Clipmarks | Steven pinker Clips

The Thousand Best Popular-Science Books

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 10:48:31 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: The site promotes input on selections, but the list looks pretty thorough.

Clip Source: cosmicvariance.com

Over at Cocktail Party Physics, Jennifer has cast a baleful eye on the various lists of the world’s greatest books, and decided that we really need is a list of the world’s greatest popular-science books. I think the goal is to find the top 100, but many nominations are pouring in from around the internets, and I suspect that a cool thousand will be rounded up without much problem.

Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond

Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hoftstadter

Cosmos, Carl Sagan

Einstein’s Clocks and Poincare’s Maps, Peter Galison

How the Universe Got Its Spots, Janna Levin

Chronos, Etienne Klein

The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman

The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen J. Gould

Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, Dennis Overbye

The Inflationary Universe, Alan Guth

The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene

Warped Passages, Lisa Randall

The Astonishing Hypothesis, Francis Crick

The Double Helix, James Watson

Prisoner’s Dilemma, William Poundstone

Tags: cock, tail, partly, physics

Steven Pinker: The evolutionary man

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:53:31 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: There is, he points out, a world of difference between knowing something to be true and believing that you know something to be true

Clip Source: education.guardian.co.uk

Few academics come close to Steven Pinker in his grasp of image and imagery. With his trademark rock-star chic and an ear for a good soundbite, he has risen steadily to the top of the academic pile. In the heavily contested field of evolutionary psychology, Pinker has managed to consistently make sure that his voice is heard above most others, and along the way he has landed one of the top jobs at Harvard, while his books are usually to be found on the bestseller lists. And yet there is a twist. For a man who has dedicated a career to unpicking the secrets of language and thought, he has surprisingly often failed to make himself entirely clear to others. Either that, or he's a person whom some people choose to misunderstand.

You either love Pinker or you hate him. Indifference does not appear to be an option

Tags: steven pinker, evolution

"language as a window into human nature'. -

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:32:32 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: "language is an instinct, an evolutionary adaptation that is partly hardwired into our brains and partly learned"..Steven Pinker un his new book

Clip Source: discovermagazine.com

The rules of language may reveal how our brains really work.

Steven Pinker

a linguistics explorer, hunting around the sentences and syntax of human language for clues

to the inner world of the human brain

how they are used in sentences,

Why so much attention to verbs?

part it’s simply because he finds them fascinating.

Pinker has been a driving force in linguistics theory, analyzing language in labs at MIT, Stanford University

testing to what extent language is biologically programmed. His research suggests that language is an instinct, an evolutionary adaptation that is partly hardwired into our brains and partly learned

This work led Pinker to develop his theory of the evolution of the mind and the source of language

the brain at birth is not simply a blank slate to be shaped by culture and experience. Rather, it comes programmed with many behavioral dispositions and talents

human nature is to some extent innate and shaped by natural selection

The Singularity - A Special Report

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:04:32 GMT

clipped by: splendidus

Clip Source: www.spectrum.ieee.org

From the Magazine:

Signs of the Singularity
The writer who first postulated the singularity answers skeptics and tells us what to look for as the world slips closer to the edge.
By Vernor Vinge

The Singularity: Who’s Who
A guide the singularity true believers, atheists, and agnostics.
By Paul Wallich

The Consciousness Conundrum
How can we hope to create consciousness if we don't know anything about it?
By John Horgan

Can Machines Be Conscious?
Yes, someday—and here’s one way to determine if they are.
By Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi

Web Exclusives:

INTERACTIVE Mapping the Body Electric

VIDEO How to Prepare for the Singularity

Tech Luminaries Address the Singularity
Candid assessments from leading voices such as Steven Pinker, Gordon Moore, Esther Dyson, and more

Two Paths to the Singularity
MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld and technology futurist Ray Kurzweil both believe that we are on the event horizon of a technological singularity.

