Tag: “The Better Angels of Our Nature”

  • Nation & World

    Enough with the quackery, Pinker says

    Steven Pinker thinks “we will always need to push back against our own irrationality,” but that education, democracy, science, and journalism, along with an awareness of our individual biases, can help us embrace a more rational approach to everyday issues.

    9 minutes
    Illustration of a brain and wheels.
  • Nation & World

    Violence in streets, hope in the data

    While the daily news conveys a world beset by horrific acts of terrorism, brutal civil war, and frequent mass shootings, Professor Steven Pinker brought a hopeful message to a talk at Emerson Hall, saying global violence is actually in decline.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Where the research takes you

    Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology, and Howard Gardner, John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, met to interview each other about their research, influences, and interests.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Exorcising the curse of knowledge

    Author Steven Pinker told a packed audience what is wrong with so much academic writing: It’s filled with abstract language, clunky transitions, clichés, “zombie nouns,” and “compulsive hedging.”

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Peace in our times?

    A Harvard Kennedy School panel assembled to discuss “Is War on the Way Out?,” the oddly counterintuitive notion that violence, among both individuals and states, is on the wane, or at least on a downward trajectory.

    3 minutes