Steven Pinker's fake enlightenment: Misleading claims and false assertions | Hacker News Reader

Steven Pinker's fake enlightenment: Misleading claims and false assertions

salon.com

27 pointsJerry217 comments

I read this hoping to see examples where Pinker's data about progress - which I find surprising and interesting - was misrepesented. Instead it's mostly about the semantics of the argument.

It's definitely not cool if Pinker used quotes in ways that gave the impression people agreed with him who don't. But these are also viewpoint quotes that are just as meaningful in the new context Pinker gives them - so reattributing them doesn't exactly refute his argument.

And a bunch of the stuff later on is just giving a platform to people who disagree with Pinker, and don't think he included enough of their view. Which is like, a reasonable opinion but not an error.

Does anyone have a good piece that takes on the substance of Pinker's arguments?

Most of Pinker's arguments are basically ok giving statistical data on how things like life expectancy have improved.

I agreed with this article that Pinker's take on AI is off though.

In "Authority and American Usage", DFW once described Pinker as having a "1950s SCIENCE: POINTING THE WAY TO A BETTER TOMORROW high-school filmstrip" vibe -- and once it was pointed out, it's impossible to ignore.

“Some have pointed out that modern racism more or less originated in the Enlightenment — contra Pinker”

This is an odd statement because didn’t the Enlightenment start many modern thoughts? Is this odd or unusual? All who is “some?” Are their ideas important for some reason? It’s odd to make a vague reference like it’s somehow meaningful. Is the author quoting her neighbor.

Racism wasn't racism simply because people failed to notice it, it was so common. So, yes, in a way, it's true that it didn't exist. It didn't exist in people's conscience. Yet, it doesn't mean it didn't exist in practice. Same as child labor. It too wasn't a problem because, it was ever-present and part of everyone's life.

Pinker's stuff often follows the old 18th-century Whig history pattern.

This sounds interesting but I know nothing about 18th century, Whigs (other than they are/were the Torys counterpart[y]), or history patterns. Could you explain this, maybe give examples of what Pinker said/wrote and why that follows this? Thank you in advance!

The Wikipedia entry for "Whig history" is fairly informative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history. Essentially, a view of history that everything represents a progression towards something better. It's also tied up with the rise of mercantilism (i.e. merchantocracy) of the 17th and 18th centuries. (It's also associated with Liberalism, in the classical sense of the term.)

why is this article not on the front page? Was it flagged by too many people? If so I wonder why ... Yes, it's a personal attack on Pinker, yet I agree with most of the arguments (and had the same feeling when I was reading his book ... he takes too many things out of context and thinks just because he's an expert in language and cognition he's an expert in other topics ... I have some knowledge in machine learning and found insulted when I read the AI parts of Enlightenment Now).

It's a bit sad because Pinker's older books are great. I recommend "The Blank Slate" and "The Language Instinct". In "The Better Angels of our Nature" he already started to stray away from his expertise.

I read this book and had the same thoughts. But I think what he was intending to get across, is that you can take any statistics and spin it in a positive or negative way. In other words - you can choose to be optimistic or pessimistic. He does address this at several points where he says something along the lines of having a healthy level of skepticism is a good thing, but to do it in a positive way.

I've never been able to get past chapter 1 of any of pinkers books I've tried 3. I just don't get why he is lauded. I am missing something.

Why is salon bothered by Pinker? Lots of professors follow ideology rather than logic, specially in the softer majors. Listen to philosophers, and they loosely tie things together from time to time.

Maybe this book of Pinker's is full of it, but why take exception to Pinker when there are many more out there?

It seems pathetically personal, for no good reason [by that I mean it attacks some flourishes and liberties, but not the substance]

Hungry writers sometimes attack their betters in order to earn some publicity from the controversy. For it to work, the victim has to be famous and with a significant following, such as in Pinker's case.

>Why is salon bothered by Pinker?

It's given away in the intro. Re-read this line: "In a recent article for Quillette, the “Intellectual Dark Web’s” online safe space"

Opening an article by bringing up something the Salon core readership has already been taught to hate before mentioning the topic of the article? This article isn't about Pinker, it's about the battle between Phil Torres and whatever it is that Pinker and the IDW stand for in Phil Torres' mind.

I stopped reading on the first line: "Quillette, the “Intellectual Dark Web’s” online safe space"... That's junk writing and I'd already had more than enough. A paragraph of that would get flagged on here and reprimanded by dang for being tiresome flame-war language. All it wants to do is fight.

Someone let me know if I've been unfair and it's actually worth reading, thanks.

> Someone let me know if I've been unfair and it's actually worth reading, thanks.

Sorry, are you referring to the Salon article linked here (https://www.salon.com/2019/01/26/steven-pinkers-fake-enlight...), or the Quillette article interviewing Pinker (https://quillette.com/2019/01/14/enlightenment-wars-some-ref...)?

I thought both were well worth reading!

The Salon article gets better after the first couple paragraphs, and gives a number of specific examples of how Pinker appears to use poorly-sourced quotes out-of-context in manner that the original authors disagree with. It tracks down a couple of these quotes, with those authors explaining what they really meant. So while it's extremely anti-Pinker, I thought it made a good case for why one should be skeptical of Pinker's argument.

I liked the Quillette article because I'm normally very pessimistic about human progress, and I thought Pinker made a good case that, in fact, lots of things are going much better than they did in the past. I particularly liked his quote of Obama's question "When would you choose to live if you didn’t know who you would be?" I now wonder if the quote is accurate, but I think it's still a good one to ponder. I also liked Pinker's attempt to explicate Scott Alexander's theory of "Conflict vs Mistake", where he says that he feels that the "mistake" side is the essence of the Enlightenment.

Hi, thanks. Not sure why you would think I meant the Pinker interview. Yes, I read that a few weeks ago I think. I don't think I've seen an article on Quillette that wasn't worth reading.

I like reading savage criticisms of people/positions I like! That wasn't the problem. Ok thanks, will give it (salon) a go.

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