Harvard author Steven Pinker appears on podcast linked to scientific racism. Psychologist and writer’s appearance on Aporia condemned for helping to normalise ‘dangerous, discredited ideas’.

www.theguardian.com

Harvard author Steven Pinker appears on podcast linked to scientific racism

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3w ago

Surprise, surprise! Harvard hack Steven Pinker appears on podcast linked to ‘scientific’ racism

www.theguardian.com /science/2025/jun/07/harvard-steven-pinker-aporia-podcast

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3w ago

Harvard author Steven Pinker appears on podcast linked to scientific racism

www.theguardian.com /science/2025/jun/07/harvard-steven-pinker-aporia-podcast

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3w ago

Steven Pinker in race-science podcast shocker

www.theguardian.com /science/2025/jun/07/harvard-steven-pinker-aporia-podcast

24 comments

I've been blowing the whistle in my department about this intellectual charlatan for years. They made us pay for rights to read his idealistic liberal garbage.
- idealistic liberal garbage.
  The world is indeed getting better all the time. Now you must excuse me. I have a very important meeting with Bubba "Heinrich" Evil who - of course - is the CEO of EvilCorp. He is responsible for the majority of my funding and my groundbreaking human biodiversity research which is leading to some surprising results. Mr. Evil is very enthusiastic.
I thought this guy has always been known to be Alt right adjacent; One of the little pseudo intellectual figureheads the evolutionary psychology goons love to quote.
- He is just straight up a eugenicist that couches it in reactionary liberal optimism
- Wasn't alt right a creation of the liberal media so as to make incels feel better about being pieces of shit to everyone?
St(even P)inker
I really don't understand the Evo Psych guys. Maybe I'm missing something, but it really seems like their argument goes,
"The Tabula Rasa model is highly unlikely to be a complete explanation of psychology... therefore, we're going to dismiss it completely and focus only how genetic evolution explains people's behavior."
which just seems nonsensical??? I mean, in a modern exceptionally new and recent computerized industrial age, how can you say that with a straight face, much less make an academic career out of it? Learned behavior just has so damn much more explanatory capacity.
- The initial purpose of evolutionary psych was to find the reasons humans would evolve mental illnesses with the intent of creating better treatment. For example, Bipolar Disorder may have evolved in areas where humans had limited time outside each season. So bipolar people would have only a few months to do a year's worth of work stockpiling food and firewood. Then they'd be cooped up somewhere safe for months while it snowed and dropped below freezing.
  It would make sense, then, if they had bursts of mania followed by bouts of depression. Manic episodes to DO ALL OF THE THINGS NON-STOP CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP and then depressive episodes to increase sleep time and suppress their appetite. Fast forward tens of thousands of years where humans can stay indoors or outdoors all year round. Bipolar conditions that used to be evolutionary necessities are more like vestigial organs, thus causing people distress.
  Of course, evolutionary psychology was immediately hijacked by racist eugenicists to do phrenology.
  
  The problem you run into there is that the hypothesis is non-falsifiable - it sounds reasonable, but there's no way to test it, so you get what evolutionary biologists call a "just so story."
  The other issue, and what makes it so appealing to "scientific racists," is that it becomes an exercise in justifying social stereotypes, and you get papers like "the reason the women are worse at math is because they didn't need to count mammoths like the men did."
  The thing about learned behaviors is that they can be heritable and subject to evolutionary forces in epigenetic ways; if I avoid eating pork because there's a cultural taboo and I'm in an area where trichinosis is prevalent, I have a better chance to survive and produce lots of offspring than my pork-eating neighbors. No need to involve any hypothetical baked-in genetic tendencies to avoid pork. Dawkins talked about it a lot before he went off the Cultural Christianity deep end.
A colonial psychologist peddling bullshit? No way. Next you'll tell me that water is wet.
I could not be less surprised
Steven Pinker and his circle of Epstein-affiliates are just a re-run of the Gilded-Age "intellectuals" whose whole purpose was to legitimize the race and class hierarchies of their time.
There's better criticisms of Pinker.
I don't like guilt by association.
- The first two paragraphs alone seem pretty damning to me and 100% on brand for Pinker. It's just coincidental but the term "human biodiversity" sounds like something he would say.
  The Harvard psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker appeared on the podcast of Aporia, an outlet whose owners advocate for a revival of race science and have spoken of seeking “legitimation by association” by platforming more mainstream figures.
  The appearance underlines past incidents in which Pinker has encountered criticism for his association with advocates of so-called “human biodiversity”, which other academics have called a “rebranding” of racial genetic essentialism and scientific racism.
- He believes that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically superior to other races if that helps clear anything up
- Are you talking about his associations with Epstein, or his associations with eugenicists. Because in both cases, as we know, if there are 9 fascists and 1 liberal sitting at a table, there are 10 fascists sitting at a table.
  
  1 fash and 9 libs = 10 fash
- I like guilt by association. Had multiple dinners with Epstein, and probably went to his island? Gulag.
  
  I've had dinner with gangsters and murderers.
- Fuck that.
  Friends with a white supremacist? Guilty of being perfectly comfortable with white supremacism.
  Bring back ostracism.

24 comments