VIDEO Teaching Machines to Watch Blade Runner

Tags: singularity, technology, human, brain

Tech Luminaries Address Singularity

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 09:29:17 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.spectrum.ieee.org

Douglas Hofstadter

SINGULARITY WILL OCCUR Someday in the distant future

MACHINE CONSCIOUSNESS WILL OCCUR Yes

MOORE'S LAW WILL CONTINUE FOR 20 more years

Jeff Hawkins

SINGULARITY WILL OCCUR “If you define the singularity as a point in time when intelligent machines are designing intelligent machines in such a way that machines get extremely intelligent in a short period of time—an exponential increase in intelligence—then it will never happen. Intelligence is largely defined by experience and training, not just by brain size or algorithms. It isn't a matter of writing software. Intelligent machines, like humans, will need to be trained in particular domains of expertise. This takes time and deliberate attention to the kind of knowledge you want the machine to have.”

John Casti

T.J. Rodgers

SINGULARITY WILL OCCUR Never

Eric Hahn

Gordon Bell

Steven Pinker

Gordon E. Moore

Jim Fruchterman

Esther Dyson

Tags: singularity, opinions, tech luminaries

Indignity and Bioethics

Mon, 26 May 2008 18:48:51 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: article.nationalreview.com

Steven Pinker discovers the human-dignity cabal.

By Yuval Levin

Human dignity has long been a contentious subject in American bioethics. A frequently employed if ill-defined concept in European political life, in international law, and in the ethical tradition of the West, dignity has had a particularly hard time finding its precise meaning and place in the Anglo-American sphere. Is it just a synonym for equality or autonomy, or does it describe something else — a concept foreign to our political vocabulary? And either way, does it belong in an American bioethics, or is it best left safely across the pond? Different scholars and observers through the years have taken for granted quite different definitions of the term, while others have simply denied its utility altogether.

↓ Keep reading this article ↓

Tags: bio-ethics, steven pinker

Does science make belief in God obsolete?

Wed, 21 May 2008 14:35:16 GMT

clipped by: sam.reckoner
clipper's remarks: Good series of essays. Good perspectives.

Clip Source: templeton.org

Does science make belief in God obsolete?

This is the third in a series of conversations among leading scientists and scholars about the "Big Questions."
For the previous two questions, click here.
To request a booklet containing all the essays, click here. For a PDF, here.
To view featured debates among the contributors, click here.

Tags: religion, psychology, science, belief

The Stupidity of Dignity

Sun, 11 May 2008 11:27:22 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Steven Pinker, a modern most advanced thinker, a must read

Clip Source: www.tnr.com

This spring, the President's Council on Bioethics released a 555-page report, titled Human Dignity and Bioethics. The Council, created in 2001 by George W. Bush, is a panel of scholars charged with advising the president and exploring policy issues related to the ethics of biomedical innovation, including drugs that would enhance cognition, genetic manipulation of animals or humans, therapies that could extend the lifespan, and embryonic stem cells and so-called "therapeutic cloning" that could furnish replacements for diseased tissue and organs. Advances like these, if translated into freely undertaken treatments, could make millions of people better off and no one worse off. So what's not to like? The advances do not raise the traditional concerns of bioethics, which focuses on potential harm and coercion of patients or research subjects. What, then, are the ethical concerns that call for a presidential council?

Tags: steven pinker, bioethics, genetics, dignity

Support the Reason Project: get a paperback copy of Letter to a Christian Nation.

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:06:29 GMT

clipped by: Antara

Clip Source: us.mg1.mail.yahoo.com

Letter to a Christian Nation (Vintage Paperback)

with a New Afterword

The Vintage paperback edition of Letter to a Christian Nation is now available on Amazon. This edition has a new, twenty-page Afterword.

All books purchased through the above link will help support the work of Sam's new foundation, The Reason Project, whose advisory board now includes: Peter Atkins, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Rebecca Goldstein, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Harry Kroto, Steven Pinker, Lee Silver, Ibn Warraq, and Steven Weinberg.

www.samharris.org

email: author@samharris.org

web: http://www.samharris.org/

Tags: sam harris, the reason project

Steven Pinker -- The Stuff of Thought

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:15:02 GMT

clipped by: rj3sp

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Is Language a Window into Human Nature?

"I told him to be fruitful and multiply, but not in those words."

Woody Allen

Is the gap between objective and inner reality the reason we have difficulty understanding large numbers, the way statistics works, scientific theories like quantum physics or how to navigate the complexities of modern society, which is so different from a small tribe of hunter-gatherers?

