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3.96 AVERAGE
3.96 AVERAGE
Snarky, highly argumentative, highly intelligent pieces of writing are only fun when you agree with the bulk of what is being said.
This was a blast! Young Harvard Professor giving it ALL HE’S GOT! Summarizing science in prose, making jokes, hitting you with example after example, after example, after example after study! And then throwing in CARTOONS.
Enviable. Beautiful. Expansive. Seemingly complete. He is so mean and so right about things that are so fundamental and so important that this book is both overwhelming and dense while being entirely intoxicating.
Dude wrote such a book he can put a list of human universals after the last page! He can address John Tooby and Leda Cosmides by first name in the dedication! He quotes Trivers foreword from the first edition of the Selfish Gene! He knows it’s good. That’s what makes it amazing.
Surprisingly tender. Will rest in my memory, and will easily be one of the few books I come back to again and again.
This was a blast! Young Harvard Professor giving it ALL HE’S GOT! Summarizing science in prose, making jokes, hitting you with example after example, after example, after example after study! And then throwing in CARTOONS.
Enviable. Beautiful. Expansive. Seemingly complete. He is so mean and so right about things that are so fundamental and so important that this book is both overwhelming and dense while being entirely intoxicating.
Dude wrote such a book he can put a list of human universals after the last page! He can address John Tooby and Leda Cosmides by first name in the dedication! He quotes Trivers foreword from the first edition of the Selfish Gene! He knows it’s good. That’s what makes it amazing.
Surprisingly tender. Will rest in my memory, and will easily be one of the few books I come back to again and again.
It was a silly (at best) and stupid (at worst) Pinker article that got me thinking about The Blank Slate and what rating I had given it, only to look back and discover I had neglected to log or rate it at all. This was a book a family member gave me a little while ago--as a little background, a scholarly-inclined Korean-speaking family member who I think read this (and E.O. Wilson's The Social Conquest of Earth) over a winter and gave me my own copies out of interest. They remain to date some of the only thoughtful gifts I've ever gotten from family. I don't think we ever got around to discussing, though. Anyway--
First of all, two stars is not a name-blackening rating. I still resent the implication that if I don't hate someone, I have to give their book three stars at least to be polite. Three stars = liked it. Two stars = it was okay. This was okay. Anyway:
Pinker's book is a solid case of "book that would be nonexistent without strawmen." Take away all the time he spends either characterizing the extremes of viewpoints he finds alarming or defending his own character against potential accusations, and there wouldn't be a lot of book left. This undermined the whole thing in a major way for me, because in my experience there is no mainstream assertion in either the scientific community or lay discourse that heredity and biology don't play a major role in temperament and behavior. What those roles are, what the system and processes that express them are, how they are altered or expressed in variable ways by experience and other external factors, what the interaction is with philosophical questions of free will, what the narratives arising from this are, etc. are all under intense discussion of varying degrees of rigor and good faith, but while it would also be hyperbole to say no one believes in the tabula rasa... it's definitely not the situation that Pinker implies in this book. So to helplessly rail against an imagined, unreasonable majority opinion is a pretty large waste of time.
It is also a waste of time that scatters a quick sleight of hand over the unscientificness of the book, frankly. Pinker hops from topic to topic and anecdote to anecdote in such a tizzy that he alights on a lot of fields, issues, and experiments he clearly doesn't have much of a grasp of; one part that made me laugh was something complaining about modern art, not over whether one does or doesn't value modern art but his unironic assertion that this is connected to his point about the establishment suppressing the discussion of human nature. Not to be an asshole, here, but this is the kind of thing you only get out of the social sciences, and specifically sort of the pop punditry in the social sciences--lots of unfalsifiable things in elegant words. If anything the existence of modern art is as much an eventual end product of behavior and nature as anything else we do, as evidenced by the fact that... well, we do it. You can argue about why, and what the role art plays in individual life and society, but Pinker quite frequently finds himself sliding, like down a water slide, from what we do to what we should do, as concerns. Which you would think would be damaging to his point.
I mean, it isn't, because Steven Pinker isn't writing a scientific or scientifically grounded book here, but sort of a polemic about a topic he's passionate about with unrigorous reference to fields he has training and experience in. I don't doubt that he does, but it doesn't show up much in The Blank Slate.
