DISQUS

stuart · 3 years ago

Did Chris really need to make such a meal of how much he dislikes Pinker? He puts part of his dislike down to Pinker's supposed right wing political views.

I'm sure he'd hate you Will

razib · 3 years ago

I’m sure he’d hate you Will

he has hated will. but more for his perception that will misunderstands cog sci than the politics. chris to the left of lakoff, but i consider him a 'blog friend' and i am probably to the right of will on many issues (e.g., anti-immigration).

razib · 3 years ago

oh, and when i say that 'will misunderstands cog sci,' it wasn't meant as a slam. just that chris' issues with will didn't have much to do with politics from what i remember.

Will Wilkinson · 3 years ago

Chris came down on me pretty hard for my Cato piece on evolutionary psychology and politics, but I think we get on rather well. Chris often leaves insightful and helpful comments here, and I almost always agree with him. I'm sure are politics differ (my politics are basically Pinker's), but I have no reason whatsoever to think he hates me. How about it, Chris?

razib · 3 years ago

my politics are basically Pinker’s

you're a moderate democrat? :)

Will Wilkinson · 3 years ago

Is that what Pinker says he is? I'm a free-market liberal (which could be construed as a moderate democrat, I guess) which is what I took Pinker to be.

razib · 3 years ago

well, he says:
2004 vote: Kerry. The reason is reason: Bush uses too little of it. In the war on terror, his administration stints on loose-nuke surveillance while confiscating nail clippers and issuing color-coded duct tape advisories. His restrictions on stem cell research are incoherent, his dismissal of possible climate change inexcusable.

i had a conversation with pinker once, he struck me as a typical milquetoast democrat. but hey, you know what, i know people who are close to pinker. why don't i ask them?

i only bring this up because people keep saying he is a "right winger." i don't think that's accurate.

Will Wilkinson · 3 years ago

Well, had I not lived about anywhere other than DC, which trends so heavily Democratic that election results are a foregone conclusion, I would have voted for Kerry. Since voting for Kerry in DC wouldn't help Bush lose, I voted for Badnarik instead, with a sense of ironic protest. I had always been under the impression that Pinker is fairly libertarian. So please do ask your Pinker connections. I'm interested in what they say.

razib · 3 years ago

cosmides & tooby are right-libertarians, that i know. i have already sent off the email. i'll email you when/if i get an intelligible response.

Chris · 3 years ago

I hate you! I hate you all!

OK, just kidding. No, I don't hate Will at all, and I read his blog regularly. Not being one of those people who likes to read things just to get all riled up, my reading it must mean that I find something interesting and/or insightful in it. It's true that he and I are probably pretty far apart politically (just as Razib and I are), but I don't see any reason to hate someone just because they differ politically.

Now, I do not like Pinker's work (I've only met him a couple times in person, and so I couldn't say what I think of him personally), but it's not really because of his politics. I've got cog sci friends who are libertarians and republicans, and I like them just fine. I dislike his work because I think that he, like Lakoff, has a nasty habit of misrepresenting the state of research and debate on cognitive science, particularly when it comes to his adaptationism (which is, it should always be noted, not the mainstream view in cognitive science).

Chris · 3 years ago

p.s., the reason I made a big deal out of disliking Pinker is to stress the fact that I wasn't disagreeing with Lakoff just because I dislike him (it's widely known among the people who read the blog that I dislike him). I wanted to make it clear that I disliked both the participants (professionally, not personally, though in my one meeting with Lakoff, he was an ass -- Mark Johnson, his partner in crime, is a really nice guy, though), and so the only reason I had for siding with one was because he was right, and the other was wrong. Sometimes that's not clear to everyone, in the blogworld.

stuart · 3 years ago

Sorry. I didn't know Chris commented here. I got the impression that his political views had something to do with your dislike for him.

I don't think Pinker's politics are clear from his books. I always figured he was a democrat who actually took libertarianism seriously, rather than just denouncing it.

Not that I normally think of libertarians as right wing (economically yes, otherwise no)