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sapinker's profile
Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Verified account
@sapinker

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Steven PinkerVerified account

@sapinker

Cognitive scientist at Harvard.

Boston, MA
pinker.wjh.harvard.edu
Joined January 2010

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    Steven Pinker‏Verified account @sapinker Aug 8

    The first insight of linguistics, going back to Plato, is that words are conventions, without magical powers. That's being nullified by PC/SJW attacks on mentioning taboo words, even ironically or in works of art. https://quillette.com/2018/08/02/the-death-of-the-author-and-the-end-of-empathy/ … via @QuilletteM

    8:02 AM - 8 Aug 2018
    • 381 Retweets
    • 1,074 Likes
    • Yoruba Demon with Ijaw Blood ℕ J  #antifascismo #anticomunismo 🏳️‍🌈🇪🇸🇪🇺 Tom Christian Frank Ullrich Otis Manousakos Pau-Manuel Pereira Batlle Hicham Mellouki Kevin Barhydt
    201 replies 381 retweets 1,074 likes
      1. New conversation
      2. John Ganz‏ @lionel_trolling Aug 8
        Replying to @sapinker @QuilletteM

        Plato wanted to ban music because it was a bad influence on the polity so maybe not the best person to predicate this argument on

        6 replies 9 retweets 434 likes
      3. Scott‏ @FakeScottKersey Aug 8
        Replying to @lionel_trolling @sapinker @QuilletteM

        Imagine reading The Republic and thinking "this Plato dude's super chill about language and art. Also he thinks words are never signifiers to an absolute, transcendent Form"

        2 replies 13 retweets 276 likes
      4. kennan‏ @longtweetergram Aug 8
        Replying to @FakeScottKersey @lionel_trolling and

        I think “Imagine reading The Republic...” is about as far as Pinker got.

        0 replies 2 retweets 99 likes
      5. End of conversation
      1. New conversation
      2. Cyrus the 'Frankfurt School's Monster' Bacteria‏ @lepcyrus Aug 8
        Replying to @sapinker @QuilletteM

        The amount of slippage between The Language Instinct and your new far-right rhetoric is jarring. Words are conventions - and calling someone "PC/SJW" tells us all about you sociolinguistically. It tells us about language contact, and power, and many other things - none positive

        5 replies 9 retweets 276 likes
      3. Lunster‏ @lunster81 Aug 8
        Replying to @lepcyrus @sapinker @QuilletteM

        In this tweet you explain the nature of words to Steven Pinker. The Language Instinct makes direct reference to Orwellian Newspeak, I recommend a refresher on both.

        3 replies 0 retweets 6 likes
      4.  🌎 The  🎃 SPOOKY 🚀 Cosmist  🎃  🌌 Insurrection  ✊  🏴‏ @yungneocon Aug 8
        Replying to @lunster81 @lepcyrus and

        So what is it, do words have power, a la Orwellian Newspeak or nah? That's not a very consistent position buddy

        1 reply 1 retweet 49 likes
      5. Lunster‏ @lunster81 Aug 9
        Replying to @yungneocon @lepcyrus and

        False dichotomy.

        1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
      6.  🌎 The  🎃 SPOOKY 🚀 Cosmist  🎃  🌌 Insurrection  ✊  🏴‏ @yungneocon Aug 9
        Replying to @lunster81 @lepcyrus and

        that’s not what that phrase means lol

        1 reply 0 retweets 35 likes
      7. Lunster‏ @lunster81 Aug 9
        Replying to @yungneocon @lepcyrus and

        "do they have power or nah?" Is X or Y? I think you need a refresher on logic.

        1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
      8.  🌎 The  🎃 SPOOKY 🚀 Cosmist  🎃  🌌 Insurrection  ✊  🏴‏ @yungneocon Aug 9
        Replying to @lunster81 @lepcyrus and

        Buddy, if 'Orwellian Newspeak' is real & important, that is ipso facto sufficient for the claim that words have 'power', what's more, in context, that's the central conceptual maneuver (words have no power) underlying Pinker's claim, which you defended.

        3 replies 1 retweet 42 likes
      9.  🌎 The  🎃 SPOOKY 🚀 Cosmist  🎃  🌌 Insurrection  ✊  🏴‏ @yungneocon Aug 9
        Replying to @yungneocon @lunster81 and

        There is sufficient pragmatic referential & conventional context here to infer that the substance of my claim is about the characterization of words as Newspeak, which is a sufficiency claim--'sufficiency' could hold even in the concept weren't binary, but a spectrum.

        2 replies 1 retweet 28 likes
      10. 1 more reply
      1. New conversation
      2.  🌎 The  🎃 SPOOKY 🚀 Cosmist  🎃  🌌 Insurrection  ✊  🏴‏ @yungneocon Aug 8
        Replying to @sapinker @QuilletteM

        This is a disingenuous crock of shit and you know it, Psycholinguistic research shows that words *hurt*. Social psychology work find that slurs have definite behavioral, cognitive & affective effects. And the entire discipline of pragmatics is devoted to language as action.