I'm reminded of the article that brought me here, which was a defense of Harvard president Larry Summers in 2005--yes, that one. Yes, it went as you might expect. But what struck me about it were two things--one was a casual reference to how if gendered socialization were as powerful as "people" (what people?) think, why do gender differences show up so consistently in different societies?
This struck me as an unbelievably silly claim. If there's a smarter claim intended, it certainly doesn't exist in the text of that one--the majority of "societies" as best we can define them, especially at this time in history, have more in common in values than they have different. We have no control group for this, just a lot of interconnected communities with a long history of accelerating cross-pollination. The thing is there is lot to be said about human nature and group behavior and desires that leads to social structuring and values, which then structure behavior even further--... which is being said... and not by Pinker. Instead this was attempted to reference the idea that there were the equivalent of reliably controlled studies of humans raised in truly alien social environments (to the values of the modern West, for example) and turning out similarly, which there really, really aren't.
The other was a reference to the case of John Money and David Reimer--but actually, not by name. It was a handwaved reference to 'cases' of boys who suffered mutilation and gender reassignment as children, raised as girls and later developing masculine 'traits' and desires for masculine identity. But it's clearly a reference to the Reimer case, which is a really depressing and outrageous story about medical malpractice and medicalized child abuse. If Pinker were referencing it more directly, he might have had to admit that the Reimer case is in fact frequently adopted insensitively by queer politics in an attempt to advance ideas of born-this-way legitimacy; he's arguing against "leftists" and "radical feminists" and "postmodernism" all at once as strawmen.
But the thing is, I don't think this is dishonest--not this and not the assertion about socialization in different societies. I think it's just stupid. I think his read on the Reimer case really is that shallow and poorly remembered.
So I guess what I have to say about Steven Pinker is--he seems like a sort of "classic liberal" secular atheist guy a bit alarmed and upset by the encroachment of leftism into academic spaces, and that's what he tried to write a book about. And that is basically what he wrote a book about. There are actually a lot of books about heredity, even accessible to a lay audience - it's a topic of great interest culturally to many, in a major way it's how people define their identities and legacies - but they wouldn't be as, uh, sad and entreating and implicitly opinionated as this one. Pinker needn't worry, I don't think he's a eugenicist, or even exactly a bigot beyond what I suppose are the tendencies of the lazier and more self-satisfied members of his generation--you know, an old boy's club with Larry Summers, dining at a faculty club and trying to rationalize that they belong there. I just think this is kind of a useless book for a demographic of people that sort of want to read smarter than they usually do, but also feel comfy in confirmation bias.
And I'm not sure it promotes anything broadly, abstractly untrue about humanity in it, or at least not from my understanding. But it promotes a lot that's untrue about the current discourse, and I think that's pretty harmful in its own right. Nevertheless I have come away convinced that Steven Pinker definitely believes it.
Most pop-science books are something like this, though--if it took any effort to learn Americans wouldn't be reading it!
First of all, two stars is not a name-blackening rating. I still resent the implication that if I don't hate someone, I have to give their book three stars at least to be polite. Three stars = liked it. Two stars = it was okay. This was okay. Anyway:
Pinker's book is a solid case of "book that would be nonexistent without strawmen." Take away all the time he spends either characterizing the extremes of viewpoints he finds alarming or defending his own character against potential accusations, and there wouldn't be a lot of book left. This undermined the whole thing in a major way for me, because in my experience there is no mainstream assertion in either the scientific community or lay discourse that heredity and biology don't play a major role in temperament and behavior. What those roles are, what the system and processes that express them are, how they are altered or expressed in variable ways by experience and other external factors, what the interaction is with philosophical questions of free will, what the narratives arising from this are, etc. are all under intense discussion of varying degrees of rigor and good faith, but while it would also be hyperbole to say no one believes in the tabula rasa... it's definitely not the situation that Pinker implies in this book. So to helplessly rail against an imagined, unreasonable majority opinion is a pretty large waste of time.
