Peven Stinker

We have a few things to say about Pinker.

• Part of the War on Science
• The Language Instinct
• Pinker on Race Realism
• Co-authored paper on overregularization
• The Open Letter to the LSA
• The article that Carrie was interviewed for, but not named, about the Open Letter
• Our episode on dogwhistling
• The Harper's Letter
• Guardian on his appearance on Aporia

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Megan Figueroa: Hi and welcome to the Vocal Fries Podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination. 

Carrie Gillon: I'm Carrie Gillon. 

Megan: And I'm Megan Figueroa. Carrie, I'm looking out at dark clouds right now. Did you hear anything about Phoenix yesterday?

Carrie: No. What happened in Phoenix?

Megan: Oh, just completely flooded everywhere. Like Sky Harbor had to divert planes to Tucson. 

Carrie: What?!

Megan: Rounded planes. You should see some of the freeways flooded and Sky Harbor flooded.

Carrie: Oh my god, how did I miss this? I completely missed this. Wow.

Megan: Yeah. I know.

Carrie: So like a really late monsoon? No, yeah, it is late.

Megan: It's late, it's super late. It finally came and it's late. Yeah, we got some of it but yeah, no, they were diverting the planes here because it was much better. 

Carrie: Holy shit. Well...

Megan: Yeah the videos are wild. 

Carrie: I guess I've got to reach out to all my Phoenician friends.

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: Oh my god. 

Megan: Yeah, hopefully, no house flooding or anything. That's the worst.

Carrie: Yes. Yes.

Megan: That is the worst. 

Carrie: And hopefully nobody got washed away in a car. 

Megan: No, I know, that's super dangerous. It's such a possibility here.

Carrie: Oh my god, yeah. There were a couple of storms where I was like, "I should not be driving. I'm just going to pull over to the 7-Eleven here. Just hang out."

Megan: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. 

Carrie: Oh, boy. 

Megan: Exactly. And they do have that... What is it called? Stupid motorist law?

Carrie: Yes, they do. Yeah. 

Megan: Yeah, where they will charge you if they have to extricate you out of a situation of getting your car stuck in like raging water. 

Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Whoo. Well. Exciting times. It's the end of the world, but, you know?

Megan: Yeah. 

Carrie: We have two people to thank, two new patrons. Well, one's not actually all that new, but somehow completely missed until recently. Virginie Dalleur[?] and Dee Golightly. 

Megan: Oh, thank you, Dee. 

Carrie: Yeah. So thank you so much. And if anyone else would like to join our Patreon, it's www.patreon.com/vocalfriespod. We get stickers and bonus episodes. There's a mug, so.
 
Megan: Yeah. Yeah. 

Carrie: But you just get to support the work that goes into this because we're independent and we have to pay for everything. 

Megan: Yeah. So thank you so much for considering. 

Carrie: Yes, thank you. Speaking of, we tried to do something for our... Well, yeah, many, any patreons, including our free members, and it just didn't work out. So then we tried again. It sort of worked. But anyway, well, we might do it again in the future because it was kind of an interesting. It would be fun to have people actually in these recording sessions and we can do it on Riverside, which is how we record now. So I think we're going to try again, this month. 

Megan: Yeah. Yeah. And it was fun knowing that it was going to be live or possibly listen to it at the same time that we were recording. 

Carrie: Yes. And we talked a lot about Steven Pinker. 

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: I just spent most of the morning before this listening to a YouTube video. There were some visuals, but I didn't really need to be looking at it. I was cleaning and stuff. About the war on science, the book edited by Lawrence Krauss, who is a real creep. 

Megan: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Carrie: And this guy, Sean, I don't know what his last name is, I'll put it in the show notes, though, just goes through every single author, and Lawrence Krauss, every single thing, like why this is bad. And of course, one of the authors is our fave, Steven Pinker. 

Megan: More cherry pick data, I'm sure.

Carrie: Probably. I don't think it's gotten to him yet. But there's just like, ooh, there's so many people in this book who are just terrible people. And if you are okay with being in the same book with these people... 

Megan: Right, that's a good point. 

Carrie: So much racism, like this one woman who is married to an actual Nazi—that was a fun little surprise in the video—is a very anti-indigenous and it's just so gross. Anyways.

Megan: I just don't get it. I don't get racism.

Carrie: Yeah, I don't either. Anyways, so he's our favorite linguist, because he's just so problematic and is friends with really vile people, pretends not to be friends with Epstein. But I don't know, man. I don't know. 

Megan: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people are doing that these days. 

Carrie: Well, even Lawrence Krauss, just as far as I know, continues to say, "Oh, I [inaudible] him." But Pinker is smart enough to distance himself.

Megan: Yeah, well, he still wants that pedestal that people have put him on. And you might hear his name right now, because I think he has a new book coming out or just out. 

Carrie: Yeah, I don't know why, like, you cannot be in a book like The War on Science and maintain like any... To me anyway. It's a murderer's row of really shitty people. I don't know. He's trying. He's trying to be on that balance beam. Like, "Sure, I'm friends with these people, but I'm not actually racist." 

Megan: Yes. 

Carrie: "Sure. I support rape myths. But I'm not sexist."

Megan: Yeah, I know. I know. 

Carrie: Anyways. But yeah, we hope that this episode is interesting. And we'll see you next month. 

