Joe Rogan Experience #1073 - Steven Pinker

1. 0:00 – 1:56

   Alt-right label, taboo topics, and why open debate matters

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (laughs) If I can keep it in check. (laughs)

   2. SPSteven Pinker0:02

      (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:02

      Four, three, two... and we're live. First of all, Steve, thank you very much for doing this. I really appreciate it.

   4. SPSteven Pinker0:09

      Oh, thank you for having me.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:10

      I've been a big fan of your work for a long time. And, um, you, you bring up some really fascinating subjects. And, um, we were talking right before the podcast about social media and how weird it is that you got lumped in with the alt-right for a comment saying something along the lines of, uh, that you find... W- what was the exact quote? Something along the lines of, "Highly intelligent people seem to..." Which is not saying they're good people.

   6. SPSteven Pinker0:38

      No, that's right.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:38

      Yeah.

   8. SPSteven Pinker0:38

      And (clears throat) I think a lot of people who are, uh, ignorant of the alt-right, uh, e- equate them with the, uh, the, the skinheads and the neo-Nazis carrying the tiki torches.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:47

      Yes.

   10. SPSteven Pinker0:48

       Uh, but when... I, I was referring strictly to the alt-right from its origin in internet discussion groups.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:53

       Right.

   12. SPSteven Pinker0:54

       And I... You know, I, I know some of them. Some of them are former students and some of them are highly intelligent and, and, uh, high- highly read. So, uh... But, but that's not what people often think of when they think of the alt-right.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:04

       Right.

   14. SPSteven Pinker1:04

       And that's what I was referring to. I was referring to, there are people in tech, there are some people in universities who stay undercover. And, uh, I was... I, I, uh, made some remarks on how to starve that movement, not how to feed it. But-

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:15

       But so many people jumped on it as if you were endorsing the alt-right. It was... What, what was the exact quote? You were just-

   16. SPSteven Pinker1:21

       Well-

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:21

       ... basically saying something along the lines of, "There's a lot of intelligent people that are involved in this."

   18. SPSteven Pinker1:26

       Well, it wasn't so much that. It was also that, that because of the, uh, the various taboos in mainstream intellectual culture, the, the, the... because of political correctness, there are certain things that are just kind of not discussable. But then when people in the alt-right discover them, they feel tremendously empowered. Like, "We are now, you know, privy to the truth that the establishment can't handle. You can't handle the truth." And since it was never discussed in the open, there are no counterarguments to some of the most toxic interpretations. And so the alt-right can run with the... Ne-

2. 1:56 – 3:13

   Sex differences: averages, overlap, and the “fairness vs sameness” mistake

   1. SPSteven Pinker1:56

      never having been in a forum where these things are debated and criticized and put into context, they take, like, one fact and then they draw the most extreme conclusions. If these things were debated in the first place, then you'd realize that those conclusions, uh, are not warranted. Oh, f- I mean, an example is there are average differences between men and women in a lot of psychological traits. Now, uh, if that's... A- and that's often quite taboo in intellectual circles for, I think, bizarre reasons. There are people who think that somehow women's rights depend on men and women being, uh, indistinguishable.

   2. JRJoe Rogan2:29

      Right.

   3. SPSteven Pinker2:29

      Which I think is a bad equation in the first place.

   4. JRJoe Rogan2:32

      I agree.

   5. SPSteven Pinker2:33

      But, um, uh, as soon as you, uh, come across the fact that men and women on average are, are, are different, you also come across the fact that men and women overlap in a lot of these traits. That whatever trait you name that men on average are better at than women or vice versa, there are a lot of women who are better than a lot of men or vice versa. Uh, and so you can't really judge an individual from the average of, uh, their, their, their sex. Also, f- even though there are some traits where men score a little better than women, there are some traits where women score a little better than men. And that, that's the complete picture, but the thing is that if the entire subject is out of bounds, you never get to present the complete picture and some people run away with, "Oh, men and women are totally different."

3. 3:13 – 5:14

   How gender discussion became taboo: backlash to 19th-century pseudo-science

   1. JRJoe Rogan3:13

      What, what are your thoughts on how the subject got out of bounds? Because it's, it's very confusing to me that certain subjects like, uh, the differences between genders are so taboo when they seem so obvious. I mean, you just could go to a mall and just look at the way the men dress and the women dress and you go, "Well, there's some obvious distinctions here."

   2. SPSteven Pinker3:33

      (laughs) Right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan3:33

      Can you-

   4. SPSteven Pinker3:34

      There's a history to it.

   5. JRJoe Rogan3:35

      Right.

   6. SPSteven Pinker3:35

      Because there were, there were a lot of, uh, cockamamie theories in the 19th century and a lot of the 20th century, that, uh, that men were intellectual and women were not, and women were governed by their emotions and their... If women thought too much, it would take blood away from their ovaries and their womb and they wouldn't be fertile and then they'd be all miserable. I mean, really, like, crazy stuff. And as a reaction to that, in the '70s when the second wave of feminism became prominent, it became almost an article of faith that there were no differences between men and women. Uh, and so if you say that there are differences between men and women, you're sending women back to the, to the kitchen and the nursery.

   7. JRJoe Rogan4:12

      So this is-

   8. SPSteven Pinker4:12

      Now, this is a total non-sequitur, because fairness is not the same as sameness. So obviously, women should have equal rights to men whether or not they're cop- exact copies of men or have a distinctive profile, as men have a distinct profile. So I think it was just a mistake to, uh, to conflate the issue of women's rights with men and women being identical. Uh, but that's the way it kind of shook out, and it became kind of an article of faith in, uh, kind of in a lot of... In some feminists, some kind of left liberal circles, that men and women have to be identical. And if they aren't, that means you're a traitor to, to, uh, women's equality.

   9. JRJoe Rogan4:49

      Yeah. And articles of faith are always dangerous.

   10. SPSteven Pinker4:51

       Always dangerous.

   11. JRJoe Rogan4:52

       Especially in that regard.

   12. SPSteven Pinker4:53

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan4:53

       It's... Articles of fairness are always important. I mean, fair- being fair to each other. And but, being fair is also recognizing differences.

