Pinker’s in full stride now, distilling the meaning of rationality with precision and poise. His idea of humanity being “trapped in the tragedy of a rationality commons” hit me squarely — a reminder that individual logic doesn’t automatically yield collective wisdom. You can have millions of rational people making individually sound choices, yet together create chaos. That’s a sobering paradox — and a perfect diagnosis of our age.
As I’ve listened, I’ve started feeling a deeper connection between Pinker’s framework and my own Faith vs Facts — Trump Mythology project. The whole myth of Trump as an innocent victim of “lawfare” and government persecution is a textbook case of collective irrationality — belief triumphing over evidence. I suspect Pinker would smile at anyone who calls that out, not because of the politics, but because the act of confronting irrationality itself is the work. That’s his real mission: not to defend one ideology over another, but to defend reason against the comfort of delusion.
He’s also fearless in balancing his critique — dissecting liberal and conservative absurdities with equal sharpness. That even-handedness, I think, is what gets him branded as “conservative.” In truth, he’s allergic to bad reasoning, wherever it lives.
As a gun owner and supporter of sensible regulation, I found his section on gun control particularly compelling — no moralizing, no slogans, just data and logic. He builds his argument like an engineer, not an activist.
With only an hour and change left, I can tell he’s already paving the way for When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows. It’s as if he’s saying: rationality isn’t enough — we also have to understand shared knowledge and collective awareness. That’s the next battlefield.
Pinker’s in full stride now, distilling the meaning of rationality with precision and poise. His idea of humanity being “trapped in the tragedy of a rationality commons” hit me squarely — a reminder that individual logic doesn’t automatically yield collective wisdom. You can have millions of rational people making individually sound choices, yet together create chaos. That’s a sobering paradox — and a perfect diagnosis of our age.
As I’ve listened, I’ve started feeling a deeper connection between Pinker’s framework and my own Faith vs Facts — Trump Mythology project. The whole myth of Trump as an innocent victim of “lawfare” and government persecution is a textbook case of collective irrationality — belief triumphing over evidence. I suspect Pinker would smile at anyone who calls that out, not because of the politics, but because the act of confronting irrationality itself is the work. That’s his real mission: not to defend one ideology over another, but to defend reason against the comfort of delusion.
He’s also fearless in balancing his critique — dissecting liberal and conservative absurdities with equal sharpness. That even-handedness, I think, is what gets him branded as “conservative.” In truth, he’s allergic to bad reasoning, wherever it lives.
As a gun owner and supporter of sensible regulation, I found his section on gun control particularly compelling — no moralizing, no slogans, just data and logic. He builds his argument like an engineer, not an activist.
With only an hour and change left, I can tell he’s already paving the way for When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows. It’s as if he’s saying: rationality isn’t enough — we also have to understand shared knowledge and collective awareness. That’s the next battlefield.