Megan: See you next month.

Carrie: So where to begin? 

Megan: I mean, I was doing a little bit of research just to get my head around some things again, because it's been a while, but...

Carrie: Yes, yeah. Same.

Megan: But I'm ready. I'm ready.

Carrie: You're ready? Okay. 

Megan: I mean, [inaudible]. Okay. I don't know where to begin. I mean, maybe we should tell people what the hell we're even talking about. 

Carrie: Yes. Yeah. So I thought it would be a good idea to talk about Steven Pinker, because we've sort of talked about him, but we haven't really discussed, like, our issues with him are linguistically. I'm happy to talk about other things too, but, you know?

Megan: I think it would be a disservice if we didn't touch the other things too, just to kind of ground people in why he's not an acceptable human being. 

Carrie: Yeah, I mean, it's all interrelated, right? 

Megan: It is, it is. Yeah, when you get into the blank slate stuff, and his race science stuff. It all kind of comes together in one mess of a human being. 

Carrie: Yeah. And I guess I really didn't really think about it, but he's an evolutionary psychologist, which Evo Psych is one of my most fields. 

Megan: Me too. I mean, name one person in Evo Psych that isn't kind of peddling in race science. I mean, do they exist? I don't want to make any absolute disclaims, but it feels like you kind of have to be peddling in race science to believe in Evo Psych.

Carrie: And maybe, maybe, to me, like the problem was always like, it's just so stories[?]. The reason why women do this is because that's our evolutionary history. It's like, "Well, really? Then why are different society is so different? Like, no, right?" So maybe it's possible to do it without being into race science or gender essentialism, but I doubt it.

Megan: It's kind of weird, though, because Steven Pinker would, at the same time, claim that we're not so different cultures, right?

Carrie: Well, not so much about cultures, but language. Like, one of the strongest claims he makes in the language instinct, which I happen to agree with, is that we all share equally the ability to use language. And that's clearly true, like how we got there, we can argue about, but that's clearly true. But then the same time he's talking about that, at the same time, he's making this claim, which I happen to agree with, that, yeah, all humans or almost all humans have the capacity to learn language. And every language is equal." He makes that claim.

Megan: Yes, 100%.

Carrie: But then he says some weird racist shit about people, like, calling them Stone Age and stuff. And it's like...

Megan: How does that track[?]?... No, so that's his big thing. Language ties us all together. But then he has these beliefs about how races are different, right? Or how in gender... Like, it's interesting to hold those two in the same brain, I think.

Carrie: Yeah, yes. It's confusing to me. Sometimes I understand why people believe the things that they do. But for me, it's confusing that he holds these two views together. 

Megan: Yes. So why do you think he does hold these two? I mean, because ultimately, he's ruled by believing that there are races that are better than others. Is that the overpowering belief?

Carrie: I mean, yeah. So he definitely does believe that. You can watch his video talking about how Ashkenazi Jews are the smartest people and have the highest IQ and all that. And it's...

Megan: Yeah, it's on YouTube. 

Carrie: ...fucking creepy. It's YouTube. It is really creepy.

Megan: It's really creepy. And it benefits him, does it not? 

Carrie: Of course, right? Yeah.

Megan: Right?

Carrie: Yeah, that he's a member of that particular group. So yeah, it feeds his ego.

Megan: Which is huge.

Carrie: Which is already big, right? But I don't get how someone who believes that goes on to look into language and realize correctly that it is a universal thing that we all share that there's no value difference between language to language. It's weird to me that he didn't take his clearly racist ideas and apply it to language. At least on that level, he didn't. 

Megan: Right. Wait, so he said that he'll claim that some people are, what did you say, stone? 

Carrie: Stone age. So he'll talk about certain cultures. So this is in the language instinct, right? He'll talk about certain cultures being stone age. And then he say, like, "But their language isn't." It's equally sophisticated as other languages. 

Megan: No, that doesn't track. That doesn't track at all. For me, for me.

Carrie: I mean, they are, they are equally, right?

Megan: Yeah, they're equal.

Carrie: That's true. 

Megan: What does this stone age claim? 

Carrie: Well, like they're not living part of the same civilization that we're in. They're still using stone tools, I guess. I don't know. 

Megan: And that's apparently very upsetting to him. 

Carrie: I don't know if that's upsetting. I don't think he's upset by it.

Megan: You just think that's his observation? 

Carrie: Yeah, he's just like, "Oh, these people are living a culturally distant past to us." 

Megan: Yeah. Yeah. So do you want to talk about... His big thing was actually very much related to my dissertation. 

Carrie: Sure. Yeah. We should talk about that. Yeah.

Megan: Yeah. His big linguistic claim to fame, which also, he didn't start out as a linguist. I think it was because of his advisor kind of pushing him toward it or something like that. I don't know if he...

Carrie: No idea. 

Megan: I was trying to look at his educational history and it's not like he studied linguistics. He was like in more in the cog sci field and it may have been his advisor [inaudible].

Carrie: Which is still related, right?

Megan: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Totally. And I think about my advisor, she had studied psychology, but she was definitely a linguist. So it's not that you have to study linguistics as your degree or whatever, but it's kind of not clear where he started his linguistic pursuits to me. 

Carrie: No idea. 