   14. SPSteven Pinker5:01

       That's right. And not assuming that any difference is a deficiency.

   15. JRJoe Rogan5:03

       Right.

   16. SPSteven Pinker5:04

       I mean, you know, if you're really doing an honest comparison of the differences between men and women, men wouldn't come out looking so good. (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan5:11

       Yeah. Right.

   18. SPSteven Pinker5:11

       You know?

   19. JRJoe Rogan5:12

       And, um, yeah, I have a whole bit about that in my act.

   20. SPSteven Pinker5:14

       (laughs)

4. 5:14 – 7:43

   Outrage mobs and social media’s distortion of discourse

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:14

      Um, when we're looking at the reaction to this though, what was strange to me was how many people seemed like they wanted to jump on board and criticize you. And I think a lot of it is almost like to take away some of the potential criticism of themselves. Like, it's instant claiming of the moral high ground, virtue signaling, and it's just very disappointing when you see this from intellectuals and college professors and-

   2. SPSteven Pinker5:40

      It is.

   3. JRJoe Rogan5:40

      ... and people that should know better.

   4. SPSteven Pinker5:41

      I mean, to be fair, I, I did not get into much trouble from, from, you know, my peers and among, uh, professors and grad students and so on. There are a couple of trolls who, uh, who, who ran with it. But by and large, the mainstream reaction was that this is almost a sign of, uh, as the New York Times put it, the social media is making us stupid. So-

   5. JRJoe Rogan5:58

      Yeah, that was the article, the cover-

   6. SPSteven Pinker5:59

      I-

   7. JRJoe Rogan6:00

      The name of the ar- title of the article in The Times.

   8. SPSteven Pinker6:01

      Yeah. So it was... So by and large, uh, you know, I, I came out of it okay. But it was a real indication of how these mobs of outrage can c- corrupt any kind of intelligent discourse.

   9. JRJoe Rogan6:12

      Yeah. Well, subtle discussions, di- discussions that involve nuance, like complicated issues that are-... they're, they're complex. They, they require a long des- sort of description of the issue and a, a, a very c- complex sort of take on these various differences between men and women, and the alt-right and the left, and political correct-... th- these are, these are long discussions. I mean, these aren't something that you can smash into a very short soundbite and completely cover your take on things.

   10. SPSteven Pinker6:47

       All the more reason that they shouldn't be taboo, because-

   11. JRJoe Rogan6:50

       Yeah.

   12. SPSteven Pinker6:50

       ... if you can't discuss them, then the only interpretation you're gonna have is the simplistic one. If you br- bring 'em out in the open, then you can start to have that discussion.

   13. JRJoe Rogan6:58

       Yeah. I'm hoping that this is turning around. I'm hoping that what's happened is the outrage culture, the outrage culture has become almost a parody of itself, it's gotten-

   14. SPSteven Pinker7:07

       (laughs)

   15. JRJoe Rogan7:07

       ... so ridiculous that people will s- sort of shy away from outrage. Seemingly, like, the same reason why people are terrified of talking about the differences between men and women is 'cause they don't want to be grouped into the people that literally, or legitimately, rather, were sexist-

   16. SPSteven Pinker7:27

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan7:27

       ... in the, the, you know, in the 1900s and the 1800s, and these people that did have these terrible ideas. So now, we're trying to go so far away from that, that we've become a little bit ridiculous. And I'm hoping things... I'm fe- well, I'm hoping it's a swing, and it'll just kinda bounce back towards the middle again.

5. 7:43 – 11:31

   From early “flame wars” to today: anonymity, roasting, and reputational harm

   1. SPSteven Pinker7:43

      Yeah. And in fact, there, there is some hope that, that, uh, just with any medium as new, (clears throat) there'll be these, uh, excesses, and it takes a while for the system to kind of re- uh, uh, uh, re-equilibrate, have a, an immune response that, that, uh, damps down the worst of it. I mean, I've, I've been on the internet a long time, and in the, in the 80s, when it was mainly academics and computer scientists who were, uh, on the internet, there were these discussion groups. This was before the, the World Wide Web, so it was all text. And there was this concept of, of, uh, flaming.

   2. JRJoe Rogan8:12

      Yes.

   3. SPSteven Pinker8:12

      Uh, I don't know if the word is still... Is it used as-

   4. JRJoe Rogan8:13

      Flame wars.

   5. SPSteven Pinker8:14

      Flame wars.

   6. JRJoe Rogan8:14

      Yeah.

   7. SPSteven Pinker8:14

      It was a great-

   8. JRJoe Rogan8:15

      Those were great.

   9. SPSteven Pinker8:15

      (laughs)

   10. JRJoe Rogan8:15

       Those were the good old days.

   11. SPSteven Pinker8:16

       Well, it came from the, uh, there was a- an award given, uh, su- I mean, a jokey award called the, the Flaming Asshole Award-

   12. JRJoe Rogan8:23

       Oh, really?

   13. SPSteven Pinker8:23

       ... uh, and the, the, uh, to the, the, uh, to the worst, uh, you know, insulter in these kind of intellectual discussions. And the, the, uh, the, the, the trophy was a- supposedly an, an asbestos cork.

   14. JRJoe Rogan8:34

       (laughs)

   15. SPSteven Pinker8:35

       (laughs) But from the Flaming Asshole Award, there was the, the, the, the, the noun, a flame, the adjective, flame wars, the, uh, verb, to flame.

   16. JRJoe Rogan8:44

       Yeah.

   17. SPSteven Pinker8:44

       And then it did dam down as people became aware of flaming as a phenomenon. It... In the discussion groups, it was, "Well, let's not turn this into a flame war or enough flames."

   18. JRJoe Rogan8:53

       Right. Yeah.

   19. SPSteven Pinker8:53

       And when people kind of realized that this was a thing, then they could push back against it. And let's hope that that happens with the social media again.

   20. JRJoe Rogan9:00

       Yeah, I hope so. It was a sport in, like, the late 90s, early 2000s. It was essentially like an online sport. Like, someone would say something about you and you'd go, "Okay, all right, how do I attack this?"

   21. SPSteven Pinker9:11

       (laughs) Right. How do you...