Clip Source: www.ted.com

Talks Steven Pinker: The stuff of thought

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Clip Source: www.ted.com

In an exclusive preview of his new book, The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker looks at language, and the way it expresses the workings of our minds. By analyzing common sentences and words, he shows us how, in what we say and how we say it, we're communicating much more than we realize.

Tags: language

Is Language a Window into Human Nature?

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 11:55:53 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: the way it parses the world around us, the way it uses shortcuts and assumptions would have served our hunter-gatherer ancestors well, but it is less than perfect for dealing with some of the problems we face in the 21st Century.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

I told him to be fruitful and multiply, but not in those words."

Woody Allen

Harvard cognitive scientist and experimental psychologist, Steven Pinker's new book, The Stuff of Thought examines what it is we have been able to find out about the mysterious, intuitive ways in which the human mind works using the most unique characteristic of our species, language, as the main source of information.

The discrepancy between objective and inner reality is the reason we have difficulty understanding large numbers, the way statistics works, scientific theories like Newtonian physics and evolution, and quantum physics or how to navigate our complex modern society, which is so different from a small tribe of hunter-gatherers.

Deeply ingrained in all the world's languages are conceptions about sex, intimacy, power,fairness--as well as ideas of divinity, degradation, and danger

This intuitive model of reality is a product of natural selection:

Tags: we, need, a new, language

Happy Holidays from Sam Harris

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 01:56:22 GMT

clipped by: Antara
clipper's remarks: and me too

Clip Source: us.f906.mail.yahoo.com

Letter to a Christian Nation (Vintage Paperback)

with a New Afterword

The Vintage paperback edition of Letter to a Christian Nation is now available for pre-order on Amazon (with a new Afterword).

All books purchased through the above link will help support the work of Sam's new foundation, The Reason Project, whose advisory board now includes: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Rebecca Goldstein, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Steven Pinker, Ibn Warraq, and Steven Weinberg

You will hear more about The Reason Project in the coming year.

Wishing you all a very happy holiday.

www.samharris.org

email: author@samharris.org

web: http://www.samharris.org/

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Tags: sam harris.com

NewLiesForOld=The Fight Continues

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 05:50:30 GMT

clipped by: davboz
clipper's remarks: Communism defeated now grows within West.

Clip Source: www.apologeticspress.org

Michael Brooks recounted a recent meeting of “some of the leading practitioners of modern science” in La Jolla, California (2006, 192[2578]:8). They had gathered to discuss, among other questions, “Should science do away with religion?” Their answers are alarming.

summarized the overall attitude at the La Jolla, California symposium in the following words: “science can take on religion and win”

The irony of this militant attitude toward religion is that evolutionists sometimes downplay such aggressive tactics in an attempt to lull the religious populace into thinking that no battle is taking place.

Daniel Dennett wrote a book titled Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.

Leading evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Philip Kitcher, and Edward O. Wilson highly recommended the book, calling it “surpassingly brilliant” and “essential,” as it persuades readers that “evolution by natural selection is vital to the future of philosophy.”

"The future. That's what I'm optimistic about."

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 12:27:47 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: reading list

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

Stocking-fillers: A seasonal run on the ideas bank

One of the best jokes in this year's crop of upmarket stocking-filler titles is a wholly inadvertent one. In the sparky and provoking What Are You Optimistic About? (Simon & Schuster, £12.99), John Brockman – literary agent to the planet's biggest brains and guv'nor of the ever-stimulating Edge website – asks almost 150 scientists, seers and other gurus (from Steven Pinker to Brian Eno) about their reasons to be cheerful. And what subject strikes hope into the heart of Old Etonian zoologist and (now retired) amateur banker Matt Ridley, who as chairman of the board oversaw the Northern Rock train-wreck? "The future. That's what I'm optimistic about." Thank you, the Hon Matt, and I hope you enjoyed the £24bn that our little Christmas whip-round raised for you.

Ridley aside, Brockman's compilation radiates bright ideas

Tags: books

Steven Pinker: A brief history of violence

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:29:32 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Steven Pinker: A brief history of violence

Tags: steven pinker, history, violence, ted