Megan: But I think it was in grad school. Yeah. So there are some things... I had to read so much of his work and this is actually why I started, at one point, the scholars to read and linguistics. It's a database I had, was because I was like, "There have been so many people that have contributed to this field that aren't Steven Pinker." I just want to highlight that, but in my case, I really had to read them very deeply. So yeah, he has this claim that there's basically two mechanisms to learning a language. There's this rule-based mechanism and then there's this mechanism where you basically have to memorize certain forms. And he says that this is innate. So it's related to this language acquisition device, which Chomsky had popularized before Steven Pinker came around. And there's like a spectrum, I think, of linguists or psycholinguists and cog scientists, of what they believe about. I agree that there's two things going on, that there's this rule-based system and that there's this memorization that has to go on. 

Carrie: It has to be. We have to have those two pieces, otherwise language wouldn't be the way it is. Yeah. 

Megan: Absolutely. I think the difference between me and him is like in the spectrum, I'm more in the middle, where he's like at the extreme end where he believes that those two mechanisms are built in and they're related to language, where I think that these two systems kick in really quickly for a child, but that they are innate in that it's general cognition. Like the pattern recognition or pattern recognition capabilities and all these things, which can be used in other domains are used to kind of kickstart the language learning. And then there are also people that believe that there are never rules. So that's the other end of the spectrum, which is bonkers to me. 

Carrie: Yeah. It doesn't even make any sense. Like, no. 

Megan: Yeah. Right. Right. And so ultimately, my dissertation kind of, it proved both me and Steven right in that we can't differentiate between our two views. 

Carrie: Yeah. I agree with that.

Megan: Right? 

Carrie: Yeah. It's really hard to distinguish between those two views. Yeah.

Megan: Yeah. Because his big thing is the over-regularization of the past tense ED form. So over-regularization, meaning kids will go through the stage where they say, "I brake the toy," instead of, "I broke the toy," because broke is something you have to memorize. But the rule system is kicking in and saying, "Okay, let me add ED to verbs to make them the past tense." So basically, what I did with my dissertation is it strongly supports the idea that the people on the other extreme that don't believe in rules are wrong because I found that these kids are even implying this rule in perception. Even just like not even saying verbs or even quite getting to saying the past tense yet, they're already okay with hearing words like break and catch. They're like, "That's totally cool. I love it." And they're doing this at 16 months, which is months and months before they start saying breaks and catch. 

It's funny because I think when I started, I had this idea that I'm going to prove Steven Pinker wrong, but I was like, "Wait, no, I don't really want to prove him wrong in this because for one thing, it would prove me wrong too." I think we're kind of clumped together and that you either prove you can show more evidence for the fact that there's no rules or there are rules. And I don't think you can tell the difference between our two rule-based ideas.

Carrie: I agree. Yeah. I'm more on Pinker's side on this case. I think it is part of special language thing, but yeah, everything I've read that tries to just prove it, I'm like, "That evidence goes on for both." I can't see a difference. And so maybe that tells you something. I don't know. But it's like, okay, so we're at an impasse. But for sure, there are going to be rules because kids, yeah, they over-regularize. If there were no rules, they wouldn't do it. 

Megan: They try to explain it as like this connectionist system that's just so inefficient. I'm just like, "Give our brains more credit." I mean, it does give our brains some credit in like a complicated way, but it's also like, there's got to be some efficiency in the system. 

Carrie: Let's think about how hard that would be for a child versus a simple rule. Like, I don't know. I think Occam's razor says there's a rule. 

Megan: Oh, yeah. Good point. It totally does. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. So I was deep in the weeds with Steven Pinker for a really big part of my life. I was like, "This guy is trash." It sucked that I had to be reading and citing his... I mean, I had to cite his work. 

Carrie: Especially if you were trying to actually figure out if he was right or wrong or if there's good evidence one way or the other, you really do need to talk about them. Yeah. 

Megan: And also, it was kind of an important part of the way I set up the whole dissertation was like, there are kind of three groups of people. 

Carrie: Yeah. For sure.

Megan: So kind of defining that. And it's like, I can't lie. He was the guy. He was the over-regularization guy. That was really interesting work, but it was decades ago. He has not put out, I think, since then, which I think the latest was like '92 on that work, anything really compelling about linguistics. 

Carrie: Yeah. No, I don't think he's done anything. Maybe he has done one more thing. And in the meantime, I'm not sure, but it's certainly nothing in more modern history. And so when people were asking for him to be taken off the list of distinguished linguists or whatever that was, he was like, "Well, I'm not even a linguist anymore anyway."

Megan: [inaudible]. I mean, okay, so we both signed that petition. It was in 2020 and I was looking at it again. We asked the Linguistic Society of America to take him off this list of distinguished fellows and I can't find it on the website anymore. So I think they just like... But at the time, they said, "We're not here to please people's speech, basically, or their opinions." But our arguments were like, "This guy, he has like tweets that inflame the discussion."

Carrie: Yeah. So do you want to go through the document a little bit? 

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: So the letter says, "We document six relevant occasions that show how Dr. Pinker's behavior is systematically and directly at odds with the LSA's stated aims." So the first one is in 2015, he tweeted, "Police don't shoot blacks disproportionately," linking to a New York Times article about that. 

Megan: Right. Where he incorrectly quotes it. 

Carrie: Well, he draws the wrong conclusion, the opposite conclusion. 