   22. JRJoe Rogan9:12

       And it was, it was more fun than anything. And I, I, I felt like it, there was l- very few people, relatively speaking, involved in discussion groups back then, in terms of, like, the mass amount of people that are on social media now.

   23. SPSteven Pinker9:26

       Yeah, sure.

   24. JRJoe Rogan9:26

       It seemingly, like, everyone is in some form of so- or most people are in some form of social media now, whereas back then, the number of people that were on message boards was so small.

   25. SPSteven Pinker9:36

       Oh, yeah. So small. That's right. And you're right. There r- there is a, uh, an art form of ritual insults.

   26. JRJoe Rogan9:41

       Yes.

   27. SPSteven Pinker9:41

       Like in Shakespeare and, you know, African-American snapping. Uh, there, when people realize-

   28. JRJoe Rogan9:46

       But that doesn't...

   29. SPSteven Pinker9:46

       ... that this is a sport, then, you know, no one gets hurt. It's just like, you know, you know-

   30. JRJoe Rogan9:50

       Right.
6. 11:31 – 19:42

   Why anonymity erodes morality: reciprocity, reputation, and sincerity

   1. JRJoe Rogan11:31

      (laughs) Um, when you see social media today, like, as a psychologist, and you see this, um, thing that people do when they can behave anonymously in the absence of social cues, not in front of each other, not, not seeing the, how the cruel things hurt each other-... how does that make you... Uh, d- do, do you think that this is just an unnatural way of communicating?

   2. SPSteven Pinker11:56

      Well, there is something... uh, the anonymity is certainly u- unnatural.

   3. JRJoe Rogan11:59

      Yes.

   4. SPSteven Pinker11:59

      And the lack of face-to-face contact. And, and I think one of the m- the big discoveries of psychology from over the last couple of decades is that we're moral animals to the extent that we have reputations. Uh, y- the, go- going back to Richard Dawkins' famous book, The Selfish Gene, where he posed the question, how could niceness and generosity and cooperation evolve given that in Darwinian competition, you'd expect the, the most aggressive, the most selfish to predominate? And there's an answer to that question. And Dawkins worked it out back in 1976, based on, uh, work of other biologists, which is that if there's reciprocity, that is, if I, I remember the nice things that you did to me and I feel compelled to, uh, to, to repay them, and conversely, if, uh, you do something that harms me and I threaten revenge, then people can kinda settle into cooperation, because we really are better off if we extend favors to, uh, each other that, uh, do a lot of good to the other in response to a fairly minor inconvenience to the self. If everyone does that, everyone's better off. And that's only stable, though, if everyone has a memory for what everyone else did, therefore that sets up a pressure to cultivate your reputation as someone who will... is trustworthy and will reciprocate. Uh, and, but without the reputation, without the memory of who did what and t- uh, a- and how, uh, generous and trustworthy someone is, the whole thing can unravel, and you get back to, you know, what people think of as Darwinian competition, namely, you know, nature red in tooth and claw, just a bloody battle. So reputation is really... It's not just a ma- matter of kind of e- ego or burnishing your credentials. That's really what makes all cooperation, niceness, kindness, uh, possible. And so when you have an arena in which the, uh, y- first of all, you don't have face-to-face contact, so you don't have the kind of evolved responses that we have to, to, uh, getting along, uh, namely it's, uh, uh, you know, it's a big deal to, uh- Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan14:02

      ... insult someone to their, their, their face. I mean, people do it, but, uh, you gotta do it very carefully. You take that away, and it's just, you know, typing a bunch of characters at a keyboard, and especially if the person doing the typing has a, has a handle, they're just anonymous, then that kind of, uh, eliminates some of the constraints on civility and generosity and, and maintaining a reputation as a, a credible cooperator.

   6. SPSteven Pinker14:24

      I also feel that there's, uh, there's a selfishness in being nice and being generous because, uh, the way I describe... Like, uh, I think it feels good.

   7. JRJoe Rogan14:35

      Yeah. It feels good to be nice to people. It feels good to be generous. When you give someone a nice tip at a restaurant and they get happy, like, that feels good. Like, it's good for you, too. Like, it's not just a one-way street.

   8. SPSteven Pinker14:45

      Well, it's kind of a benign selfishness.

   9. JRJoe Rogan14:47

      Yeah.

   10. SPSteven Pinker14:47

       But it's the kind... I mean, that, that is k-... Although it's not... Uh, the, the, the irony is that it can't just really be calculated. If it's really that I just do exactly as much that gets me gratitude and recognition, then, you know, other people see through that.

   11. JRJoe Rogan15:02

       Right.

   12. SPSteven Pinker15:02

       And so the i- uh, the, the, the, the paradox is that it's kind of got to be sincere for it to be credible to someone else.

   13. JRJoe Rogan15:09

       Yeah.

   14. SPSteven Pinker15:09

       So the most effective way to prove to someone else that you're a nice guy is to actually be a nice guy. (laughs)

   15. JRJoe Rogan15:14

       Yeah.

   16. SPSteven Pinker15:14

       Because if you're just calculating, if you're just doing the bare minimum you can get away with, then k-... Since we're, we're pretty good... we're all pretty good intuitive psychologists-

   17. JRJoe Rogan15:22

       Yeah.

   18. SPSteven Pinker15:22

       ... we're always kinda thinking, "Did he really mean it? Is he just kinda kissing up? Is he trying to g- you know, curry favors?" And we see through that.

   19. JRJoe Rogan15:29

       Yes.

   20. SPSteven Pinker15:29

       It's the person who actually isn't doing that calculation that we really admire and respect.

   21. JRJoe Rogan15:34

       Right. The, the... It's very unusual. It's one of the reasons why we admire. Like, "Look at this, uh, completely altruistic person."

   22. SPSteven Pinker15:41

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan15:41

       Like, it's very rare.

   24. SPSteven Pinker15:41

       I mean, it's kind of like the market. The, the marketplace of reputations kinda selects, can select for true niceness and goodness-

   25. JRJoe Rogan15:49

       Yes.