        1 reply 2 retweets 18 likes
      3.  🌎 The  🎃 SPOOKY 🚀 Cosmist  🎃  🌌 Insurrection  ✊  🏴‏ @yungneocon Aug 8
        Replying to @yungneocon @sapinker @QuilletteM

        You're just mad you can't say the N word bc you're a typical charlatan, your analysis of 'Nietzsche' & the 'Enlightenment' is so risible it wouldn't even pass intro phil. Your 'Better Angels' actively ignores contrary modern research, the lynchpin source is from 22 yrs ago

        1 reply 2 retweets 16 likes
      4.  🌎 The  🎃 SPOOKY 🚀 Cosmist  🎃  🌌 Insurrection  ✊  🏴‏ @yungneocon Aug 8
        Replying to @yungneocon @sapinker @QuilletteM

        To wit, results from behavioral ecology, statistics, archaeology, anthropology, social psychology, political science, economics, sociology, neuroscience, history, and geography directly contradict the bulk of your theses, but you're so full of shit you dismiss them out of hand

        1 reply 2 retweets 11 likes
      5.  🌎 The  🎃 SPOOKY 🚀 Cosmist  🎃  🌌 Insurrection  ✊  🏴‏ @yungneocon Aug 8
        Replying to @yungneocon @sapinker @QuilletteM

        Take one of my favorites: the fact that you play down the importance of nuclear deterrence, the prison system, forced settlement, etc despite them being consensus. You cite the law of democratic peace but ignore its corollary--democracies go to war *more* just not with each other

        1 reply 2 retweets 10 likes
      6.  🌎 The  🎃 SPOOKY 🚀 Cosmist  🎃  🌌 Insurrection  ✊  🏴‏ @yungneocon Aug 8
        Replying to @yungneocon @sapinker @QuilletteM

        Research on forced scarcity and settlement is so robust, it's one of the few things that can be analogically replicated in ethology, primatology, sociology, psychology, anthropology & history without being reductionist but ofc you prefer skull science & phrenology.

        1 reply 1 retweet 11 likes
      7.  🌎 The  🎃 SPOOKY 🚀 Cosmist  🎃  🌌 Insurrection  ✊  🏴‏ @yungneocon Aug 8
        Replying to @yungneocon @sapinker @QuilletteM

        Like Harris, Peterson, Dawkins, and so on you play the same dumb game: you're the only logical factual person and if anyone contradicts you they must hate *science* or be unreasonable or be in bad faith, even if their expertise in the field surpasses your glib & pompous ass.

        2 replies 2 retweets 12 likes
      8.  🌎 The  🎃 SPOOKY 🚀 Cosmist  🎃  🌌 Insurrection  ✊  🏴‏ @yungneocon Aug 8
        Replying to @yungneocon @sapinker @QuilletteM

        A victim complex beyond belief--already in 2006 Pinkers teaching a class with alleged Jeffrey Epstein friend & proven plagiarist Alan Dershowitz, where he brings in Larry Summers in for the class on 'free speech'--of all the self important shit one could do.

        1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes
      9.  🌎 The  🎃 SPOOKY 🚀 Cosmist  🎃  🌌 Insurrection  ✊  🏴‏ @yungneocon Aug 8
        Replying to @yungneocon @sapinker @QuilletteM

        In Pinker's mythology, Larry Summers--architect of the largest single fall in life expectancy in history in the former USSR--was the true victim when he lost the presidency at Harvard after giving a talk on gender where a person he cited literally corrected him from the audience

        1 reply 1 retweet 12 likes
      10. 1 more reply
      1. New conversation
      2. Saeen‏ @_Saeen_ Aug 8
        Replying to @sapinker @QuilletteM

        This excerpt is from The Republic, where Plato makes the case for expelling & limiting autonomy of poets.pic.twitter.com/uuOcg2edA5

        12 replies 18 retweets 358 likes
      3. Saeen‏ @_Saeen_ Aug 8
        Replying to @_Saeen_ @sapinker @QuilletteM

        Saeen Retweeted Existential Comics

        lolhttps://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/1026861074715357184 …

        Saeen added,

        Existential Comics @existentialcoms
        Philosophy began with Socrates corrupting the youth by telling them how the "wise" old men were full of shit. And philosophy is still important, because 2500 years later, the old men are just as full of shit as ever.
        2 replies 5 retweets 166 likes
      4. Saeen‏ @_Saeen_ Aug 8
        Replying to @_Saeen_ @sapinker @QuilletteM

        tfw you can't say the n-word anymore.pic.twitter.com/ENIVEKv4Tq

        3 replies 6 retweets 92 likes
      5. George‏ @George_Chi86 Aug 8
        Replying to @_Saeen_ @sapinker @QuilletteM

        Is that from this quillet piece?

        2 replies 0 retweets 5 likes
      6. Saeen‏ @_Saeen_ Aug 8
        Replying to @George_Chi86 @sapinker @QuilletteM

        I'm afraid so.

        1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
      7. your very own monica bellucci dream‏ @DJCPI Aug 8
        Replying to @_Saeen_ @George_Chi86 and

        Quillette is where old people go and whine about not being able to say the N word

        1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
      8. Transylvania 6ix9ine Thousand‏ @RageofBaltimore Aug 8
        Replying to @DJCPI @_Saeen_ and

        How much does White Twitter use the n-word?

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      9. your very own monica bellucci dream‏ @DJCPI Aug 8
        Replying to @RageofBaltimore @_Saeen_ and

        They seemingly spend fevered hours daily writing essays about why they should be allowed to say it

        0 replies 0 retweets 3 likes
      10. End of conversation

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