March 17, 2013

Video: Pinker on Political Correctness

Here's an eight-minute video from last year of Steven Pinker being interviewed by Greg Lukianoff of FIRE on "Taboos, Political Correctness, and Dissent."

By Steve Sailer on 3/17/2013

15 comments:

Anononymous said...

He has an awesome name, in the same league as Wolf Blitzer.

3/17/13, 8:20 PM
Anonymous said...

I heard Pinker on CNN Radio--yes, that exists; strange but true--a week or so after the Newtown shootings. He was explaining inter alia to the (rather self-dramatizing) interviewer that random events, by definition, happen in clusters, is I think how he'd put it. On one level I'm sure the journalist understood that yet, in keeping with professional priorities, the guy continued nattering on about Stopping The Epidemic. An interesting example of 2 alien types colliding, on the one hand someone who is casually professorial about everything, even to the point of silliness, vs. the narrative entrepreneur.

3/17/13, 9:07 PM
Anononymous said...

"You wonder why the data that I have presented in Better Angels of Our Nature, namely that violence has declined on so many scales in time and magnitude ... the reduction of racism and sexism ... the decline of lynching and racial pugrubs and rape and domestic violence."

So "violence has declined on so many scales", namely: "lynching and racial pugrubs and rape and domestic violence"

There were 3,445 blacks lynched between 1882 and 1968, which makes an average of 40 a year. The highest number in one year was 161. Nine years had more than 100. Trivial numbers.

In 2011 there were 14,612 murders, which is 90 times the number of lynchings in the year with the highest number.

The worst race riot ever was in Tulsa in 1921 with estmates of 50-300 killed. More trivial numbers.

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
year.....rapes
1960....17,190
1970....37,990
1980....82,990
1990...102,560
2000....90,178
2010....85,593

3/17/13, 9:32 PM
Aaron Gross said...

When did he get the hair cut? That curly-mullet look just does not work. Either keep the Marc Bolan hair - I think it'd still work in gray - or cut it short.

3/17/13, 9:47 PM
Anonymous said...

All examples of evil mentioned are by white gentiles.
What is most repulsive is using the picture of a mom cooking in the kitchen as proof of 'oppression' of women and to put it next to separate water fountains in the South.

Vile.

3/17/13, 10:05 PM
Anononymous said...

"put it next to separate water fountains in the South"

Yes, whites used to have to drink from a separate 'whites' water fountain. White people have made a lot of progress since then.

3/17/13, 11:05 PM
Brett_McS said...

Theodore Dalrymple has the better take on the true meaning of Political Correctness, in his often quoted "Political Correctness is Communist propaganda writ small" discussion.

3/18/13, 4:17 AM
NOTA said...

Is there a link to the unedited interview? I'm allergic to excerpted interviews of this kind, because it's usually possible for the editors to completely change what the interviewee says.

3/18/13, 7:22 AM
Pat Boyle said...

There is a lot of money to be made in Political Correctness such that the one able to support the most outrageous notion is rewarded the most. Pinker like Sailer is on the wrong side of the money equation.

Simply telling the obvious truth is not well paid.

Gould who is also in today's posting is a prime example. He was a Harvard professor which lent credibility to whatever he wrote. His Marxist connections were less celebrated.

Diamond who occupies much the same role today is in danger of losing value because he too often simply reports facts without imparting a goof ball theory to show that they don't mean what they seem to.

For example in "Guns, Germs and Steel" he explains that white people aren't really superior, they were just lucky enough the have evolved on wide continents rather than narrow ones. This assertion got him the Pulitzer Prize, more book contracts, and TV Specials.

One problem with this hypothesis is that it can't really be falsified. It's more of a post hoc explanation than a real theory. But forgetting that, even if it were true and important - so what?

Richard Lynn - terrible racist that he is - thinks that white people and East Asians evolved to be smarter than tropical people because of cold winters. Diamond thinks much the same except he chooses continent shape as the causal factor. If your ancestors enjoyed ten thousand years of favorable conditions that other people didn't have, you end up a better person - No?