   26. SPSteven Pinker15:49

       ... if you've got enough information and enough interactions. Uh, I mean, here's a crude analogy. Um, so in the business world, uh, you know, you can have cutthroat, fly-by-night businesses that just try to, you know, squeeze everything out of the customers and then, you know, take off as soon as the, the, the cheating is discovered, but they don't, they don't last very long. They don't actually make a lot of money. It's often the companies that will take back the product no questions asked, even if they lose a little bit of money, but they earn the loyalty of their customers. Uh, those are the companies that often do the best and stick around the longest.

   27. JRJoe Rogan16:20

       Yeah.

   28. SPSteven Pinker16:20

       So it's kind of an analogy to the way that being honorable, even if you have little losses, "Well, I did a little bit more for him than he did for me," but over the long run, that's what makes you desirable as someone that other people want to hang out with, if the reputations can, can spread.

   29. JRJoe Rogan16:35

       Yeah, it's, uh, kind of amazing if you think about how cherished true generosity and kindness, how cherished they are. Like, it's, it's an amazing thing. Like, you see people that are truly kind and truly generous, and we've, we value that so much. It's kind of amazing there aren't more of them.

   30. SPSteven Pinker16:53

       Yeah.
7. 19:42 – 24:11

   Tech panics, self-control, and the smartphone-as-drug analogy

   1. SPSteven Pinker19:42

      Yeah. Uh, th- no, I think that's right. When there's, whenever there's a new technological innovation, it takes society a while to, uh, adjust to it. And I mean, you, you say people got online in 1994, but social media are even more recent than that.

   2. JRJoe Rogan19:53

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SPSteven Pinker19:53

      It's more probably like, you know, smartphones started to become ubiquitous around maybe 2011, and Facebook took off in the 2000s. But yeah, I think that's right. And, and similar things happened in, when other media were introduced. Like, uh, there was a, a p- big panic when television came in, that families would, you know, never talk to each other. They'd all be, uh, staring at the screen like zombies, and you'd never have a conversation over the dinner table ever again. Even before that, when telephones were invented, it was, you know, families would never, uh, sit down together 'cause the phone constantly be ringing and attention spans would be disrupted because the phone could ring any time.

   4. JRJoe Rogan20:29

      Wasn't there similar con- uh, conversation about books?

   5. SPSteven Pinker20:31

      Yeah, (laughs) actually there was. Yeah. And about writing, going back to the ancient Greeks, uh, where, uh, when, when writing was considered to be kind of, um, uh, you know, degenerate and decadent-

   6. JRJoe Rogan20:43

      (laughs)

   7. SPSteven Pinker20:43

      ... because, you know, you, you'd let your memory go to pot, you know. How, how are people gonna cultivate their memories? They can just write things down and look at them.

   8. JRJoe Rogan20:49

      That's crazy.

   9. SPSteven Pinker20:50

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan20:50

       Isn't that interesting? Why do you think that we, we're always looking to dismiss some new, fantastic technology?

   11. SPSteven Pinker20:57

       Uh, it's g- partly 'cause we don't understand it yet. I mean, it's new, and, and, and also, a lot of the adjustments that, that you were just talking about, you know, you can't really predict them beforehand. Uh, a lot of what happens in a society is, there are like, hundreds of little adjustments that people make, like not spend too much time on, uh, Facebook or email, and leave this platform for that platform. Where if you were starting from scratch and asked to come imagine how it's gonna play out, you can't really anticipate these things. Uh, it's like thousands of, of adjustments that people make. They happen when they happen, uh, with millions of people making decisions. Um, but you, you can't just deduce them, uh, beforehand like a logical proof. And so, we just don't know, we know what the threat is, we don't know what society's response is gonna be.

   12. JRJoe Rogan21:44

       Well, this is a fascinating time when it comes to social media and just human interaction because this is so new, and because it's uncharted territory. I mean, I think this is one of the reasons why so many people have so many concerns about it. They're like, "Where is this t- where is this going?" Like, "What's it gonna do to our children?"

   13. SPSteven Pinker21:59

       Right.

   14. JRJoe Rogan21:59

       You walk down the street, and everyone's just staring at their phone.

   15. SPSteven Pinker22:02

       (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan22:02

       I mean, it really is... I, I've said this, that imagine if there was a drug that came along that, uh, this drug made you only think about the drug. You were, uh, you were likely, more likely to get into car accidents because of this drug. You were more likely to sleep late, cause more anxiety-

   17. SPSteven Pinker22:19

       (laughs)

   18. JRJoe Rogan22:19

       ... and, and soak up immense amounts of your time with very little reward for it. You would go, "Wow, what kind of crazy drug is this? It's robbing people of their lives." Well, that's cellphones.

   19. SPSteven Pinker22:28

       Yeah. (laughs)

   20. JRJoe Rogan22:29

       That's social media.

   21. SPSteven Pinker22:30

       Right.

   22. JRJoe Rogan22:30

       I mean, it does give you something, I mean, if you use it correctly. Most of the time, I try to spend on social media, I try to spend, or most of the time on, on my phone, I try to spend off social media, but reading things.

   23. SPSteven Pinker22:42

       Yes, right.

   24. JRJoe Rogan22:42

       I try to read articles, and I try to, I try to, in some way, justify like, "Oh, I'm doing something productive on my phone." But in a lot of ways, I'm just addicted to checking that thing.

   25. SPSteven Pinker22:53

       Yeah. No, you gotta, you, you have to develop habits of self-control-

   26. JRJoe Rogan22:56

       Yeah.

   27. SPSteven Pinker22:56

       ... and balance in life. I had a, uh, a student, so I te- I teach at Harvard, and, uh, one time a freshman came into my office, at, uh, beginning of the semester. So, she looked at the shelf of the, all the books that she read and said, "Wow, Professor Pinker, how do you find time to write so many books?" And then she looks at my office and sees all the books on my shelves and says, "Wow, Professor Pinker, how do you have time to read so many books?" And she paused for a second and she said, "I bet you're not on Facebook." (laughs)

   28. JRJoe Rogan23:22

       (laughs)

   29. SPSteven Pinker23:23

       (laughs)

   30. JRJoe Rogan23:24

       I mean, there's gotta be some good that comes out of those communities as well.
8. 24:11 – 34:35

   Cancellation, virtue signaling, and historical “madness of crowds”

   1. JRJoe Rogan24:11

      Um, when y- uh, when you see all, uh, so much negativity though, and this is a big problem with anonymous accounts in particular, you see it in Facebook with... But in Facebook there seems to be repercussions. Like if you're Tom Smith and Tom Smith writes something horrible, like Tom Smith could get fired from his job for it. We've seen that.

