Steven Pinker: a thinking person’s guide to bright lights in dark times

Covid-19 exposed a gulf between the rational and irrational in society, says Canadian psychologist and humanist Steven Pinker.

Steven Pinker will deliver the Christopher Hitchens address at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney next weekend. Picture: Rose Lincoln /Harvard staff photographer

Is the world regressing towards an intellectual dark age?

Canadian psychologist and humanist Steven Pinker says in some ways yes, in some ways no. But there is an undeniable desire to burn everything down infecting the Western world, which has benefited from the ideals of the Enlightenment, such as reason, the pursuit of knowledge and liberty.

The author of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined says the spoils of the Age of Reason – such as greater prosperity and wealth – aren’t immediately apparent to the everyday eye.

The average person doesn’t think about the billions lifted from poverty or improved mortality rates in their day-to-day life as they rush to work or wait in a queue at the supermarket.

Instead, Pinker says, their attention is captivated by the news, which is enthralled by the bad and the ugly.

There has never been so much information available, the modern brain glutted by facts and ideas delivered by an increasing number of screens.

An increasing number of screens deliver facts and ideas, yet people’s attention is ‘captivated by the news, which is enthralled by the bad and the ugly’.

But the failure to critically analyse and apply rationality to the smorgasbord of information means people think things are worse than they really are, Pinker believes, and they are therefore unappreciative of how good the world has become.

He says people think the world is getting worse even if the world’s problems – disease, famine, war – are occurring far away from their back yards in countries with high wages, good schools and transparent governments.

“Enlightenment values are not particularly intuitive (and) I think we naturally fall back into tribalism, prioritising the glory and the status of the group as opposed to the flourishing of the individual,” he says.

“We fall back into authoritarianism. We want our tribe to be led by a strong man.”

Pinker will deliver the Christopher Hitchens address at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney next weekend and share his thoughts on whether the world is veering away from the bright lights of the Enlightenment towards darkness.

The Harvard professor says Covid-19 exposed a dichotomy of rational and irrational thought, the highs and lows of contemporary society. On one hand, the triumphs of science delivered effective vac­cines against Covid-19 in record time. Yet some people refused the jab because of the spread of quack science and conspiracy theories.

Pinker says one of the reasons behind the gulf between rational and irrational in contemporary society is the lack of faith in institutions such as governments, universities and the media. Those without trust instead become members of a tribe with their own opinions, falling back on the narratives that make them feel the most noble and virtuous.

Hundreds of people protest against Covid vaccine mandates outside of Queensland Parliament in Brisbane, in March 2022.

But Pinker says institutions have allowed themselves to be branded as left wing and subsequently have lost credibility with the wider population.

“I think a lot of our institutions have not done a good job in establishing their bona fides with the population,” he says.

“Quite the contrary since more and more institutions are branding themselves as just propaganda organs of the left; particularly that is true of many universities and mainstream media outlets.

“They’re just blowing off huge sectors of the population who aren’t on the left and therefore just write them off as people from the opposing tribe.”

Pinker says institutions that have maintained credibility have earned trust in their conclusions by maintaining the mechanisms of open debate, free speech, criticism, fact checking and empirical testing.

Pinker is often cited by culture warriors – at least on the right – but the psychologist himself isn’t wedded to either side.

“It’s (culture war) deeply unfortunate because it brings out our tribalistic thinking,” he says.

“If the results in the scientific journals are consistently and always supporting the narrative from the left, that can mean either one of two things: it could mean that these institutions are biased or it could mean that the left is infallible.

“If the left is infallible, why even have science?”

But Pinker says the right, at least in the US, currently is crazier and more powerful than the left, something uncovered throughout the pandemic.

Trump supporters battle with police and security forces as they storm the US Capitol building in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021. Picture: Roberto Schmidt / AFP

“The Trumpian right in the United States has gone off the rails, embracing patent falsehoods such as that the 2020 election was stolen, welcoming crank conspiracy theories like QAnon, subverting the mechanisms of democracy such as independent apportionment of electoral districts and counting of votes,” he says.

“Vesting authority in a charismatic leader to the point of becoming a cult. So yes, I criticise the academic left, (but) the American political right is much worse.”

One of the issues in contemporary society, Pinker says, is people aren’t critically analysing media coverage and developing their assessments of probability and risk on the immediate examples presented in news coverage, a phenomenon called availability bias.

“A lack of critical thinking would be to say such and such must happen all the time, I just read about it in the news this morning,” he says.

“That would be an example of a failure of critical thinking.”

People are therefore understanding the world through a lens coloured darkly by the misfortune suffered by others instead of through their own experiences.

Pinker says he and his fellow humanists actively engage habits of critical thinking in their daily lives, such as approaching arguments as a means of collectively approaching the truth instead of as a form of combat.

“Collective rationality emerges from the rough and tumble of ideas, which is why freedom of speech is not just a nice idea, not just a sentimental attachment like motherhood or harmony, but it’s an indispensable ingredient to us becoming more rational,” he says.

“Because if you stifle criticism – everyone wants to be right – and no one wants to be challenged, so error is guaranteed.”

The contempt shown for Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘suggests not the entire world has gone backwards’. Picture: SPUTNIK / AFP

Pinker is a keen cyclist and – in an example of how to apply critical thinking in daily life – has considered the rationality of riding a bike. In his latest book, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, he poses the question: “Given the value you put on your life and the fact that there’s even a very small probability of getting killed, does it outweigh the pleasure and health benefits from continuing to ride?”

Pinker says the world is currently experiencing several ages, dark or otherwise, and he points to the developed world’s reaction to Russia invading Ukraine as an example of the divergence.

While Vladimir Putin’s nation-aggrandising war is a throwback to Europe before 1945 when nation-states sought glory and land and avenged historical injustices, he says most of the developed world has been quick to condemn Putin and support Ukraine.

“The fact of course that the rest of the world has not applauded him and has not stood back in admiration at the glory and grandeur of the Eurasian empire but has rather treated him with contempt suggests not the entire world has gone backwards,” he says.