In Depth with Steven Pinker pt. 10/18

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[braydenbeautiful]

9:13

win

[mutbutyt]

I disagree- I think pawnson's comments are continually and relentlessly negative, they demonstrate clear bias and lack of objectivity. He may try and retreat and claim to be "promoting discussion" or whatever, but this is lame - he exposes himself as a pedant- the sort of irritating geek who heckles good speakers at a conference to indulge their ego and inflated self importance

[laborwage]

@pawsoned Hahaha yeah I think it does incite controversy, and it did work in that regard, but perhaps it is a little rude... no big deal, I think.

[pawsoned]

@laborwage I'm trying not to insult Pinker - I respect him.

When exactly I insulted him personally? Do you mean the word 'schmuck' - that was tongue-in-cheek.

I admited that it was rude and apologized. I promise I won't do that again :-)

[laborwage]

@pawsoned I don't think Pinker's work in linguistics can be compared to the Chomsky revolution, that it true. And Chomsky did not stop writing, he simply stopped writing on Linguistics. And certainly some Pinker fans are dumb and accept everything he says. But why insult Pinker? You could simply point out what he says (in the videos, preferably, since many people do not have the relevant texts you quote) and critique its validity directly, without references to Pinker's character!

[laborwage]

@pawsoned I think his talks on swearing are informed by science, but yes, are a little less rigorous than his formal work. And no, I have not read the two books you mention, so I cannot comment.

[pawsoned]

@laborwage I think they uncritically swallow every stupid word he says

[laborwage]

@pawsoned I think youtubers, most of them, are not consumers of technical linguistics literature but rather appreciate Pinker as a popular science writer.

[pawsoned]

@laborwage But Chomsky achieved a brilliant breakthrough in linguistics. It's a pity that he stopped writing, but he had his innings, whereas Pinker so far hasn't achieved comparable scientific success. (As far as I know his two technical books haven't as yet discover anything new - like Chomsky's universally acclaimed Universal Grammar theory). Maybe I'm unjustifiably selling Pinker short, but I feel like speaking up (antithesis) for Pinker's uncritically dumb psychophantic praises on YouTube.

[pawsoned]

@labo All right I'm willing to agree with you. But the fact is he stopped writing technical books for so-called popular science and uses his qualifications for his spiels (like how do we curse) which are not in any way strictly speaking scientific. That is my objection.

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that he's a fake scientist, but that he's a lapsed one. And really if you read his last books (i.e. The Stuff.., Words and Rules) you won't find much facts apart from dull semantic hairsplitting