Professor Steven Pinker - Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism & Progress

00:00 | Trailer
02:37 | Brian’s thoughts on the episode
05:00 | Brian’s introduction
05:31 | Steven loves being back in London
06:20 | How the MIT perspective and culture are woven into Steven’s books
09:23 | Voluntary sacrifices are not going to make a nick in the problem of climate change
11:37 | Aware of people’s cognitive biases, Steven uses data and figures to prove the world has improved
17:28 | How to guard against one’s cognitive biases
20:26 | The internet allows irrational ideas to flourish whilst science sites disprove them
30:13 | Why idea tribalism is prevalent in today’s world and how statistical evidence can dispel beliefs
32:03 | Is Steven’s optimism the reason why people favour his point of view
35:55 | The Progressives tend to be on the Left and hate progress, but there is a right-wing version too
41:26 | Steven’s optimism for a progressive future, one without interstate wars
47:15 | The Blank Slate, the modern denial of human nature
50:00 | Steven’s views on gender equality
56:16 | James Damore’s firing for questioning male domination in computer coding
1:00:09 | Steven’s perspective on the word Patriarchy
1:07:57 | A sense of universal solidarity, love and commonality could be induced by oxytocin in the brain
1:10:17 | The, everybody’s talking about it, influence of social media
1:18:11 | Success secrets
1:18:56 | What scares Steven
1:19:37 | How we are doing in dealing with problems in the Environment
1:23:15 | Phone call to the 20 years old Steven
1:26:05 | Best advice ever received
1:28:01 | Advice to the young person listening
1:29:27 | Brian’s summing up.