   2. SPSteven Pinker24:31

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan24:31

      People will write something racist or sexist or whatever and we'll see them get fired from their job because of something that they put on Facebook because your profile represents y- the actual you.

   4. SPSteven Pinker24:42

      Yeah, it's not anonymous, yes.

   5. JRJoe Rogan24:43

      I feel like there's benefit to that.

   6. SPSteven Pinker24:45

      Yeah, that's right, there's some. I mean, the problem is there can also be outrage mobs-

   7. JRJoe Rogan24:48

      Yes.

   8. SPSteven Pinker24:48

      ... uh, where someone will post something and it's taken out of context and they didn't realize, well, they meant it as a joke.

   9. JRJoe Rogan24:53

      Right.

   10. SPSteven Pinker24:53

       Like the, the, the woman who went to, to... took that trip to Africa-

   11. JRJoe Rogan24:56

       Yes.

   12. SPSteven Pinker24:57

       ... and made a co- a kind of a self-effacing comment kind of about racism and people thought it was racist, but she was actually making fun of racism. That-

   13. JRJoe Rogan25:04

       I think she was drunk and she was being racist. I just think-

   14. SPSteven Pinker25:08

       Really?

   15. JRJoe Rogan25:08

       ... she was being funny.

   16. SPSteven Pinker25:09

       Hmm.

   17. JRJoe Rogan25:09

       Because comed- look, I'm a comic and I have a lot of comedian friends that are not racist, but they will say hilarious racist things-

   18. SPSteven Pinker25:17

       Right.

   19. JRJoe Rogan25:17

       ... because it's funny.

   20. SPSteven Pinker25:18

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan25:19

       It's not because they're racist. What, what, what was her name? Justine Sacco, thank you.

   22. SPSteven Pinker25:23

       This was the, uh, I- I-

   23. JRJoe Rogan25:24

       Yes.

   24. SPSteven Pinker25:24

       ... hope I don't get AIDS, but, uh, but, uh-

   25. JRJoe Rogan25:26

       I'm ju- just kidding, I'm white, LOL.

   26. SPSteven Pinker25:29

       ... I don't have to worry, I'm wh- I'm white.

   27. JRJoe Rogan25:29

       That's what she wrote.

   28. SPSteven Pinker25:30

       Right.

   29. JRJoe Rogan25:30

       She woke up 12 hours later-

   30. SPSteven Pinker25:32

       Per-
9. 34:35 – 38:23

   Collective intelligence: why institutions make societies smarter than individuals

   1. SPSteven Pinker34:35

      (laughs) Well, this is, you know, uh, one of the big themes in, in, uh, my, my new book, Enlightenment Now, is, um, how is it that we're simultaneously in many ways getting smarter, but also seem to be getting stupider (laughs) -

   2. JRJoe Rogan34:47

      Why do you think?

   3. SPSteven Pinker34:48

      ... as a society? So I think part of it is that none of us is, individually, are that smart. Uh, we all... And, and cognitive psychologists have shown that humans have all kinds of biases and fallacies. We, um, we, we reason from stereotypes. We, uh, assess risk by, uh, how easy it is to imagine something. Uh, so, you know, we're afraid of getting on a plane 'cause it's very easy to imagine a plane crashing, and p- plane crashes make the news. We don't worry about texting while driving because there's never a headline on page one of the hundred people who died in the past week because they texted while driving. Uh, so I mean, there are a lot of, of fallacies. So, but the thing is, we as a species have done some amazing things. I mean, we discovered those Mayan, uh, buried cities. I mean, you know, science is amazing and, 'cause democracies are amazing. And it's because none of us...... solves a problem all by ourselves. We're part of a kind of collective brain that works by rules where all of the excesses of one person get kind of balanced out by, uh, by other people. And that's why you have, uh, you know, things like, uh, checks and balances in a democracy, where instead of having a supreme leader who just runs the country the way he wants, he's gotta w- worry about the legislature and the courts and the judges and, you know, and, and impeachment and so on. In science, instead of having, you know, one genius announcing the way the world works, you know, he or she has to subject themself to peer review and get... let other sciences critiso- scientists criticize, uh, him or her. And, uh, whenever you get people acting intelligently, it's often because they belong to these institutions with rules that are designed to make up for the idiocies of any individual person.

   4. JRJoe Rogan36:35

      Mm. That's fascinating. Um, I, I completely agree with that. That makes so much sense. I've also felt that there, there's not a lot... There, there's not a... We have difficulties. Obviously, people have difficulties in this life. There's social difficulties, economic difficulties. But when... In terms of survival difficulties, it's, it's way easier to get by today than it has ever been in human history. And I wonder if human beings have a need for adversity and complexity and problem-solving. And, uh, uh, all these things that, uh, are less... They're, they're less present today than ever before. I think things are just t- almost too simple.

   5. SPSteven Pinker37:20

      (laughs)

   6. JRJoe Rogan37:20

      We've made it too easy. We've nerfed the world.

   7. SPSteven Pinker37:22

      (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan37:23

      And in doing so, it's easier to just kind of be dull-minded and drift-

   9. SPSteven Pinker37:27

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JRJoe Rogan37:27

       ... through and follow the herd. The herd is so big, and there's so many people in the herd-

   11. SPSteven Pinker37:32

       (coughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan37:32

       ... if you just do what most of the people are doing, wear what most of the people are wearing, say the things most of the people say, you'll survive. And you'll survive, and you'll find some other dimwitted person to breed with, and you'll make-

   13. SPSteven Pinker37:45

       (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan37:45

       ... dimwitted children. And I'm, I'm being dead serious. I think there's a certain... When you're d- dealing with this massive pack of humans, 300-plus million on a continent, there's just... There's so much r- Uh, I've always said, like, if you have a group of people, if you're being very generous, and you have a hundred people in a room, what are the odds that one of those people is a moron?

