New Season Podcast Release: Steven Pinker

The latest episode of Lives Well Lived, the podcast I co-host with Kasia de Lazari-Radek, is now available.

This is the first episode of Season 2, and I look forward to sharing great interviews with you. This time, we sit down with cognitive scientist and author Steven Pinker, renowned for his work on human progress and reason. Steven shares his insights on the state of global peace, nuclear weapons, moral progress, and the future of artificial intelligence.

Here are some highlights from our conversation, lightly edited for clarity. You can now listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

On the state of global peace:

Steven: “Well, the events of the last few years, the invasion of Ukraine, the war in Gaza, even more so, wars in Ethiopia and then Sudan have set the curve of war deaths back up in the wrong direction and have wiped out a few decades of progress. We're back to the level of probably the late eighties. It has actually gone down between last year and this year because of the end of the war in Ethiopia and a peak in Sudan. But it's definitely turning in the wrong direction. Whether that will bring us back to a world of warring great powers or whether it is a blip that will be reversed, it’s too soon to tell, but it's certainly possible that we could go back there.”

On nuclear weapons and the concept of nuclear peace:

Peter: “On the issue of war, do you…see nuclear weapons as actually a good thing because they have maintained this peace because the great powers are so reluctant, for obvious reasons, to get into a nuclear conflict?”

Steven: “I don't think I would. There's that hypothesis sometimes called the nuclear peace, and there was an international relations theorist who proposed that the nuclear bomb be given the Nobel Peace Prize. I would not go that far. There's no question that it is making leaders, particularly Joe Biden, more skittish about empowering Ukraine than if the world had no nuclear weapons.

There are a couple of reasons that I wouldn't. One is that the reduction can't easily be explained by nuclear deterrence simply because nuclear weapons are rightly seen to be so momentous that countries have been very skittish about brandishing them, which in turn means that other countries treat it as a bluff and defy nuclear powers. Just to take a step back to what I said earlier, what has survived is the decline of war between great powers and rich countries. They have stopped fighting each other. They're still not fighting each other. And that was a major shift after 1945 that continues to be true.”

On moral progress, particularly the acceptance of homosexuality:

Kasia: “So you mentioned homosexual relations and the change and progress in our attitude toward that. I wanted to ask exactly about this change. Do you think it marks rational and moral progress?”

Steven: “I think it does in the sense that when you shift from a morality based just on either the moral norms of your culture, or religious scripture, or for that matter, your own gut reaction, to reasoning out what should be deemed moral or immoral, which largely, or increasingly, corresponds to asking whether anyone gets hurt, or is anyone coerced. The fact that gay relations don't harm anyone, they're voluntary, means it's very almost impossible to come up with a moral argument against it. And so, to the extent that you have to justify your moral convictions, as opposed to just saying, well, you know, the Bible says it's wrong, or it grosses me out, then I think it pushes in the direction of liberalization.”

Can we solve the problem of climate change?

Steven: “I think that the only viable solution I see is a combination of technological change that makes clean energy cheaper than dirty energy, so people simply in pursuing their self-interest will do what is conducive to the whole commons. With policy like carbon pricing, we would need to be clever enough to do it in a way that's not regressive, that is, it doesn't punish the truck drivers and the poorest people in society, but involves some sweeteners or rebates or shifting so that the external price that people impose on each other when they burn carbon factors into their decision. That's what carbon pricing would do. It needs to be more attractive to use low-carbon fuels or zero-carbon fuels. I suspect that's the only way we'll get ourselves out of it. I think we can; I don't know if we will.”

On his own life and feeling fulfilled:

Steven: “I'm very aware of what a blessed life I've had, even though, every day, like everyone, the deadlines, the worries, the criticisms, weigh on me. But then I also try to step outside of that to realize what a fortunate person I am, above all for living in an affluent democracy. I've had tragedies, as has everyone, but I like to do what I love to do, and I like to do what I think I'm good at doing. Writing, explaining, researching, teaching. Living a comfortable life, having a supportive family, means that I have much to be grateful for. Knowing what you have to be grateful for has been shown to be a contributor of mental health. It also leads me to avoid going down the path of thinking, what should I have done differently? Obviously, everyone has made mistakes, and I know that I've made mistakes. On the other hand, since we are so ignorant of the cascading possibilities of different choices and given that my life has gone so well, I have to think, well, who knows, if I avoided some boneheaded distinction in 1987, maybe things I could not have anticipated then or now could have led to a much bigger catastrophe. So, this isn't complacency, but this is gratitude.”

On rationality versus emotions:

Steven: “I try, especially as an evolutionary psychologist, to think of emotions as themselves adaptations that evolve for various purposes, avoiding danger, reproducing, staying healthy, that it's often good to try to reflect, even when we're in the throes of an emotion, to try to think back as to what is it accomplishing. No one has enough time, Zen, or self-control to extricate ourselves from the emotion of the moment completely.”