I’m really worried about the state of the US despite being a white male who was I’ll coast right through it. I’ll also accept “I don’t” and “very poorly” as answers

You are viewing a single thread.
View all comments View context
3 points

You might think that if you listen to Steven Pinker, The World’s Most Annoying Man.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Yeah, I liked that book but I’m not sure I should believe anything that comes out of his mouth.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

A friend of mine had an interesting basis for dismissing Pinker.

They saw a discussion panel which included Pinker and noticed that in all the discussion and Q&A he didn’t express a single thought that wasn’t already in his book or speech.

The basis is that any person intelligent and thoughtful enough to be an academic let alone a public intellectual has myriad thoughts and ideas that don’t make it into publication and should spill over in conversation. They reasoned that Pinker is just a clever nerd that got lucky in academia, and I’ve always figured that they’re right (having never thought of that way of thinking about it myself).

Incidentally I’ve seen Penn (of Penn and Teller) reason similarly about how dumb Trump is.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Asklemmy

!asklemmy@lemmy.ml

Create post

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it’s welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Icon by @Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de

Community stats

  • 7.8K

    Monthly active users

  • 5.7K

    Posts

  • 310K

    Comments