Author: Steven Pinker
Quotes of Author: Steven Pinker
George Williams, the revered evolutionary biologist, describes the natural world as "grossly immoral." Having no foresight or compassion, natural selection "can honestly be described as a process for maximizing short-sighted selfishness." On top of all the miseries inflicted by predators and parasites, the members of a species show no pity to their own kind. Infanticide, siblicide, and rape can be observed in many kinds of animals; infidelity is common even in so-called pair-bonded species; cannibalism can be expected in all species that are not strict vegetarians; death from fighting is more common in most animal species than it is in the most violent American cities. Commenting on how biologists used to describe the killing of starving deer by mountain lions as an act of mercy, Williams wrote: "The simple facts are that both predation and starvation are painful prospects for deer, and that the lion's lot is no more enviable. Perhaps biology would have been able to mature more rapidly in a culture not dominated by Judeo-Christian theology and the Romantic tradition. It might have been well served by the First Holy Truth from {Buddha's} Sermon at Benares: "Birth is painful, old age is painful, sickness is painful, death is painful..."" As soon as we recognize that there is nothing morally commendable about the products of evolution, we can describe human psychology honestly, without the fear that identifying a "natural" trait is the same as condoning it. As Katharine Hepburn says to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above. book-quotenatural-selectionpredationidyllic-viewMany moral advances have taken the form of a shift in sensibilities that made an action seem more ridiculous than sinful, such as dueling, bullfighting, and jingoistic war. And many effective social critics, such as Swift, Johnson, Voltaire, Twain, Oscar Wilde, Bertrand Russell, Tom Lehrer, and George Carlin have been smart-ass comedians rather than thundering prophets. What in our psychology allows the joke to be mightier than the sword?Humor works by confronting an audience with an incongruity, which may be resolved by switching to another frame of reference. And in that alternative frame of reference, the butt of the joke occupies a lowly or undignified status. ...Humor with a political or moral agenda can stealthily challenge a relational model that is second nature to an audience by forcing them to see that it leads to consequences that the rest of their minds recognize as absurd. ...According to the 18th-century writer Mary Wortley Montagu, 'Satire should, like a polished razor keen / Wound with touch that's scarcely felt or seen.' But satire is seldom polished that keenly, and the butts of a joke may be all too aware of the subversive power of humor. They may react with a rage that is stoked by the intentional insult to a sacred value, the deflation of their dignity, and a realization that laughter indicates common knowledge of both. The lethal riots in 2005 provoked by the editorial cartoons in the Danish newspaper {for example, one showing Muhammad in heaven greeting newly arrived suicide bombers with 'Stop, we have run out of virgins!'} show that when it comes to the deliberate undermining of a sacred relational model, humor is no laughing matter. {pp. 633-634} book-quotesatireIf the multiverse turns out to be the best explanation of the fundamental physical constants, it would not be the first time we have been flabbergasted by worlds beyond our noses. Our ancestors had to swallow the discovery of the Western Hemisphere, eight other planets, a hundred billion stars in our galaxy {many with planets}, and a hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. If reason contradicts intuition once again, so much the worse for intuition. Another advocate of the multiverse, Brian Greene, reminds us: "From a quaint, small, earth-centered universe to one filled with billions of galaxies, the journey has been both thrilling and humbling. We've been compelled to relinquish sacred belief in our own centrality, but with such cosmic demotion we've demonstrated the capacity of the human intellect to reach far beyond the confines of ordinary experience to reveal extraordinary truth." book-quoteuniversemultiverseMy gratitude goes as well to the other data scientists I pestered and to the institutions that collect and maintain their data: Karlyn Bowman, Daniel Cox {PRRI}, Tamar Epner {Social Progress Index}, Christopher Fariss, Chelsea Follett {HumanProgress}, Andrew Gelman, Yair Ghitza, April Ingram {Science Heroes}, Jill Janocha {Bureau of Labor Statistics}, Gayle Kelch {US Fire Administration/FEMA}, Alaina Kolosh {National Safety Council}, Kalev Leetaru {Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone}, Monty Marshall {Polity Project}, Bruce Meyer, Branko Milanović {World Bank}, Robert Muggah {Homicide Monitor}, Pippa Norris {World Values Survey}, Thomas Olshanski {US Fire Administration/FEMA}, Amy Pearce {Science Heroes}, Mark Perry, Therese Pettersson {Uppsala Conflict Data Program}, Leandro Prados de la Escosura, Stephen Radelet, Auke Rijpma {OECD Clio Infra}, Hannah Ritchie {Our World in Data}, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz {Google Trends}, James X. Sullivan, Sam Taub {Uppsala Conflict Data Program}, Kyla Thomas, Jennifer Truman {Bureau of Justice Statistics}, Jean Twenge, Bas van Leeuwen {OECD Clio Infra}, Carlos Vilalta, Christian Welzel {World Values Survey}, Justin Wolfers, and Billy Woodward {Science Heroes}. David Deutsch, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Kevin Kelly, John Mueller, Roslyn Pinker, Max Roser, and Bruce Schneier read a draft of the entire manuscript and offered invaluable advice. book-quote