Diamond could have concluded that white people were superior because they eveolved on wide continents. Instead he asserts that white people are NOT superior because they only evolved on wide continents.

This season whites being not superior is the massage that sells.

Albertosaurus

3/18/13, 11:09 AM
Anonymous said...

The first poster said, "He has an awesome name, in the same league as Wolf Blitzer."

Really? It's memorable, if that's what you mean, but "awesome" usually means something else. I'd not think most men would like that name. Rhymes with "tinker." Nuh uh. I"Wolf Blitzer" has a very different sound--and the name doesn't match the person, btw. WB is a weak-kneed, cowed "journalist."

3/18/13, 12:22 PM
Anonymous said...

Pinker seems to be yet another guy asking politely for the rules of the kitchen and household to stop being applied to political and academic discussions. His asking nicely if we can go back to the old style of conversation and debate before the ladies joined in and set the tone. Good luck with that. Seriously, I do wish him luck with that.

3/18/13, 2:04 PM
Anononymous said...

" Really? It's memorable, if that's what you mean, but "awesome" usually means something else. I'd not think most men would like that name. Rhymes with "tinker." Nuh uh. I"Wolf Blitzer" has a very different sound--and the name doesn't match the person, btw. WB is a weak-kneed, cowed "journalist." "


Wolf Blitzer was a reporter in Kuwait during the Gulf War. The war was a 'blitzkrieg', if you will. Bonus points for the 'Wolf'. A reporter named Wolf Blitzer reporting live from in a war.

And then you have a liberal/progressive named 'Pinker'.

Their names both describe them.

Wikipedia: Pinko
"Pinko is a critical term coined in America in 1925, originally to describe a person regarded as being sympathetic to communism, though not necessarily a Communist Party member.

"The term has its origins in the notion that pink is a lighter shade of red, a color associated with communism. Thus pink could describe a "lighter form of communism", purportedly promoted by supporters of socialism who were not themselves actual or "card carrying" communists."

It was also in common use in South Africa during the apartheid era.

In his two presidential campaigns, Alabama governor George Wallace often railed at "the left-wing pinko press" and at "pseudo-pinko-intellectuals."

Nixon regularly referred to her as "the Pink Lady", and his campaign distributed political flyers printed on sheets of pink paper.

Archie Bunker, the patriarch of the Bunker family in the 1970s sitcom All in the Family often derisively used the term 'pinko' when referring to his liberal son-in-law Michael "Meathead" Stivic or Michael's friends."

3/18/13, 4:59 PM
Anonymous said...

Steve should not be putting through comments consisting of nothing more than witless copy-pasting from Wikipedia, but since he's already done so above I'll add a missing detail about the historical case of the "pinko" pejorative in the Senate race between Nixon and Helen Gahagan Douglas (a non-blood relative of the actress/mistress Illeana). Douglas was actually the first to throw the word "pink" in that campaign, sort of a lazy Lalaland liberal's idea of undercutting her opponent who was then best known from the Alger Hiss scandal, though at this pre-McCarthy juncture Nixon's staff had endeavored to associate her with out-of-touch cosmopolitan types, i.e. New Yorkers. The local press greatly played up the mudslinging all the way to the election, with Douglas finally losing all but 5 counties (each of which located in the north among more livestock than people).

3/18/13, 11:53 PM
Anonymous said...

Ever considered that it's morally OK for a Jew to call himself "Wolf Blitzer", but anyone else doing so (or worse, being born with that name) would be a Nazi skinhead?

3/19/13, 4:11 PM
Anonymous said...

Wolf Blitzer is the name given to him by his parents. Wolf used to be a common given name among Yiddish-speaking Jews, and Blitzer is an Ashkenazi surname, though an uncommon one.

3/19/13, 8:27 PM

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