Megan: Right. Which I want to say that if I think of a few words to describe Steven Pinker, cherry picker. 

Carrie: Definitely a cherry picker. But the article says the data is unequivocal. Police killings are a race problem. African-Americans are being killed disproportionately and by a wide margin. Original emphasis, by the way. So he's outright lying. It's not even cherry picking at this point for that one. But he does cherry pick. Yes. 

Megan: He cherry picks. Yeah. 

Carrie: Yeah. Which if books could kill, talk a lot about his cherry picking. 

Megan: Which book did they do? Better Angels. No.

Carrie: Better Angels.

Megan: They did do Better Angels?

Carrie: It's a really good two parter. If people haven't heard it, I recommend it. 

Megan: Oh, it's really good. Yeah. They could have done any of his books. Well, not so much the language ones, I don't think. But like his Enlightenment Now or whatever the heck. Interesting because he's driven by this desire, and I think it's shown in this tweet too, to claim that society is getting better.

Carrie: Yeah. It's across everything. Basically, it's mostly about violence. That society has gotten less violent over time. And in some ways, that's true. But again, a lot of cherry picking and then like it completely ignores World War Two in particular. 

Megan: Oh, does it? I didn't realize. 

Carrie: Oh, you have to listen to the episodes. They're incredible. You know, obviously, Michael Hobbs and his insane razor skills. 

Megan: Yeah. I don't know how I didn't listen to this yet. Yeah. Oh, they're so good.

Carrie: They're so good. But my favorite part is when they talk about this one particular data. I can't remember if it's a graph or what, because it's audio. But anyway, some sort of mapping of violence over time, like how many people have died in whichever century or due to whatever thing. And because Steven Pinker is like, "Does it by per capita?" One of the things that happens in China a long time ago ends up looking a lot worse. But it's like, this is no way to do it, right?

Megan: No. Well, it's convenient, isn't it? It was probably purposeful. Yeah. How the best can I manipulate this data to show what I want?

Carrie: Yeah, I mean, to be fair, it's someone else's data that he's using. But still, it is still a completely ridiculous... Okay, so the second one, in 2017, when nearly 1000 people died at the hands of police, the issue of anti black police violence in particular was again widely discussed in the media. Dr. Pinker moved to dismiss the genuine concerns about the disproportionate killings of black people at the hands of law enforcement by employing a All Lives Matter trope that is eerily reminiscent of both sides rhetoric, all while explicitly claiming that focus on race is an distraction. Once again, this clearly demonstrates Dr. Pinker's willingness to dismiss and downplay racist violence regardless of any evidence.

Megan: Right. And the downplaying of the racist violence, because it doesn't show the trends that he...

Carrie: Well, he just didn't really think it's worth. 

Megan: He doesn't care.

Carrie: He doesn't really care. 

Megan: No. He doesn't care. Yeah. 

Carrie: I agree that probably part of it is the Better Angels thing that he's got going on. But I think it's also like, come on, we don't really care about this, right? 

Megan: Yeah. Right. Yeah. 

Carrie: And I'm guessing, let's see what it actually says here on Twitter. Okay, so the tweet that he posted at that time was, "Police kill too many people, black and white. Focus on race distracts from solving problem as we do with plane crashes." I'm sorry, what? 

Megan: What?

Carrie: Like plane crashes do not have a racial element at all. 

Megan: They do not discriminate. 

Carrie: Unless you're Malcolm Gladwell and you think that Korean pilots are worse. 

Megan: Right, right. 

Carrie: But no, they don't. They don't have a racial component. There can be pilot error, obviously, but there's also mechanical errors and things like that. And even where it's pilot error, if anything, it's like an ego thing, not a race thing. They're not listening to their co-pilots. That's apparently a thing that happens at least according to the rehearsal. I don't know if you saw that.

Megan: Oh, I need to see that episode. I need to watch that. 

Carrie: No, the season. It's the whole season. 

Megan: Oh, the whole season's about that? 

Carrie: The whole second season is about plane crashes. It is wild. I don't even know how to describe it. 

Megan: Okay. 

Carrie: Yeah, it's worth watching for sure. But whatever. It's not racial, right? We know this. It doesn't make any sense. Whereas police killings are. The only people I think who get to complain about the focus on Black people are Indigenous people because they're killed at a slightly higher rate. That's it. Everybody else, no. Certainly not white people. I mean, at a greater number, but that's because there's more white people. But not statistically.

Megan: Yes. Oh, people love to ignore that fact. Yeah. 

Carrie: But statistically, no. Black and Indigenous people are way more likely, especially men, right?

Megan: Especially men, yeah. 

Carrie: Black and Indigenous men. Yeah, so that's great. And the thing he posted with that tweet was an opinion article from an op-ed, I guess, from the New York Times. "Why are police officers more dangerous than airplanes? It should be possible to 'accident-proof' police work if we are willing to admit when mistakes are made." And you know what? Maybe. But again, you'd have to admit that there's a racial component in order to even come close to "accident-proof". They're not really accidents.

Megan: I was going to say they're not accidents. 

Carrie: Maybe there's a case where it is, but generally speaking, no. 

Megan: Yeah, I mean, a lot is operating on unconscious bias, or a lot's operating on conscious bias when it comes to... Yeah.

Carrie: I'm willing to admit that every once in a while, there could be a mistake involved, because humans are humans. But no. That's mostly no. 