It is also a waste of time that scatters a quick sleight of hand over the unscientificness of the book, frankly. Pinker hops from topic to topic and anecdote to anecdote in such a tizzy that he alights on a lot of fields, issues, and experiments he clearly doesn't have much of a grasp of; one part that made me laugh was something complaining about modern art, not over whether one does or doesn't value modern art but his unironic assertion that this is connected to his point about the establishment suppressing the discussion of human nature. Not to be an asshole, here, but this is the kind of thing you only get out of the social sciences, and specifically sort of the pop punditry in the social sciences--lots of unfalsifiable things in elegant words. If anything the existence of modern art is as much an eventual end product of behavior and nature as anything else we do, as evidenced by the fact that... well, we do it. You can argue about why, and what the role art plays in individual life and society, but Pinker quite frequently finds himself sliding, like down a water slide, from what we do to what we should do, as concerns. Which you would think would be damaging to his point.
I mean, it isn't, because Steven Pinker isn't writing a scientific or scientifically grounded book here, but sort of a polemic about a topic he's passionate about with unrigorous reference to fields he has training and experience in. I don't doubt that he does, but it doesn't show up much in The Blank Slate.
I'm reminded of the article that brought me here, which was a defense of Harvard president Larry Summers in 2005--yes, that one. Yes, it went as you might expect. But what struck me about it were two things--one was a casual reference to how if gendered socialization were as powerful as "people" (what people?) think, why do gender differences show up so consistently in different societies?
This struck me as an unbelievably silly claim. If there's a smarter claim intended, it certainly doesn't exist in the text of that one--the majority of "societies" as best we can define them, especially at this time in history, have more in common in values than they have different. We have no control group for this, just a lot of interconnected communities with a long history of accelerating cross-pollination. The thing is there is lot to be said about human nature and group behavior and desires that leads to social structuring and values, which then structure behavior even further--... which is being said... and not by Pinker. Instead this was attempted to reference the idea that there were the equivalent of reliably controlled studies of humans raised in truly alien social environments (to the values of the modern West, for example) and turning out similarly, which there really, really aren't.
The other was a reference to the case of John Money and David Reimer--but actually, not by name. It was a handwaved reference to 'cases' of boys who suffered mutilation and gender reassignment as children, raised as girls and later developing masculine 'traits' and desires for masculine identity. But it's clearly a reference to the Reimer case, which is a really depressing and outrageous story about medical malpractice and medicalized child abuse. If Pinker were referencing it more directly, he might have had to admit that the Reimer case is in fact frequently adopted insensitively by queer politics in an attempt to advance ideas of born-this-way legitimacy; he's arguing against "leftists" and "radical feminists" and "postmodernism" all at once as strawmen.
But the thing is, I don't think this is dishonest--not this and not the assertion about socialization in different societies. I think it's just stupid. I think his read on the Reimer case really is that shallow and poorly remembered.
So I guess what I have to say about Steven Pinker is--he seems like a sort of "classic liberal" secular atheist guy a bit alarmed and upset by the encroachment of leftism into academic spaces, and that's what he tried to write a book about. And that is basically what he wrote a book about. There are actually a lot of books about heredity, even accessible to a lay audience - it's a topic of great interest culturally to many, in a major way it's how people define their identities and legacies - but they wouldn't be as, uh, sad and entreating and implicitly opinionated as this one. Pinker needn't worry, I don't think he's a eugenicist, or even exactly a bigot beyond what I suppose are the tendencies of the lazier and more self-satisfied members of his generation--you know, an old boy's club with Larry Summers, dining at a faculty club and trying to rationalize that they belong there. I just think this is kind of a useless book for a demographic of people that sort of want to read smarter than they usually do, but also feel comfy in confirmation bias.
And I'm not sure it promotes anything broadly, abstractly untrue about humanity in it, or at least not from my understanding. But it promotes a lot that's untrue about the current discourse, and I think that's pretty harmful in its own right. Nevertheless I have come away convinced that Steven Pinker definitely believes it.
Most pop-science books are something like this, though--if it took any effort to learn Americans wouldn't be reading it!
One of the ideas from this book that has influenced my thinking:
In conversation with biologist Donald Symons, Pinker imagines what might happen if two people hypothetically had identical genetic interest in their offspring. Would their relationship be one of romantic bliss? Symons says no. If their genetic interests were identical, there would be no evolutionary advantage to the feeling of love. "Heart cells and lung cells don't need to fall in love to get along." The result would not be love, but "mindless physiology."