   15. SPSteven Pinker38:05

       (laughs) It's, it's a hundred percent that one- Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan38:08

       ... is going to be a moron. That leaves you with three million morons in the United States of America-

   17. SPSteven Pinker38:12

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JRJoe Rogan38:12

       ... if you're being really kind.

   19. SPSteven Pinker38:14

       And, and three million geniuses.

   20. JRJoe Rogan38:15

       Yes.

   21. SPSteven Pinker38:15

       Yeah. I get that.

   22. JRJoe Rogan38:16

       Well, probably... (coughs) I, I'm an optimist. I, I would like-

   23. SPSteven Pinker38:20

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan38:20

       ... to think you're dealing with probably six million geniuses.

   25. SPSteven Pinker38:22

       (laughs) Right. Okay.

   26. JRJoe Rogan38:23

       You know? But-

10. 38:23 – 57:20

    Flynn effect and the “trend lines, not headlines” worldview

    1. SPSteven Pinker38:23

       Well, you know, I, I... My, you know, my, my book is k- is often described as a, a book on optimism, The Enlightenment Now, because I have 75 graphs-

    2. JRJoe Rogan38:31

       (clears throat)

    3. SPSteven Pinker38:32

       ... almost all of which show the world getting better, including what-

    4. JRJoe Rogan38:34

       Yes.

    5. SPSteven Pinker38:34

       ... some people think is the most incredible, uh, graph in the book on a phenomenon called the Flynn effect, which is that, believe it or not, and I know most people do not, IQ scores have been rising for most of the last 100 years, about three points a decade. Now, this, I know it seems totally unbelievable. But yeah, they discovered it when... Flynn, a philosopher, discovered it when he realized that the people who make IQ tests had to keep re-norming the tests to keep 100 as the average, because the average kept creeping up. And it was like, "Gee, 110, well, we keep... That, that's what most people score. We say that the average is 100. We gotta adjust the scale downward." And Flynn realized, "Hey, wait a second. If they keep doing this over and over again, that must mean the population's getting smarter." Now, not biologically smarter. It's not that people's brain power, uh, has somehow magically been increasing, although probably a little bit of that through better nutrition, better sanitation and healthcare, and so on. But a lot of it is just that... a lot that, um, s- ideas that used to be kind of sophisticated and restricted to professors and scientists and statisticians kind of trickle down to the population. And so we... Things like, uh, um, placebo effect or trade-off or cost-benefit analysis or win-win situation, all these things that actually came from pretty fancy-shmancy theory originally, but they kind of are, are loosed on the whole population, and they become part of everyone's conventional wisdom. Also, we have to think more and more in abstract ways just to deal with things like a, you know, a subway map, or a smartphone, (clears throat) a, uh, watching TV. It's... You know, it used to be you could turn on the knob and your TV would be on. Now you gotta kind of program the bloody thing. So, the demands of life have become more sophisticated, and ideas (clears throat) spread more quickly. And so we are quite literally getting smarter, up to a point. Things that can't go on forever, don't, and the Flynn effect is starting to level off. But there has been this, this, uh, this drift upward in intelligence.

    6. JRJoe Rogan40:37

       I don't think that's surprising at all. I think if you look at the amount of information that people are subject to today, and just the, the sheer raw data. I mean, there's... A lot of the data is just nonsense, and Twitter, and... What, uh... What is the quote, that we produce more content in two days than in entire human history every two days?

    7. SPSteven Pinker40:56

       Wow. Yeah, I think that-

    8. JRJoe Rogan40:56

       Something crazy like that. Is that right?

    9. SPSteven Pinker40:58

       It sounds plausible.

    10. JRJoe Rogan40:59

        Something along those lines.

    11. SPSteven Pinker41:00

        It sounds plausible, yeah.

    12. JRJoe Rogan41:00

        Yeah. But most of it is like, "LOL, I just went to the mall." (laughs)

    13. SPSteven Pinker41:05

        Right. (laughs)

    14. JRJoe Rogan41:05

        You know, like... (laughs) You know, there's a lot of nonsense-

    15. SPSteven Pinker41:07

        Yeah.

    16. JRJoe Rogan41:07

        ... in there.

    17. SPSteven Pinker41:07

        Right.

    18. JRJoe Rogan41:07

        But the sheer amount of interesting information, like those newly discovered Mayan ruins in Guatemala and things along those lines, or, you know, some, uh... There was, uh, some, uh, interesting new information on, uh, the, the history of human beings 'cause they found some new teeth and some, uh... that throwback the, the date of modern humans, uh, and they keep moving that back. Which, the point is, we're constantly getting more information and more data, more things to think about. And I've just gotta assume that the amount of information that comes to a person in 2018 is just vastly larger than the amount that came to them in 1978.

    19. SPSteven Pinker41:46

        Oh, absolutely. And there are... You know, as, as idiotic as a lot of, of public debate is today, there was a lot of idiocy in the past too.

    20. JRJoe Rogan41:53

        Sure.

    21. SPSteven Pinker41:54

        I mean, in the, uh... You know, as recently as the 1960s, there's that, that movie on the, um, first, um, uh, interracial couple in Virginia, where there was a court, um, a judge who said, "God..."... uh, didn't mean for the races to intermarry. That's why He put Black people in Africa and yellow people in, uh, Asia and white people in Europe.

    22. JRJoe Rogan42:13

        The judge?

    23. SPSteven Pinker42:14

        The judge.

    24. JRJoe Rogan42:14

        Hilarious.

    25. SPSteven Pinker42:15

        The judge said this in his decision-

    26. JRJoe Rogan42:16

        God.

    27. SPSteven Pinker42:16

        ... eventually overturned, Loving versus Vir- Virginia. Um, now, I mean, n- no one would make that stupid an argument today.

    28. JRJoe Rogan42:24

        Right.

    29. SPSteven Pinker42:24

        Uh, even, even people that we, you know, think of as, as kind of racist, they'd be embarrassed.