Megan: Yeah, yeah.

Carrie: Okay, the third thing, Pinker2011 provides another example of Dr. Pinker downplaying actual violence in a casual manner. "In 1984, Bernhard Goetz, a mild-mannered engineer, became a folk hero for shooting four young muggers in a New York subway car." Bernhard Goetz shot four black teenagers for saying, "Give me five dollars." We don't know if it was an attempted mugging. Like, that's disputed, right? But anyway, Goetz, Pinker's mild-mannered engineer, described the situation after the first four shots as follows, "I immediately looked at the first two to make sure they were taken care of and then attempted to shoot Cabby again in the stomach, but the gun was empty." Yeah, this guy's not mild-mannered. 

Megan: No. He's a murderer. Yeah.

Carrie: Yeah. Also, 18 months prior, the same "mild-mannered engineer" had said, "The only way we're going to clean up the street is to get rid of the S slur and N word, according to his neighbor." Once again, the language he employs in calling this person "mild-mannered" illustrates his tendency to downplay very real violence and very real, obvious racial [inaudible]. Like he clearly hated them regardless of whether he was violent before that or not. He clearly hated them. You can't call that mild-mannered. It's like the Charlie Kirk business calling him a great debater. 

Megan: He is not. Yeah. Let's not call that debate. That's not what he was doing. Like, it's so mischaracterized. Well, it's on purpose. I know, it's ridiculous.

Carrie: Yeah, we could go on a whole long tangent about that, but he does not debate or he didn't debate. He would just say something inflammatory, kind of soften it, and then keep repeating things that would make the first point the more salient thing. And he did this on purpose.

Megan: He was in bed with logical fallacies. 

Carrie: Oh, yes. He was BFFs with logical fallacies. He used them as a little comforter. 

Megan: Yeah, exactly.

Carrie: Oh, my God. Anyways. Okay. In 2014, a student murdered six women at UC Santa Barbara after posting up a video online that detailed his misogynistic reasons. Ignoring the perpetrator's own hate speech, Dr. Pinker called the idea that such a murder could be part of the sexist pattern "statistically obtuse", once again, undermining those who stand up against violence while downplaying the actual murder of six women as well as systems of misogyny. 

Megan: And I think it was Kate Manne, the philosophy professor, does so much good work with the Steven Pinker gender stuff and her book, Down Girl. And I think she took to Twitter during the time and did a lot of good work there. But it was ridiculous. That manifesto was clearly anti-women. He was like an incel.

Carrie: He was clearly an incel. Yeah. He clearly hated women. He stated this was the reason why he was doing this thing. But oh, he also killed some men, including his roommates.

Megan: Yeah, that's right. 

Carrie: By the way, his mother... I don't know. I really respect her when she talks about what he did and how she doesn't want it to happen again. Like, I don't know. 

Megan: She's honest. She's honest about it. 

Carrie: She's extremely honest. Extremely honest. Yeah. On June 3rd, 2020, during historic Black Lives Matter, protests in response to violent racist killings by police of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others, Dr. Pinker chose to publicly co-opt the academic work of a Black social scientist to further his deflationary agenda. He misrepresents the work of that scholar who himself mainly expressed the hope he felt that the protests might spark genuine change in keeping with his belief in the ultimate goodness of humanity. A day after, the LSA commented on its public Twitter account that it "stands with our Black community". So yeah, there's also a public post by Dr. Maria Esipova. So if you can look that up if you want to see more. 

Okay, so this is the tweet from Pinker. "Harvard Social Science Dean Lawrence Bobo did the research I've cited on the decline of overt racism in the U.S. Here he reflects with cautious optimism on race relations in the context of police killings of Black men."

Megan: Well, yeah, it's so insensitive to... He seems to come in when another terrible murder of a Black man at the hands of police happens and is like, "No, but wait, racial violence isn't really a thing anymore or police aren't really doing this disproportionate rate to Black men or whatever." He knows what he's doing. It's an asshole move.

Carrie: It is an asshole move. I wonder if he thinks, it's like, he's just right. So it's not asshole-ish, you know? 

Megan: I was going to ask you, do you think that he's bad at statistics or...

Carrie: Maybe.

Megan: Because I'm thinking he must be if he actually believes what he's saying. Or is he someone...

Carrie: Disingenuous. 

Megan: Yeah. 

Carrie: I don't know because he does strike me as being disingenuous, but also like firmly believes that he's right. So I just never know on any given thing whether he's just like, "I'm going to twist this on purpose," or whether he's just like motivated reasoning, getting himself to there. You know what I mean? 

Megan: Yeah, I do. Yeah. It's unclear. 

Carrie: That's very unclear to me. Okay. And then the sixth thing, on June 14th, 2020, Dr. Pinker used the dog whistle "urban crime/violence" in two public tweets. Neither of the sources that he's tweeting about use the term. And we've talked about dog whistles with Robert Henderson, and here, it's a deniable speech act that "sends one message to an out group while at the same time sending a second often taboo, controversial, or inflammatory message to an in group". And again, this is also what Charlie Kirk did. 

Megan: Oh, yeah. What was his last words? Blaming gang violence when we know that that's a dog whistle for black. Yeah. 

Carrie: Yeah. He died as he lived. 

Megan: 100%. 

