The brain is not a bag of traits. It's startlingly complex. There are few or no single genes with a consistent effect on the mind. Steven Pinker bagbraincomplex Change image and share on social
Some people believe that the nuclear bomb should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, since it scared the major powers away from war by equating it with doomsday. Steven Pinker awardbombdoomsday Change image and share on social
Climate change could produce a lot of misery and waste without necessarily leading to large-scale armed conflict, which depends more on ideology and bad governance than on resource scarcity. Steven Pinker armbadchange Change image and share on social
If you look in general at people who live in anarchy, they have quite high rates of death from either homicide or warfare or both. Anarchy is one of the main reasons for violence, and it may be the most important. Steven Pinker anarchydeathgeneral share on social
Students do everything on laptops these days, so I definitely think electronic books are a trend that's going to expand. Steven Pinker bookdayelectronic Change image and share on social
Commerce is a noble profession, and Jews should get over any self-hatred they might harbor from contemplating the capitalist spirit of diaspora Judaism. Steven Pinker capitalistcommercecontemplate Change image and share on social
Violence and religion have often gone together, but it's not a perfect correlation, and it doesn't have to be a permanent connection, because religions themselves change. Steven Pinker changeconnectioncorrelation Change image and share on social
I spent 20 years doing research on regular and irregular verbs, not because I'm an obsessive language lover but because it seemed to me that they tapped into a fundamental distinction in language processing, indeed in cognitive processing, between memory lookup and rule-driven computation. Steven Pinker cognitivecomputationdistinction share on social