Steven Pinker

Cognitive scientist at Harvard.

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

I joined the APA as a postdoc, and resigned a few years ago. This article explains why: The Inmates Run the Asylum at the Psychological Association by @SwipeWright and @Hartz_PhD https://t.co/NPcjHQC1kh via @WSJopinion

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Latest NYT science article by @ericboodman

[Eric Boodman @EricBoodman]

In June, guards expelled five scientists from a conference. Months later, some 1,200 researchers are boycotting the American Diabetes Association.

I wrote about how diabetes research has become a microcosm of Trump's America.

https://t.co/uUmq8DWwwQ

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

The U.S. Is Driving Away Young Scientists (I see this happening with my students). https://t.co/U46MMpX6rR

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Its handling of human intelligence is also a travesty: https://t.co/KorJ4GWzfp

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Wikipedia may be the Web's greatest accomplishment, but it is not infallible, and in several hot-button issues, it has been captured by activists. One of the most egregious is its rewriting of "Zionism" after 10/7: https://t.co/YXWbWTXHbd

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

"Steven Pinker: Why we pretend everyone is equal | Rak höger": https://t.co/Zy82kzQbu7

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

"Steven Pinker: Why we pretend everyone is equal | Rak höger"

Me:
I think there is hope, and I think we may have just, just passed peak woke, although there were rather extreme manifestations of that in 2020 and 2021 after the George Floyd killing. It’s still a serious problem, and it’s got to be, simply because professors in the United States have tenure, and so they’re in their positions until they die or retire.

Ivar Arpi (@Ivarpi):
Or capital punishment.

Me:
Or capital punishment, yes.

So it turns over very slowly, and I think that the problem is that, in most universities, especially in the social sciences and humanities, there is a political monoculture on the left and an absence of political diversity. This is not a problem just in being unrepresentative, because there’s nothing that says that a university has to match the demographics of the society. But the problem is that, when there are legitimate hypotheses within a field that tend to be correlated with political ideology—and there are plenty of them—certain hypotheses just don’t get voiced, don’t get thought, don’t get taught. Certain criticisms never get made simply because everyone thinks the same way.

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

It's always The End of History. Brilliant essay by Harry Seavy: "Ours is the decisive moment, and it is we who are alive to see it, to shape it, to place history on the tracks of what we make out of it. In this decade, as the winds of crisis whip around us—democracy, liberalism, AI, climate change—as we stand uniquely at the precipice, the very point at which things will either tip over into the abyss or be miraculously rescued from it, we face a moment the world has never seen before. Just like everyone else before us." https://t.co/iqRFPi3TVu

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Why Men Die Younger Than Women, and Women Suffer More Pain https://t.co/HGuNIO9iqE

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

I joined the APA as a postdoc, and resigned a few years ago. This article explains why: The Inmates Run the Asylum at the Psychological Association by @SwipeWright and @Hartz_PhD https://t.co/NPcjHQC1kh via @WSJopinion

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

I Wouldn’t Hurt A Fly, explains Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (with an analysis of the concept of human dignity). @platobooktour https://t.co/vitLx4bGR3

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Rebecca Goldstein's The Mattering Instinct named one of the Best Books of 2026 by Publishers Weekly. https://t.co/AUNf3zu4Ak

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

"Evolution does not need a rebuild, and The Selfish Gene is not outmoded. It remains...a page-turner." Nathaniel Comfort's misguided take on The Selfish Gene at 50 https://t.co/Gp9Bf0kBgE

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Link to Harvard Hillel panel: https://t.co/uJm9O6KrSO

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Rabbis and Scholars: The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

This evening! November 9, 2026
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

https://t.co/uJm9O6KrSO

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Monday at Harvard Hillel: I'm on a panel with two Rabbis on AI & Humanity: Mind, Machine, and Meaning - Rabbis and Scholars on our Future with AI.

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Monday at Harvard Hillel: I'm on a panel with two Rabbis on AI & Humanity: Mind, Machine, and Meaning - Rabbis and Scholars on our Future with AI.

[Tony Morley @tonymmorley]

The “Defend the West” online conference by @ConjectureInst and @ChipkinLogan, January 13th, 2027, is stacked with brilliant speakers: @johanknorberg, @sapinker, Deirdre McCloskey, @michaelshermer, @nickgillespie, @yaronbrook and more. Register here: https://t.co/gq9WrriTKI

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

How Trump Is Dismantling America’s Scientific Research Machine https://t.co/HYHj7Po246

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Leonard Cohen — ‘a man whose compass always led him home’ by my friend Cantor Gideon Zelermeyer. https://t.co/oaSpIix8in

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Is anomie a First World problem? "Modern life values personal choice and increases the range of choices open to ordinary people. In modernity, the quest for meaning and purpose is fulfilled through individual and voluntary collaborative action. As such, we should reject the complaints of anomie and, to the extent that they have a foundation, regard it as a problem of success." https://t.co/ksVPtJddsW

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Latest updates on human progress from @HumanProgress https://t.co/ptAzsjnZ27