolution of spoken language and the debate over the existence of an innate universal grammar, as well as an exploration of why language is such a fundamental part of social relationships, human biology, and human evolution. | Big Think

26.4K viewsMar 17, 2022

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How Common Knowledge Shapes the World | Steven Pinker | TED

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3rBxkja | Steven Pinker

17.6K viewsSep 16, 2021

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Steven Pinker: Linguistics as a Window to Understanding the Brain | Big Think

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On the "greater fool" strategy and common knowledge. More on this in my new book: When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . . Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life: https://bit.ly/3FgucEQ "In ordinary investing, you buy a share of a company because the company sells something at a profit, and you hope to take a share of that profit. In speculative investing, you buy it not because of the profit of the company, but because you hope that you can unload the shares

5.9K views8 months ago

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Below I explain the concept behind my new book: When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . . Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life https://bit.ly/3FgucEQ "I came to the topic of common knowledge, that is, everyone knowing that everyone knows that everyone knows something, through my interest in language. In language, most of what we say isn't exactly what we mean. People say things like, if you could pass the salt, that would be awesome. And that's not literally

10.9K views8 months ago

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Harvard Business Review - Why do people pour money into hype—like crypto or meme stocks? Speculative bubbles, crypto perhaps being one of the most recent examples, are cases where people think that other people will, in the future, will want to buy in. Some of that's called the greater fool theory of investing, that you invest because you think other people will invest because they think that still other people will invest. The thing is that, of course, bubbles could pop when the market starts t

7.2K views7 months ago

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Discussing common knowledge with Bill Maher. Common knowledge is the topic of my new book: When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. https://stevenpinker.com/publications/when-everyone-knows-everyone-knows-common-knowledge-and-mysteries-money-power-and Maher: What's the phrase of the book when everyone knows that everyone knows? Okay, so explain what that means. Me: Yes, so when everyone knows that everyone knows. When I kn

130.4K views8 months ago

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Some of the world's top minds—Elon Musk, Steven Pinker, Michio Kaku, Max Tegmark, Luis Perez-Breva, Joscha Bach, and Sophia the Robot herself—weigh in on one of the most divisive questions in tech. | Big Think

451.9K viewsJun 29, 2020

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The formula for rational thinking explained by Steven Pinker. | Big Think

3.1K viewsFeb 16, 2023

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Everyone suffers from this rationality error, explained by Harvard professor Steven Pinker. | Big Think

10.2K viewsMar 16, 2023

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Steven Pinker says it's no coincidence that there are zero libertarian countries on Earth; social spending is a shared value, even if the truest libertarians protest it, as the free market has no way to provide for poor children, the elderly, and other members of society who cannot contribute to the marketplace. As countries develop, they naturally initiate social spending programs. That's why libertarianism is a marginal idea, rather than a universal value—and it's likely to stay that way. | Bi

606K viewsMar 7, 2018

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Steven Pinker Redefines Moral Relativism

76.7K viewsApr 20, 2012

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Steven Pinker: How the Mind Works

9.2K viewsMar 13, 2013

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Steven Pinker On Reason | Big Think

84K viewsApr 24, 2012

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