Carrie: And then, "Urban is a dog whistle too, which signals covert and crucially deniable support of views that essentialize black people as lesser than and often as criminals." It's parallel inner city is in fact one of the prototypical examples used by Robert Henderson and Ellen McCready in their article, their articles, I should say.

Megan: And ultimately in the book, I think they address it. Yeah.

Carrie: Probably, yeah. Okay, so the two tweets, the first one, don't abolish the police. Patrick Sharkey, researcher on urban violence and its decline writes, "Cops prevent violence, but they aren't the only ones who can do it." And then the second one, "Another expert on urban crime, Ron Brunson points out protests focus on over-policing, but under-policing is also deadly."

Megan: Isn't it true, like you said something there that both of those things don't actually say urban crime. It was Pinker that categorized it that way, right? 

Carrie: Yeah, but I don't see it in the actual tweets themselves. So this is interesting. Oh, that's right. No, he uses urban violence in the first one. And then the second one, urban crime. Yeah, so he does use urban. Sorry. Yeah. I was looking for the other dog whistles.

Megan: I mean, I don't know. There's so much more to that letter could have included, but I see, like it was a point to stick to his racism and...

Carrie: It was to stick to the...

Megan: But there's so much more that could include racism too, but yeah. 

Carrie: Also sexism because about the UC...

Megan: Santa Barbara.

Carrie: Santa Barbara. But otherwise, yeah, it's basically all his racist shit. And there's also a footnote in the letter that he also frequently uses the word race in a manner that dog whistle appears far too weak a term for. So this example is, "Every geneticist knows that the race doesn't exist. Dogma is a convenient PC. One quarter truth."

Megan: Oh, he loves to call out PC stuff, doesn't he?

Carrie: He does. 

Megan: He does. And speaking of everything that's happening in the world right now, isn't he like, "Cancel culture is ridiculous. It's too woke and like free speech over everything. Like we should be able to..."

Carrie: Well, he signed the Harper's letter about free speech on campus, but is he saying anything about all these people being fired or I don't know. My guess is no.

Megan: Not yet, I don't think.

Carrie: I haven't seen anything, but also I don't think he cares. These are people that deserve to be fired in his mind.

Megan: Yeah. Because he signed the letter basically saying that there's not enough intellectual diversity on campuses. There needs to be voices from the right or whatever.

Carrie: Yeah, but they couch it in terms of people shouldn't be canceled for their speech.

Megan: So like Jimmy Kimmel shouldn't be canceled for his speech. 

Carrie: Right. Among many, many, many, many, many others. There's so many professors who are fired simply for saying Charlie Kirk said a thing that he literally did say.

Megan: I know. It's really bad. It's scary. 

Carrie: Yeah. So geneticists very well do know that race doesn't exist because...

Megan: Social contract. 

Carrie: Well, social contract, but also like what genes? I'm sorry, which genes?

Megan: Right.

Carrie: Show me the cluster of genes that gives you this race versus this race. It's impossible. It's absolutely impossible. 

Megan: Right, yeah.

Carrie: Anyways. 

Megan: Yeah, so I looked at the LSA website and they do have media contacts and I think that you should have Steven Pinker but they don't anymore. They don't have McWhorter either.

Carrie: Oh, that's interesting. Because McWhorter, as terrible as he is, hasn't quite done this. You know what I mean?

Megan: No, I know. I know. Yeah. No, yeah. Steven Pinker is so frustrating and people still give him a platform. He was just on Bill Maher's show a couple of weeks ago. 

Carrie: Oh, yeah, I meant to try to watch that just because...

Megan: I watched it. It was pretty tame. 

Carrie: Okay. Okay. I guess I'm glad I didn't give them an extra view then.

Megan: Yeah, yeah. Think of it that way. For sure. Because he has a new book. He's doing an interview because he has a new book and I forgot what it's about now. But that's another good point that people make about him is that, and maybe it's the ego, he keeps writing about things that are so far afield from anything he's had studied or like focused on. He keeps going further and further away from that. So like, I don't know. I'm sure he does some research, but it's just interesting. It'd be like if I decided to write about the Renaissance, write a book about the Renaissance or something. It's not going to be as good or accurate as someone who studied the Renaissance in a formal setting. 

Carrie: No. Yeah. Well, I mean, his whole book on the Enlightenment apparently pissed off every single person who works on the Enlightenment. 

Megan: Right, exactly. Exactly my point. Yeah. Yeah.

Carrie: Yeah. I mean, he's old enough to be retired, so he could just stop.

Megan: Wouldn't that be nice? But people like him don't stop. 

Carrie: No.

Megan: They think their voice is too important.

Carrie: Yeah. So you brought up Blank Slate a bit. Do you want to explain what's the problem with Blank Slate? 

Megan: That he brings up?

Carrie: Mm-hmm. Like why is his attacking the Blank Slate idea so problematic? 

Megan: So he's saying we're not Blank Slates. 

Carrie: Right. Which is true, right? We aren't.

Megan: Right, right.

Carrie: Literally true.

Megan: Right. Well, he brings it back to race, basically. He brings it back to differences between us, right? He's trying to blame what's inherent to us as the reason for violence or crime or societal ills, I believe, if I remember correctly. I think he claims that we can't make good policies or laws if we don't understand that people have these inherent issues. 

