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May. 6th, 2018 04:37 pmI've been catching up with Jason Colavito's blog, and he has a post about Steven Pinker that makes me happy.
"Since Pinker’s failings in historiography, scholarship, and reasoning have been amply demonstrated, I will use my space instead to talk about how Enlightenment Now is a secular humanist polemic masquerading as a work of objective science"
Yes. I, like Jason, like secular humanism, but that makes this recent surge of treating secular humanism as some kind of Objective Truth even more galling. It's a religious way of thinking, not a rational one.
Also I'm pretty sure I learned more about the Enlightenment in high school than Pinker has in his whole life, but that's not a real surprise. Evolutionary psychologists are notoriously allergic to history. Looks like Pinker's not up on biology and evolutionary theory, either, since he "singles out anyone who sacrifices himself for the greater good of the collective as a fool."
I wonder where willful ignorance ends and scamming begins. I think Pinker, Dawkins, and Shermer are more on the "willful ignorance" end of things, whereas I'm pretty sure Harris is more of a scammer. Maybe it doesn't matter. What does is that this is why we need to teach history more often and more honestly in schools as a bulwark against this kind of crap.
"Since Pinker’s failings in historiography, scholarship, and reasoning have been amply demonstrated, I will use my space instead to talk about how Enlightenment Now is a secular humanist polemic masquerading as a work of objective science"
Yes. I, like Jason, like secular humanism, but that makes this recent surge of treating secular humanism as some kind of Objective Truth even more galling. It's a religious way of thinking, not a rational one.
Also I'm pretty sure I learned more about the Enlightenment in high school than Pinker has in his whole life, but that's not a real surprise. Evolutionary psychologists are notoriously allergic to history. Looks like Pinker's not up on biology and evolutionary theory, either, since he "singles out anyone who sacrifices himself for the greater good of the collective as a fool."
I wonder where willful ignorance ends and scamming begins. I think Pinker, Dawkins, and Shermer are more on the "willful ignorance" end of things, whereas I'm pretty sure Harris is more of a scammer. Maybe it doesn't matter. What does is that this is why we need to teach history more often and more honestly in schools as a bulwark against this kind of crap.
