@razibkhan I guess my attitude to the New Enlightmentarians is a little bit like your attitude to the New Atheists who downplay the naturalness of religious thought. likewise every decade there's a new celebrity empiricist decrying some anti-empirical turn of the culture
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but maybe we just have to see it as a permanent feature of the human landscape, like faith healings and UFO-sightings and the casino lucky hand :-)
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so your contention is that the consensus required to pull off basic science is unravelling because science is increasingly viewed as a suspicious instrument of power?
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Not saying Pinker is a flash-in-the-pan. I'm saying there's always been someone complaining about the irrational turn. I still remember:pic.twitter.com/QlQrFMJpWs
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wait you believe (a) anti-science has coopted powerful institutions and (b) it is widespread to believe "science is a superstition" ??? because there are some taboos on race & genders differences?
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Mann’s new book, The Wizard and the Prophet asks, like Pinker, based on the past, should we look at the future positively or negatively. Mann’s lenses are technology and the environment. Is the greater hype around Pinker’s book that he explicitly picks a side (Mann doesn’t)?
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I mean I know Pinker is a bit more of a known public intellectual but I think Mann is prominant in his own right, so that’s why I’m thinking Pinker choosing to be more polemical is why he’s getting more attention.
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Yes! I actually like that he tries to be neutral. I think he’s a bit more on the wizard’s side (technology will solve environmental challenges), but you get a good grasp of why prophets (people are subject to many of the same ecological limits as animals) think the way they do.
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