Carrie: Hmm. Okay. Yeah, so one of the other things I noticed when I was rereading The Language Instinct, it's just like, he would be saying a bunch of stuff that made sense and we're like, "Great." And then all of a sudden, he would say this weird thing. And you're just like, "What the fuck are you doing?" So for example, this goes back to the same conversation earlier where I was talking about like the Stone Age people, but there's no such thing as a Stone Age language. He's trying to compare like English to [inaudible], which is a Bantu language and how complicated [inaudible] is when you're talking about things like the equivalent of, "She baked me a brownie." It does all these cool, interesting things, grammatically, morphologically. And he's talking about how, "Okay, well you have to understand, there's 16 genders in this language. So you have to understand that to do this properly." And then he's like in brackets, "In case you're wondering, these genders do not pertain to things like cross-dressers, transsexuals, hermaphrodites, androgynous people, and so on, as one reader of this chapter surmised." 

Megan: What the fuck? 

Carrie: To a linguist, the term gender retains its original meaning of kind as in the related words, generic, genus, and genre. The Bantu gender is referred to kinds like humans, animals, extended objects, clusters of objects and body parts. It just happens that in many European languages, the genders correspond to the sexes, at least in pronouns. For this reason, the linguistic term gender has been pressed into service by non-linguists as a convenient label for sexual dimorphism. The more accurate term sex seems now to be reserved as the polite way to refer to copulation. So much packed into that. So much packed into that.

Megan: What? What? So he's always just been weird. 

Carrie: Oh, fuck yeah. Yeah.

Megan: Yeah, yeah. 

Carrie: It's important to point out that gender means something different here than you're expecting from, if you're not a linguist, right? That's fine. The explanation is wild.

Megan: It goes a lot of places. Yeah, it took some turns. It took some turns. 

Carrie: To say like, this meaning of gender is closer to things like generic and genus and genre, oh, yeah, cool. That actually does make sense to maybe bring that in. But to claim that you can't use gender to mean what we often mean it to mean, yeah, like male, female, non-binary or whatever, is hilarious and bizarre.

Megan: Bizarre. What was this, '94, when he wrote this, I think? 

Carrie: I think this one was '92. It was in the 90s anyway, early 90s. So it was a kind of an interesting read to be like, "Oh, you've always been like this." I mean, I knew that, but like... 

Megan: Yeah, there was no point where he became radicalized or weird. He's always just been...

Carrie: Oh yeah, yeah.

Megan: Yeah. I saw that he went on to a, in June, Aporia or some sort of race science like podcast. 

Carrie: Oh.

Megan: The Guardian wrote about it, even saying like Steven Pinker goes on Aporia. 

Carrie: Oh.  Oh, yeah, back in June. Yeah, okay. The psychologist and writer's appearance on Aporia condemned for helping to normalize dangerous discredited ideas. Oh, wow. 

Megan: Yeah, I was surprised to see, because I just put Steven Pinker and race science in Google, and it was like, "Oh my God, this is new." Like this is this summer. So he's still on his bullshit.

Carrie: Yeah, unsurprising. Oh, yeah, so Pinker expressed agreement with claims made by Charles Murray, the author of The Bell Curve, a prominent figure in the human biodiversity movement that seeks to promote race-based theories of intelligence. And he was also a participant in a human biodiversity email list convened by Steve Saylor, as was Pinker. 

Megan: Yeah, agreement with Charles Murray is not the best look.

Carrie: No.

Megan: The Bell Curve is awful. 

Carrie: Yeah.

Megan: I mean, they wouldn't try to hide anything. It is not a dog whistle. It is just straight up racism.

Carrie: No! Yeah. Okay, so the host of this podcast, which I've never heard of before, is called Noah Carl. And Carl cited, "Evidence collected by sociologists like Charles Murray, suggesting that part of the family breakdown in some communities in America seems to be attributable to the state taking over the traditional function of the father." So this isn't even race science shit. This is anti-social supports.

Megan: Yeah. It's a class thing too, for sure. 

Carrie: It's definitely a class thing. It's definitely a class thing, but it's specifically anti-government, right? 

Megan: Right.

Carrie: Pinker responded, "I think that is a problem." He added, "It is a huge class differentiated phenomenon as Murray and others write it out."

Megan: Oh, yeah, I read a bit of The Bell Curve because of the last article I wrote before I retired from academia about linguistic racism. I compared Hart and Risley, which is a book about children developing language and like socioeconomic stuff to The Bell Curve. And some of the quotes, you can't tell the difference. And so The Bell Curve would say stuff, they would say like people need to be explicit, that people of lower classes don't raise their children as well as people higher on the socioeconomic ladder. It was disgusting.

Carrie: Yeah. Couldn't be something that, I don't know, money could help with. I don't know. Maybe we could give people supports instead of being like, "Oh, no, where the state's taking over the responsibilities of being a father?" What? What are you even trying to say? I mean, I know what you're trying to say, but oh my fucking God. Okay, Aporia is wild. And Carl is... I cannot believe that he went onto this podcast even knowing who he is. I would have thought this would be a step too far. Like he'd be like, "Okay, this is no longer dog whistling. This is just whistling, you know?"

Megan: Yeah. Well, at the end of the Guardian article, it says that he finally commented and said that he was on the show because they disagreed with him and he wanted to discuss it.

Carrie: No, no.

Megan: It doesn't say that?

