Steven Pinker - Psychologist HARDtalk

Now on BBC News Stephen Sackur

is here with HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk.

I'm Stephen Sackur.

This HARDtalk programme,

like so many others in the churn

of 24/7 news tends to focus

on people and places facing

problems and challenges.

More often than not we hold

the powerful to account for things

that went wrong, not right.

Are we missing the bigger picture

about the world we live in?

My guest psychologist and writer

Steven Pinker

Thinks so.

His new book, Enlightenment Now,

is a paean to human progress

driven by reason and science.

How convincing are his

reasons to be cheerful?

THEME MUSIC PLAYS.

Steven Pinker welcome to HARDtalk.

Thank you. This idea of the

enlightenment is very dear to your

heart. Can you briefly, if you will,

catch for me what you mean by

enlightenment enlightenment the.

The

first of the intellectual movement

of the second half of the 18th

century that put a premium of reason

as opposed to authority, tradition,

doctors, on science, on the attempt

to explain the world by testing

hypotheses and on humanism, the

individual humans as the ultimate

good as opposed to the triumph of a

nation and faith.

Is it your

proposition that it captures

universal values?

European and

American. Although every idea has to

come from somewhere, so it is

European in that sense, but it is

based on reason and universal human

interests. Everyone wants a long

life, to be healthy, almost everyone

wants knowledge and education.

People would prefer to live in

safety rather than danger, all

things being equal.

Science and

reason have underpinned so much of

human thought and scientific and

technological developments in recent

centuries but is it you're feeling

that this enlightenment is under

threat?

It absolutely is and has

been since it was formulated. The

counter Enlightenment of the 90s

century Roseberry quickly. -- 19th

century rose very quickly. The idea

that the individual is merely a cell

in the super organism, consisting of

race and groups. And also

authoritarian populism with Trump in

the US, and populous movement in

Eastern Europe.

You are suggesting

that Donald Trump in the US, as far

as you are concerned, and utterly

illogical and counter-productive

political movement.

Indeed. Talking

about the intellectual roots of

trumpeter sounds like an oxymoron

but he was advised by people like

Stephen Bannon and Steve Miller and

Michael Anton who consider

themselves intellectuals and are

influenced by a counter

enlightenment tradition and you can

see some of the themes of Trumpism

Trumpism wet the soul is embodied in

a strong leader. These are things

that run through Trumpism.

It seems

to me his politics is driven by

emotions, by an appeal to a person's

cup in sticks rather than their

rational brain. -- instincts. The

skill of Donald Trump is that,

unlike many of his political rivals,

he found and continues to find a way

to connect with a significant part

of the American population.

Indeed

and emotional impulses such as

tribalism, authoritarianism, besting

power in a charismatic leader,

reasoning by an act don't rather

than by fax and data -- anecdote,

the story of the American who is

mowed down by an illegal immigrant

breaking traffic law, is an appeal

to our not so rational side...

If

Trump is an aberration, he is not a

bleep, he is part of a long line of

politicians that you would say the

last few centuries have been a

triumph of science and reason, many

would say that last few centuries

have absolutely shown is that the

human species is often driven by gut

instinct and emotion and by feelings

that are not anything to do with

science or reason.

Indeed. One of

the misconceptions about

enlightenment thinkers is that we

assume we are all rational. Like Mr

Spock from Star Trek. But David

Hume, Spinoza, there were avid

students of human nature and they

proposed norms and institutions that

would work around for our Dhaka

impulses so those impulses are over

with us. -- dark.

You are saying

that we need to understand that as

human beings have never had it so

good and that in terms of statistics

on world hunger, on poverty, on loss

of life to warfare, that things are

rather wonderful on our planet today

and that is not the way many people

in both the developed and developing

world actually sit and experience of

the world?

That is right. As long as

tragedy and problems have not been

reduced to zero, there will always

be enough of them to feel the news

and since we are driven by anecdotes

and narratives rather than data,

unless we see the data, we can miss

the fantastic progress. Not

uniformly...

We cannot dismiss half

of all Syrians, 12 million people,

being displaced on their homes, many

hundreds of thousands killed. We

cannot dismiss that as an

unimportant bleep in the data.

Absolutely not but because of our

rising moral standards, we care more

about people than out ancestors did

so things can look worse than...

How

can you measure compassion?

I do not

have data on compassion but, if you

look at the way events are described

and categorise, people forget that

there were greater number of

displacement during the partition of

India, the Korean War had far more

casualties than the war in Syria.

This is not to minimise the horrific

suffering of the people in Syria but

the imperative to recognise the

people in earlier eras and to

realise that not stuck with the

amount of suffering. Just as earlier

generations reduced the number so do

we. The realisation that these are

not utopian aspirations, that

displaced people and walls and

refugees can be reduced.

