Photo: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Steven Pinker public figure — reconstructed profile
This is a reconstruction from published statements, not a real account. Only questions with a documented position are answered, and each one cites its source below. Spotted an error? Bring a better citation to the forum and it gets fixed.
Cognitive scientist & author. Positions reconstructed from The Blank Slate, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality — not a member.
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Kindred % · overall match
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Twin % · thinks like you
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World % · lives in your world
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Life % · lives like you
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Opposition % · opposite poles, held with certainty
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Bubble
Positions & sources
| Question | Position | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Before reading a particular study, you were skeptical of claim X. The study — large, in a strong journal — largely convinced you. It is now retracted for fabricated data. Stipulate: no other study has tested X, and nothing else you know bears on X beyond what you knew before. Where does your belief in X land now? | Back where I started — the study is simply erased | Rationality (2021) — his Bayesian method: invalidated evidence returns credence to the prior (the "clean undo" his book teaches). (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Which comes closest to your actual position on God? | Probably no god, though I can't be certain | Enlightenment Now (2018) — stated atheism, probabilistically held. |
| Before results, you strongly doubted this: a one-time, one-hour classroom exercise measurably raises students' grades a year later. Then a randomized trial reports exactly that, statistically significant. Stipulate: preregistered, a large multi-school sample, an independent team, analysis matching the preregistration, and no flaws you can find. Where do you land now? | Probably true — a trial this clean should move me most of the way | Rationality (2021) — Bayesian updating on a single strong study; the textbook-Bayes landing zone his book endorses. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Human-caused climate change is best described as: | Real, mainly human-caused, and a serious problem | Enlightenment Now (2018), environment chapter — a serious problem, solvable by decarbonization. |
| A new nuclear power plant is proposed about 300 miles from your home, replacing a coal plant. Stipulate: it meets every current safety standard. Your stance during public comment: | Actively support | Enlightenment Now (2018), energy chapter — the ecomodernist case for nuclear power. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| The standard childhood vaccine schedule, taken as a whole: | Does far more good than harm | Enlightenment Now (2018) — vaccination and public-health progress. |
| Five years ago a commentator you usually agree with publicly made a specific prediction, and it came true. Stipulate: their reasoning was wrong and it came true for unrelated reasons. In their track record, you count it as: | A hit, with a note that the reasoning failed | Rationality (2021), forecasting chapter — endorses Tetlock-style scored track records with honest process accounting. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Using the World Bank's international extreme-poverty line of $2.15 a day (2017 prices), the share of the world's population in extreme poverty from 1990 to 2019: | Fell by more than half | Enlightenment Now (2018) — the book's core poverty charts: World Bank extreme poverty fell from ~36% (1990) toward ~9–10%, i.e., by more than half. His knowing this is documented by the book itself. |
| Humans came to exist by: | Evolution by natural processes, no guidance needed | The Blank Slate (2002). |
| The best economic order is closest to: | Capitalism with a basic safety net | Enlightenment Now (2018) — regulated market economies with welfare floors are his exhibited model. |
| Mainstream news outlets, taken as a whole, mostly: | Get most things roughly right, with real failures | Rationality (2021) — mainstream media defended as broadly accurate against systematic-deception claims. |
| A new nuclear power plant is proposed about 5 miles from your home, replacing a coal plant. Stipulate: it meets every current safety standard, and the coal plant it replaces is elsewhere and closes either way. Your stance during public comment: | Actively support | Enlightenment Now (2018) — his support is principled, argued independently of distance. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Twenty years from now, advanced AI will most likely have been: | Net beneficial — major gains with manageable harms | Enlightenment Now (2018). |
| God exists | Probably false | Enlightenment Now (2018) — he identifies as an atheist. |
| Conscious existence continues after death | Probably false | Enlightenment Now (2018) — secular-humanist worldview throughout; no afterlife. |
| Prayer can change what happens in the world, beyond its effects on the people involved | Probably false | Enlightenment Now (2018) — his stated atheism; supernatural intervention is not part of his documented worldview. |
| Human beings arose entirely through unguided natural processes | Certainly true | The Blank Slate (2002); How the Mind Works (1997) — evolution by unguided natural selection. |
| Consciousness is produced entirely by the brain | Certainly true | How the Mind Works (1997) — the computational theory of mind: the mind is what the brain does. |
| With the past exactly the same, our choices could have gone otherwise | Probably false | The Blank Slate (2002), "The Fear of Determinism" — behavior is caused; no uncaused will. |
| Some actions are wrong no matter what any person or culture believes | Probably true | Enlightenment Now (2018) — morality objectively grounded in human wellbeing (secular humanism). |
| We owe a stranger overseas as much as we owe a neighbor | Probably true | The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) — the expanding circle of moral concern, endorsed as moral progress. |
| Healthy adults are better off getting every vaccine their health authority recommends | Certainly true | Enlightenment Now (2018) — vaccination as an emblematic triumph of public health. |
| Free markets do more to reduce poverty than government programs do | Certainly true | Enlightenment Now (2018) — market economies credited with history's great escape from extreme poverty. |
| Genes shape adult personality more than upbringing does | Certainly true | The Blank Slate (2002) — the laws of behavior genetics: genes outweigh shared family environment in shaping adult personality. |
| Advanced AI poses a serious risk of human extinction | Probably false | Enlightenment Now (2018), existential-threat chapters — AI-extinction scenarios argued to be implausible. |
| People in 2100 will live better lives than people do today | Certainly true | Enlightenment Now (2018) — the book's central thesis of continuing progress. |
| Human life has a purpose beyond the one we choose for it | Probably false | Enlightenment Now (2018) — humanist meaning is made by people, not cosmically assigned. |
| Experts are usually right about questions in their own field | Probably true | Rationality (2021) — a sustained defense of expertise and scientific institutions. |
| Official institutions are honest with the public | Probably true | Rationality (2021) — mainstream institutions defended as broadly reliable knowledge engines against conspiracist cynicism. |