Carrie: No. I mean, I don't see it here, but also, no, that claim is wrong. 

Megan: Yeah, yeah.
 
Carrie: So yeah, he said he agreed to be interviewed on Aporia after the site attacked his views on human progress and accepted their invitation to reply in a written rejoinder and interview. No, you agreed with Carl on at least one thing and probably more. 

Megan: Right, and also you're just platforming him. Like you know people listen to you for whatever reason. Yeah, he's platforming it. 

Carrie: He is platforming it. I mean, this is not the only thing he's done. So for example, he's got a connection to Steve Saylor. He included a Saylor essay in a collection of American science writing. He was an early participant in Saylor's human biodiversity email discussion group. And even goddamn Malcolm Gladwell was like, "This is bad."

Megan: Yeah, yeah. 

Carrie: I mean, I guess Malcolm Gladwell has his problems, but he's not on this tip, so.

Megan: No, yeah.

Carrie: I have many issues with him, but yeah, he does seem less actively bad. And maybe I should stop being so mean about Malcolm Gladwell.

Megan: Yeah, especially in comparison to Steven Pinker.

Carrie: In comparison. Oh my God, he's a goddamn saint. 

Megan: Yeah, yeah.

Carrie: Hilarious that they're both Canadian too, but anyway. 

Megan: Oh, Malcolm's Canadian too?

Carrie: Mm-hmm. And then there's also an academic study from 2021, which I do not remember seeing from UCLA, saying that Pinker is one of the "political centrists" who have "played a role in legitimizing the ideas of the human biodiversity movement".

Megan: Didn't see that either. Wow.

Carrie: So yeah. So anything else we want to mention about this man? 

Megan: He helped Jeffrey Epstein. 

Carrie: Yes! I can't believe I forgot about that. Okay, yes.

Megan: I guess he would probably claim, "No, I helped Alan Dershowitz."

Carrie: He helped Alan Dershowitz, who asked him to write about, is this a case of like crossing state lines?

Megan: Yeah, something like that. Illegally.

Carrie: For the purposes of prostitution, I think? 

Megan: Yeah, he was like, "We wanted his expertise as a linguist."

Carrie: Actually, let me find it, because I think it is important to get it correct. Okay. This is a quote from Patrick Blanchfeld, a scholar of politics and violence, an affiliate faculty member at Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, cited in Inside Higher Ed. "At a certain point, if you're playing Dr. Pangloss to people who administer a monstrous social order, then at some point, you're going to rub shoulders with and do favors for actual monsters." Talking about...

Megan: Epstein.

Carrie: Epstein, yeah.

Megan: Yeah. Yeah, it was ultimately a favor for Jeffrey Epstein, because that was when he, I think it was at Alex Acosta down in Florida. Like that's when he got off, with the sweetheart deal.

Carrie: Yeah, I wouldn't say got off, but he got a sweetheart deal. Yeah. Okay, so [inaudible] attorneys, including Dershowitz, submitted a letter to federal prosecutors arguing that their client hadn't violated a law against using the internet to lure minors across state lines for sexual abuse. So that's what it was about. So the reading is that the plain meaning of the words, he was not violating this law. I don't know. Personally, I would have a real problem being asked to talk about this, unless a linguist. I have been asked to do some linguistic interpretation for a court case, but it was about contracts. It was like, "Does this contract say this or this, or is it ambiguous," right? And it was nothing about minors, nothing about sex, nothing about anything. No problem. I'm pretty sure if someone came to me with this particular case and they were like, "Oh, can you tell us what the law is saying?", I'd be like, "You know what? I don't feel comfortable."

Megan: Yeah, that's what he could have done.

Carrie: If this person is maybe trafficking children across state lines using the internet, maybe I don't want to be involved.

Megan: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, and then I think Steven was like, "Oh, I barely know the guy." Of course there's pictures. There's pictures, or at least one picture of him with Epstein. But yeah, no, like I wouldn't have wanted to help with that either. And he could have said no, like didn't want to be a part of it.

Carrie: And this is what he said, "I could never stand the guy, never took research funding from him and always tried to keep my distance. I found him to be a kibitzer and a dilettante. He would abruptly change the subject, ADD style, dismiss an observation with an adolescent wisecrack and privilege his own intuitions over systematic data."

Megan: Oh. Is he talking about himself? 

Carrie: You know, I bet there's some truth to this quote because it feels right about what everyone else says about Epstein, I mean. But yeah. He's also in the picture with Lawrence Krauss, so I don't really trust your judgment, Pinker. Also, if you're friends with Dershowitz, I'm sorry, there's something wrong with you.

Megan: Yeah, exactly. 100%. So yeah, he's all over the place, just doing bad things.

Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Megan: That's Steven Pinker for you. 

Carrie: That's Steven Pinker. Yeah. So anyways, I hope this was an enjoyable tour of everything we find bizarre about this man.

Megan: Yeah. It was fun to do a live one.

Carrie: Yeah. We might do this again. I don't know what, but we should try again because I do think this was good.

Megan: Yeah, who knows?

Carrie: All right. Well, we always leave our listeners with one final message. Don't be an asshole. 

Megan: Don't be an asshole.

Carrie: The Vocal Fries Podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon, theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, @VocalFriesPod. You can email us at vocalrfriespod@gmail.com and our website is vocalfriespod.com.

[END]