Come back

to the point that most people on

this earth do not think the way that

you do, partly because they are not

trained in the way that you have,

but you are driven by bigger data,

meta data and you crunch the numbers

and you take a very high overview of

the way the world works. Most folks

do not do that. They relate to their

own experience and their own

perception. How much value is there

only telling us we should be more

cheerful and positive and optimistic

when it does not match reality for

most of us?

That is why we have

education, persuasion, discourse,

debate. In order to counter our

intuitions and impulses which are

often misleading. A lot about

intuitions are systematically

biased. Something that can be

amplified...

But you have abayas

also. We all do. You are the product

of your nurture just as high. When

people today expressed doubt about

expertise and they sometimes say,

you know what, you can prove almost

anything with statistics, they have

a point, don't they?

You cannot

prove everything with statistics,

not if you are honest ...

But you

make choices about the data you put

into your numbercrunching computers,

you decide what particular facet of

the human condition to profile, it

is all subjective.

Then you

challenge me and observers get to

hear the various sides and see who

has the most persuasive case. The

fact that science has progressed

shows that, despite human

disagreement and the fact that we

are blinded by our buyer says, over

the long run, with free speech, open

debate, the ability to challenge

people and the onus to provide data

to support your ideas, over the

longer run, we can approach and

understanding of truth.

No question

that everybody would agree that the

data on global hunger and poverty

suggests that most people in the

world, in that material sense,

things are better at today for most

people but, if you take the most

advanced society, the US, your radio

progress and runs into real trouble

because the generations the middle

class has seen the living standards

stagnate and in some years declined.

When you look at the polls,

Americans and said, the years that

they have felt the country is on the

wrong track. Your theory of the

eternal march to progress has been

thwarted.

Forget about the eternal

march to progress. Problems are

inevitable. We sold them as they

arise. On average we make progress.

The US is a peculiar case because

although people think of it as the

prototypical advanced democracy, it

is a laggard among Western

democracies...

You cannot have an

outlay of which is the most

important economy in the world. It

sets a standard and it is in many

ways a country the rest of the world

looks to stop if the message from

the United States is that the

values, the science, the humanism

can take you so but then things

start to go wrong, that is a message

important to the entire world.

It is

an unfortunate message and in many

ways it is a backward country

compared to it's West Stand peers.

It has high incidences of crime,

lower lifespans, more abortions,

high drug use. Any measure of social

pathology. It is ahead of most

countries of the world. But behind

other...

White?

The US is an

ambivalent enlightenment country

because its constitution was perhaps

the most famous product of the

Enlightenment. Jefferson, Adams,

were men of the Enlightenment but in

many ways the country itself has

been divided. There is an

enlightenment country but also a

more traditional culture of honour,

more heavily represented in the

south than the West, the ethics that

instead you have this interest

institutions, that meet out justice

and secure social welfare, it is up

to the individual defending himself

and his family by the justifiable

use of violence if necessary and a

lot of American politics has always

struggle between the culture of

honour and the culture of the

Enlightenment. And so it is a

peculiar example of a Western

democracy.

The time when those values, weather

it be from Russia, China all

elsewhere, are being challenged in a

concerted and important and

considerable way.

They are being

challenged, that's why I would not

allude to an inexorable march of

progress. The end of history was a

brilliant bit of marketing.

It's now

a millstone that hangs around

Francis Fukuyama's neck.

In defence

of Fukuyama, the number of

democracies has increased since the

end of democracy was published.

In

the last 12 years more countries

have seen a regression in diplomatic

values.

It's one of the more

pessimistic measures of democracy.

It's also an activist organisation

and they are always biased towards

our crime crisis. Other indicators

of democracies. There's certainly

been a deceleration. But freedom

house has somewhat an alarmist

picture and when you think about it,

in our youth we both had 31

democracies in the early 1970s, half

of Europe was behind the Iron

Curtain. There was barely a

democracy in Latin America. Taiwan

and the Philippines, Indonesia,

Greece was a military dictatorship,

Spain and Portugal were under the

control of fascism. It's true that

there has been a push bike in

countries like Russia, Turkey and

Venezuela. But still the overall

trend continuing through the end of

history has been towards

democratisation.

In your world view,

is religion nothing more than an

aberration when it enters the realm

of public policy and governance?

It

is certainly... Theistic belief,

belief in a God who can work

miracles, that's something that

should be kept out of politics, yes.

In the United States we have the

separation of church and state, and

I think this is an excellent

principle, yes, we should not base

policy on miracles.

Do you think you

have too rosy a view of human

nature?