    30. JRJoe Rogan42:28

        Yeah.
11. 57:20 – 1:05:52

    Enlightenment Now: problem-solving mindset, negativity bias, and “possibilism”

    1. JRJoe Rogan57:20

       When you chose to write a book about enlightenment, and you chose to write a book that's showing all these positive graphs and all these trends that seem to be, uh, optimistic, are you, um, writing that... Obviously, you feel this way, and this is the data, and this is your, your interpretation of where, where we're headed, but are you, are you also kind of, like, encouraging people in a way to have a more rose-colored view of the world, and just-

    2. SPSteven Pinker57:50

       Yeah.

    3. JRJoe Rogan57:51

       ... understand the...

    4. SPSteven Pinker57:51

       I think I'm not, not so much rose-colored, but, uh, um...

    5. JRJoe Rogan57:54

       It's a bad description.

    6. SPSteven Pinker57:55

       No, no, no, it's-

    7. JRJoe Rogan57:55

       But positive.

    8. SPSteven Pinker57:56

       ... I know, I know exactly what you mean. No, but, um, have a, a kind of problem-solving mindset, namely, we have solved problems in the past, or at least we've, we've reduced them, and that, I think, emboldens us to, uh, look at the problems we have now and think, "Well, we can handle those too," if we decide to do now what our ancestors did in the past that led in the right directions. And I, I, I credit this to the, uh, mindset of the enlightenment, namely that with reason and science and a concern for human welfare, we can gradually make people better off. And as long as we maintain that kind of philosophy of, of, of living, uh, then we, then there's a reasonable hope that we can solve the problems facing us. It doesn't happen by itself. There's not, you know, a magic escalator. There's no, you know, uh, uh, arc of history or dialectic or any mystical stuff that just makes us better and better. There's, uh, recognizing problems and figuring out how the world works and doing our best to solve them. So that was, that was the message. And the fact that we have had progress, contrary to the impressions you get from the headlines, shows that this is not a crazy, idealistic, optimistic pipe dream. It's happened, and some more of it can happen.

    9. JRJoe Rogan59:10

       Yeah, that's where I was going with this, is that, w- why do we have this desire to concentrate on the negative? Like, um, I, I have a friend, uh, my friend Ian Edwards has this bit about the news, about renaming it to the bad news.

    10. SPSteven Pinker59:22

        (laughs) Right.

    11. JRJoe Rogan59:23

        And, uh, he, he goes on this whole rant about the news. But it's, he's-

    12. SPSteven Pinker59:26

        Oh, I gotta, I gotta check this out.

    13. JRJoe Rogan59:27

        But he's right.

    14. SPSteven Pinker59:27

        Yeah.

    15. JRJoe Rogan59:27

        And, and it is a thing that we... is it because we have this concern, like, we have to recognize danger, and we wanna know what's happening so that we know that we're safe? But the reality is we're dealing with a world of seven billion people with seven billion stories. You know? So you're, you're gonna be able to see negative stuff all day long if you ch- so choose to do that, if you so choose to concentrate on negativity. And it gives you this bizarre portrait of the world, that the world is just this horrible place, and that... Bill Hicks used to have a bit about CNN, about, you're watching CNN and it'd be death, AIDS, pit bulls. You go outside, birds are chirping. Like, "Where is all this shit happening?"

    16. SPSteven Pinker1:00:07

        (laughs)

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:00:08

        Like... (laughs) It's...

    18. SPSteven Pinker1:00:09

        You know, and, and there's a, there's a lot to that, that's a good-

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:00:10

        Yeah.

    20. SPSteven Pinker1:00:10

        ... those are great, great examples. But it's-

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:00:12

        But why do we concentrate?

    22. SPSteven Pinker1:00:14

        Yeah.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:00:14

        What is our d- our desire to concentrate only on the negative or s- uh, mostly on the negative?

    24. SPSteven Pinker1:00:19

        Well, there is a phenomenon in psychology called the negativity bias.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:00:23

        Mm-hmm.

    26. SPSteven Pinker1:00:23

        The, uh... that bad is psychologically stronger than good.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:00:26

        Wow.

    28. SPSteven Pinker1:00:26

        So we dread-

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:00:27

        Why is that?

    30. SPSteven Pinker1:00:28

        We dread losses more than we enjoy gains, and criticism hurts much more than praise makes you feel better. Uh, we're... our, uh, our, our minds are attracted to possibilities of, of death and danger and so on. Uh, I think it's because we are really... as, as you say, we are vulnerable. There are many more things that can go wrong than can go right, and that's kind of a implication of the law of entropy. Uh, there's a tiny fraction of the ways th- the world could work that works, works out well for you, and an awful lot of ways that things can go wrong. And so, our minds are attuned to things that could go wrong, and that kind of opens up a market for experts to remind us of things that can go wrong that we may have forgotten. And so, the, the news tends to gravitate to the negative, and there are actually studies that show this. You give editors, uh, two different, uh, framings of an event, an optimistic one and a pessimistic one, they pick the pessimistic one. And that's a trend that's actually increased. I have a graph in the book, one of the 75 graphs, uh, that shows, uh, a, an automatic analysis of the tone of the news. That is, how often are there positive words, like, you know, improve, better? How often are there negative words, like crisis, disaster, catastrophe? And the news has been getting more and more negative for about 70 years.
12. 1:05:52 – 1:31:52

    Borders, globalization, poverty decline—and the backlash of political correctness

    1. SPSteven Pinker1:05:52

       Yeah.

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:05:52

       It's like a normal European country. It used to be this conquering nation. Like, how- how long can we kind of keep this thing up? And what are your thoughts on the, the future of, of just even the idea of nations? It seems like our bo- our boundaries and our borders, uh, the- the way we have, uh, online, this ability to communicate with people all over the place, everywhere, it seems to me to, uh, lessen the necessary... Or the need, rather, for- for borders.

    3. SPSteven Pinker1:06:22

       Yeah.

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:06:22

       And for- for these walls that we're now literally and figuratively talking about putting up.

    5. SPSteven Pinker1:06:29

       Yeah, I think there's gonna be a, a kind of, uh, a balance. It's, I mean, an interesting thing about nation-states now is that they are... There's- there's a sense in which they're treated as immortal, uh-

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:06:39

       Hmm.

