The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.Steven Pinker
I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor.Steven Pinker
People today sometimes get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven't given much thought to the connections.Steven Pinker
I have never been a fan of science fiction. For me, fiction has to explore the combinatorial possibilities of people interacting under the constraints imposed by our biology and history. When an author is free to suspend the constraints, it's tennis without a net.Steven Pinker
Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?Steven Pinker
The way to understand how different species evolved is to think about the niches that they fill in an ecosystem - basically, how they make a living.Steven Pinker
It is true that raids and battles killed a tiny percentage of the numbers that die in modern warfare. But in tribal violence, the clashes are more frequent, the percentage of men in the population who fight is greater, and the rates of death per battle are higher.Steven Pinker
Plants can't very well defend themselves by their behavior, so they resort to chemical warfare, and plants are saturated with toxins and irritants to deter creatures like us who want to eat them.Steven Pinker
Like the early days of the Internet, the dawn of personal genomics promises benefits and pitfalls that no one can foresee.Steven Pinker
Words let us say the things we want to say and also things we would be better off not having said. They let us know the things we need to know, and also things we wish we didn't.Steven Pinker