In conversation with biologist Donald Symons, Pinker imagines what might happen if two people hypothetically had identical genetic interest in their offspring. Would their relationship be one of romantic bliss? Symons says no. If their genetic interests were identical, there would be no evolutionary advantage to the feeling of love. "Heart cells and lung cells don't need to fall in love to get along." The result would not be love, but "mindless physiology."
slow-paced
I've already known about this idea, it was maybe too meticulous for explaining it
informative
slow-paced
Some controversial points that maybe don't age well at time of reading (2022), but is did make me think how this may have changed in the years since that has been published (2002).
I am taken with much of Pinker's other works, but felt that Blank Slate argued on points that were of the era, constructivism versus essentialism continues.
I am still not sure where the chapter criticising modern art and uptake of humanities courses fits into this debate...which leads me to feel that some of the arguments were unwieldy.
Pinker's tone can border on the irreverant and he can be piercing, whilst calling commonly asserted parental advice "Flapdoodle"...I want to use this phrase in all my sentences.
I would love to ask him. Is there anything you would write differently in hindsight? A read that is important in understanding Pinker's corpus.
I am taken with much of Pinker's other works, but felt that Blank Slate argued on points that were of the era, constructivism versus essentialism continues.
I am still not sure where the chapter criticising modern art and uptake of humanities courses fits into this debate...which leads me to feel that some of the arguments were unwieldy.
Pinker's tone can border on the irreverant and he can be piercing, whilst calling commonly asserted parental advice "Flapdoodle"...I want to use this phrase in all my sentences.
I would love to ask him. Is there anything you would write differently in hindsight? A read that is important in understanding Pinker's corpus.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Best book in the "leftist academia has gone too far" genre
challenging
informative
slow-paced
I only got half way through this book, I don't usually read non-fiction. I think this book should have been subtitled "the American denial of human nature" but the author or publishers chickened out.
Because I agree with the authors premise, and everyone I talked to (in melbourne Australia) did too. Common sense, why write a whole book about it. But it was clear that in America, among certain circles, this book did have to be written and did have to be a success to ensure science triumphs over religious-zealots who put the 'facts' of the bible before evidence in nature. Basically Pinker is picking a fight with a particular bunch of people.
Surprisingly I found myself not always coming to the same conclusions as he, and seeing rather large flaws in his arguments. A philosopher, I think, would tear him to shreds for his assumptions and massive leaps to conclusions. Which is hilarious because I usually agree with his point, I just don't think he's having this argument with me, he's trying to guess what the opponents' assumptions and conclusions would be, perhaps, and then debunking them.
He did open my eyes to a few things, for instance about the way we talk about plasticity of the brain, he gave me nightmares about the many animal experiments he recounts, basically I'm just saying this book was not meant for me. And I suspect that in time better books will be written on this subject debunking the idea of the "soul" in the machine, more science has been learnt on the subject since publication, we are moving at a rapid pace now, in learning just what it is that makes us tick - or perhaps, learning to explain the science behind the apparent "magic" that is "us". I did enjoy learning that stuff, just....
I guess I'm writing to say - Pinker is not a genius, nor infallible, and you should always keep a critical eye open when reading books of this nature, fanatically believing any one author is unhealthy.
Because I agree with the authors premise, and everyone I talked to (in melbourne Australia) did too. Common sense, why write a whole book about it. But it was clear that in America, among certain circles, this book did have to be written and did have to be a success to ensure science triumphs over religious-zealots who put the 'facts' of the bible before evidence in nature. Basically Pinker is picking a fight with a particular bunch of people.
Surprisingly I found myself not always coming to the same conclusions as he, and seeing rather large flaws in his arguments. A philosopher, I think, would tear him to shreds for his assumptions and massive leaps to conclusions. Which is hilarious because I usually agree with his point, I just don't think he's having this argument with me, he's trying to guess what the opponents' assumptions and conclusions would be, perhaps, and then debunking them.
He did open my eyes to a few things, for instance about the way we talk about plasticity of the brain, he gave me nightmares about the many animal experiments he recounts, basically I'm just saying this book was not meant for me. And I suspect that in time better books will be written on this subject debunking the idea of the "soul" in the machine, more science has been learnt on the subject since publication, we are moving at a rapid pace now, in learning just what it is that makes us tick - or perhaps, learning to explain the science behind the apparent "magic" that is "us". I did enjoy learning that stuff, just....
I guess I'm writing to say - Pinker is not a genius, nor infallible, and you should always keep a critical eye open when reading books of this nature, fanatically believing any one author is unhealthy.