    7. SPSteven Pinker1:06:39

       ... and that... Whereas, as you mentioned, for most of history, there were conquering emperors and, uh, uh, n- nation- nations were wiped off the map and engulfed and conquered. And, you know, now you look at a map of the world, and, uh, it's actually not that different from what it was 70 years ago. I mean, there are colonies that achieved independence. There's some big states, like Soviet Union, that broke fragmented, but the borders in between the Soviet republics are now borders between nation-states. And no nation has gone out of existence through conquest since, uh, since 1945, uh, at least recogn- internationally recognized state by the, by the UN. So there's this norm, even though the borders are often, you know, crazy, and they've, they were arbitrary lines drawn on a map. But one of the reasons that, um... Again, this is counterintuitive, that wars have gone down and deaths in wars have gone down, is that borders are now treated as sacrosanct by the kind of international community. Not 100% of the time. You had Russia, uh, uh, annexing Crimea, but those are, are exceptions. And by and large, unlike, say, in the past, in the 19th century, where the US had a- an unpaid debt from Mexico, so it conquered, you know, Texas and Colorado (laughs) and K- and Nevada and, and California, you know, that doesn't happen anymore. And so the, the borders have kind of been grandfathered in, and that's one of the reasons why the, uh, the- the- the world has been more stable in terms of the, uh, the- the map. On the other hand, as you mentioned, there's another sense in which we have this global community that tr- transcends borders. We have things like the European Union. We have the United Nations. We have, uh, trade agreements like NAFTA, which try to get simultaneously the grandfathered borders, but this extra layer of cooperation that transcends the borders. And we need them more and more, despite the fact that our- our- our current president is pushing back against the global community. Um, but because there are problems that are, are global, uh, mi- migration, terrorism, climate, pollution, rogue states, and the fact that people, even if they've... E- even if you grow up in France and you consider yourself a French citizen, you wanna be able to spend a summer in, um, you know, in, in Italy or in England or in Belgium if- if that's where there's a good job. And there's a desire among people to be able to move to wherever the opportunities are best. So there's gonna be some kind of compromise, I think, between keeping the- the- the- the nation-state borders, just so you don't have constant wars of conquest and border disputes, but allowing the world and allowing the people of the world to take advantage of a true global community.

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:09:18

       Yeah, I feel like that's one of the things that people were most upset about Brexit, was that this is, uh, uh, even though they... The people that were pro-Brexit felt like this was in the interest of the UK and the interest of England to be separate from all this because they were doing better and because they didn't want all the negative possibilities from all these other places coming into their environment. But the... What- what I think that people... What they didn't like about it was the idea that this is a, uh, a regressive move, and that the progressive move is that we would all move towards, uh, this idea of a global community, of this en- entire world being free and connected. And, you know, we- we've talked about, um, some of the problems that Paris has with, uh, immigration. We showed some of the videos of these, uh, these immigrants that are just littered all over the street and, uh, taking this place apart. And we're looking at it going, "Man, that is a, that is a real tragedy." But what it represents is a bunch of people that really don't have anything. Like the real tragedy is that these people live like this. The real tragedy is not that they've done it to Paris. The real tragedy is that these people exist at all and that they moved to Paris looking for a better life, and now they're stuck in this situation where-

    9. SPSteven Pinker1:10:37

       Hmm.

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:10:37

        ... you know, there's not a lot of sanitation and the garbage is all over the place. They're littering everywhere. And the- it's... I wonder if we ever will have a world where there isn't a place where you can go and ship a factory and pay people a dollar an hour, because they don't need a dollar an hour, because it's just like living in Los Angeles or just-

    11. SPSteven Pinker1:10:59

        Mm-hmm.

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:11:00

        ... like living in Phoenix. Like you'd never be able to pay someone a dollar an hour because there's too much opportunity. The- the- the world has caught up and surpassed it.

    13. SPSteven Pinker1:11:09

        Yeah. I mean, there are a number of- of, uh, really complicated issues that they... You know, mobility is, in general, a good thing, and countries do well when they welcome in immigrants, but, you know, not-

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:11:21

        Not on the short term.

    15. SPSteven Pinker1:11:22

        Yeah, not too many too fast.

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:11:23

        Yeah.

    17. SPSteven Pinker1:11:24

        Faster than they can be assimilated and integrated into the new country. So, just opening the doors-

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:11:30

        Right.

    19. SPSteven Pinker1:11:30

        ... probably is not a good idea. No country really does that. But, uh, building the wall is a terrible idea too. Uh, and of course, the- the- the- the best way to prevent...... uh, you know, massive amounts of, of migration, is to make life better in the countries of origin.

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:11:46

        Right.

    21. SPSteven Pinker1:11:46

        And that is happening slowly and unevenly, but, uh, y- uh, it's been noted that even in the United States and Mexico, more people, uh, are going, uh, or the same number of people are, uh, doing the reverse migration from the US back to Mexico now that the economy of Mexico is so much better than it was 25 years-

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:12:02

        My own parents.

    23. SPSteven Pinker1:12:02

        Okay, yeah.

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:12:03

        Yeah, my parents live in Mexico.

    25. SPSteven Pinker1:12:04

        Okay, there you go.

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:12:05

        Yeah.

    27. SPSteven Pinker1:12:06

        Um, and there is, uh, a, um, uh, hard to detect, but there is a, a huge improvement in the standard of living in what used to be called the Third World, the developing world, where, um, the, uh, if you look at the cutoff for extreme poverty, it's kind of define- defined somewhat arbitrarily as a $1.90 per person per day, kind of the bare, bare, bare minimum to feed, feed your family. Uh, it's, it's down now from, uh, 50% a few decades ago to 10% now, and the United Nations has set the goal of bringing it to zero by the year 2030 of extreme poverty.

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:12:39

        And what, what is causing that? What's causing the change?

    29. SPSteven Pinker1:12:42

        So, uh, a lot of it is, um, globalization that, I mean, even though that's kind of a villain in many people's eyes. But when you have, uh, a, a huge global market, then, uh... and the introduction of, of, uh, factories and industrialization in China, in India, in Bangladesh. Sometimes the conditions are grim, but the conditions being a peasant in the rice paddies was even grimmer.

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:13:05

        Hmm.

Episode duration: 2:13:09