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" Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture. "
Steven Pinker
Back
Picture
Nature
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" Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world. "
Steven Pinker
Interesting
Reality
World
" Terrorist bombings, like rampage shootings, are events that maximize the amount of publicity per amount of damage. That's why people do them, because they know they will set off a media frenzy. "
Steven Pinker
Know
Events
Will
" If you look in general at people who live in anarchy, they have quite high rates of death from either homicide or warfare or both. Anarchy is one of the main reasons for violence, and it may be the most important. "
Steven Pinker
People
Violence
Look
" Commerce is a noble profession, and Jews should get over any self-hatred they might harbor from contemplating the capitalist spirit of diaspora Judaism. "
Steven Pinker
Spirit
Over
Judaism
" By all measures men are the more violent gender. "
Steven Pinker
Measures
Violent
More
" A hostility to modernity is shared by ideologies that have nothing else in common - a nostalgia for moral clarity, small-town intimacy, family values, primitive communism, ecological sustainability, communitarian solidarity, or harmonies with the rhythms of nature. "
Steven Pinker
Nature
Family
Moral
" I do look for openings where I can overturn popular misconceptions, but unlike Christopher Hitchens, I am neither a contrarian nor a lone heretic. I like to have a significant number of academics watching my back. "
Steven Pinker
Watching
I Am
I Can
" Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance. "
Steven Pinker
People
Underestimate
Us
" We know about every massacre that has taken place close to the present, but the ones in the distant past are like trees falling in the forest with no one to hear them. "
Steven Pinker
Place
Trees
Like
" All of the violence that doesn't occur doesn't get reported on the news. "
Steven Pinker
Get
News
Reported
" Language is a window into human nature, but it is also a fistula, an open wound through which we're exposed to an infectious world. "
Steven Pinker
Window
World
Human Nature
" So no, it's not all in the genes, but what isn't in the genes isn't in the family environment either. It can't be explained in terms of the overall personalities or the child-rearing practices of parents. "
Steven Pinker
Environment
Parents
Genes
" Whenever you speak to someone, you are presuming the two of you have a certain degree of familiarity - which your words might alter. So every sentence has to do two things at once: convey a message and continue to negotiate that relationship. "
Steven Pinker
You
Speak
Words
" Broadly speaking, the Southern and Western desert and mountain states will vote for the candidate who endorses an aggressive military, a role for religion in public life, laissez-faire economic policies, private ownership of guns and relaxed conditions for using them, less regulation and taxation, and a valorization of the traditional family. "
Steven Pinker
Family
Life
Mountain
" Evolution is an indispensable component of any satisfying explanation of our psychology. "
Steven Pinker
Evolution
Psychology
Explanation
" The reason the United States is not so likely to invade Iran is precisely because of the lessons learned from Iraq. And conversely, the Iranian push towards nuclear capability is calculated to deter invasions like the kind deposing Saddam Husain. "
Steven Pinker
Like
Because
Reason
" Evolutionary psychologists seem to want to unmask our noblest motives as ultimately self-interested - to show that our love for children, compassion for the unfortunate and sense of justice are just tactics in a Darwinian struggle to perpetuate our genes. "
Steven Pinker
Children
Struggle
Want
" An eye for beauty locks onto faces that show signs of health and fertility - just as one would predict if it had evolved to help the beholder find the fittest mate. "
Steven Pinker
Health
Beauty
Eye
" Violence and religion have often gone together, but it's not a perfect correlation, and it doesn't have to be a permanent connection, because religions themselves change. "
Steven Pinker
Religion
Violence
Change
" For one thing, before the 20th century, there were plenty of genocides. We tend to forget about them, partly because they weren't as well documented and partly because, until recently, people didn't care. We used euphemisms like 'sackings' and 'sieges' instead of calling them 'genocides.' "
Steven Pinker
Well
Used
People
" 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
Eat
Behavior
Plants
" Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage point. "
Steven Pinker
World
Reading
Technology
" Why is it surprising that scientists might have long hair and wear cowboy boots? In fields like neuroscience, where the events you are recording are so minute, I suspect scientists cultivate a boring, reliable image. A scientist with a reputation for flamboyance might be suspect. "
Steven Pinker
Why
Reputation
Long
" Equity feminism is a moral doctrine about equal treatment that makes no commitments regarding open empirical issues in psychology or biology. "
Steven Pinker
Psychology
Moral
Feminism
" Societies that empower women are less violent in every way. "
Steven Pinker
Way
Women
Women Are
" Commerce, trade and exchange make other people more valuable alive than dead, and mean that people try to anticipate what the other guy needs and wants. It engages the mechanisms of reciprocal altruism, as the evolutionary biologists call it, as opposed to raw dominance. "
Steven Pinker
Alive
Try
Altruism
" The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero. "
Steven Pinker
Simple
Blank
Fact
" The decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon. You can see it over millennia, over centuries, over decades and over years. "
Steven Pinker
Years
Violence
See
" Though as a psychologist I like to think that nothing human is foreign to me, I admit to having been repeatedly flabbergasted by the insouciance, and sometimes relish, with which our ancestors carried out and witnessed unspeakable cruelties. "
Steven Pinker
Ancestors
Nothing
Think
" 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
Arts
Think
Kind