Thread by @RichardHanania

I interviewed @sapinker about his new book for the @CSPICenterOrg podcast. A brief thread with some highlights. richardhanania.substack.com/p/rationality-…

Pinker on why we should want to be rational, and how humans can seem relatively sane in their personal lives but still hold fundamentally irrational social and political beliefs.

On channeling people's desire for community towards something more constructive. "There was a time, there still exist these things called service organizations... they are deeply square and uncool, which is a shame because they have been kind of mobilized to do good work."

How do we deal with the problem of belief in science and rationality slipping into scientism? I ask Steve whether allowing methods that lack sufficient rigor to be used in the social sciences can create false certainty about beliefs.

Pinker on attempts to cancel him: "the real fear is the message that it sends to people who are less powerful than me. I mean, I’ve got tenure... talk about privilege. Forget being white, having tenure is the ultimate privilege."

I present my theory about the differences in irrationality between the right and the left in America today. The right has a more "platonic" form of irrationality, while the left specializes in taking false premises and building on them in a logical way.

On how the conversation about human nature and genetics has changed in the last few decades. "the Great Awokening has involved a huge lurch back toward the blank slate." What used to be the left wing position for explaining racial differences, culture, is now cancellable.

What should a young person who wants to go into academia but is afraid of the political climate do? "it’s an agonizing question... wait until you have tenure before you express your most outrageous opinions."

Where wokeness came from: "Billy Joel was wrong. We did start the fire, we baby boomers." On how administrators and the growth of human resource and diversity bureaucracies have made things worse.