I'm well-equipped to deny

that charge. Probably the strongest

case is that human nature is saddled

with flaws such as dominance,

egocentrism, revenge, magical

thinking and so on. I'm the last

person that can be accused of having

too rosy a view of human nature. I

think human nature is a complex

system and together with our

policies, there are, and I stole the

phrase from Abraham Lincoln, but

better angels of our nature, sides

of human nature such as reason,

empathy, self-control, moral norms

that are in constant tension with

our darker sides and it's up to our

institutions and our norms to

empower our better angels, the parts

of human nature that over the long

run can read to institutions that

tame our inner demons.

Your academic

discipline is psychology rather than

history for example. I want to quote

to you something that perhaps puts

an historical sense of perspective

onto your thinking about the

Enlightenment, it comes from a

commentator in the UK responding to

your book, Jenni Russell, she says

every civilisation has believed in

its in vulnerability until it falls,

from the Greeks, the Romans, the

Mongols, the Ming Dynasty, it

couldn't recognise the threats to it

before it is too late and your blind

spot is believing the appeal of

liberal democracies and the light

and values that underpin them are so

powerful that they need only to be

spelt out to be accepted.

-- in

light and. No. I would identify the

blind spot among people who confuse

the existence of progress with some

forced inevitability or

indestructibility ash Enlightenment.

People are so unused to even

conceiving of progress that they

can't distinguish a factual claim

like things are better than they

were several decades ago, or several

centuries ago, with these mystical

notions of vulnerability or

inexorable march is. They're not the

same thing. You can acknowledge we

live longer without saying that we

live in a utopia all we are going to

live forever.

What about science,

you are a scientist they sought, but

if one looks your claims for

technology and science and the

degree to which they continue to

deliver us to a better place, one

can quite quickly counter with

obviously climate change being a

massive global problem which science

for the moment seems incapable of

coming up with a clear solution, one

could look at the degradation of our

environments, particularly the

oceans and microplastics right now.

One could say your faith in science

looks misplaced.

All of the facts

you mention of course our scientific

discoveries, and so without

science...

Their discoveries of the

harm science is doing.

That's what

technology has done. The way to deal

with them is to understand what

caused them and what camera burst

them.

That's where you have to marry

human ingenuity in science and human

motivation and science -- what can

reverse them. We don't have the

motivation to undertake the massive

cooperative effort to solve these

problems.

We do, not enough, but we

do. The Paris climate accord and

certainly shows the world, again

with one conspicuous exception, can

come to an agreement.

The exception

is pretty darned important.

Although

remember that the pushing back on

our president, and we can't withdraw

from the accord for another three

years anyway, by which time it is

possible President Trump will be a

lame duck and his successor will

reinstate the American

participation, but individual

states, individual corporations, the

rest of the world and the rest of

the world of course can push back

against the United States when it

violates the Paris Agreement by

putting tariffs on American goods

based on their carbon emissions. So

the act of one president

unnecessarily undo the progress,

although they might.

When you talk

like that I'm just reminded that the

historian Mall Ferguson said at

times he is reminded of Doctor

Pangalos when he listens to use.

Doctor Pangalos, that's a mistake,

Pangalos is a pessimist, he said we

live in one, the best of all

possible worlds. -- listens to you.

You're much more optimistic than

Doctor Pangalos?

Pangalos was a a

defender of the belief that God was

incapable of making the world any

better than the way we find it

today. Just go back to climate

change, we are not on track to

solving the problem of climate

change, there's no doubt. I'm not an

optimist in the sense that

everything will all workout.

We're

almost out of time but in essence

you always are. Here's my invitation

to you at the end of this programme,

some people today look at where we

are with climate change, for

example, or indeed with nuclear

proliferation, and in particular the

nuclear stand-off right now with

Donald Trump's United States

administration and North Korea, and

they think to themselves, we've

probably never been closer to seeing

existential threats to humanity come

to reality, but your worldview would

suggest we have it within us always

to avert those accidental threats?

I

think there is an imperative to see

our way through to avoiding the ex-

essential threats, to treating these

as problems to be solved, not to

declare that we're doomed so we may

as well enjoy life while we can, but

to put the pressure where it has to

be placed for the changes of

policies, changes of administration,

so we mitigate the severest threats.

And your life, your experience

suggests to you that there is every

good reason to continue to believe

that human beings will get to where

they need to be?

Not that there is

every reason but there is a reason,

not that it's inevitable, who knows

what the probabilities are, but it

is possible and therefore there is

the imperative to take the steps

that have the greatest chance of

solving the problems.

We have to end

there but Steven Pinker, thank you

very much for joining me on

HARDtalk.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you very much.