There’s always been this strain, particularly in American politics, a skepticism about politicians. We’re in one of these periods where there is such skepticism, but it runs deeper.
Nexus Conference 2016: What Will Save the World?
I have known Hillary for almost thirty years. And I hope that when this conference takes place, she’s been elected president. We share common values, political values. But also I think that these are deeply rooted in our own personal experiences. And these values we’ve defended against all sorts of people who have used whatever means that they could, many of them underhanded, in order to try and destroy reputations, attack people personally, to engage in what we’ve called the politics of personal destruction, but for political advantage and gain.
Steven Pinker on Why Doom is not Inevitable
presented by Steven Pinker
I don’t think that anything will save the world in the sense of bringing Utopia to Earth. But I think the world could be improved, and that would be the version of the question that I’m very much interested in.
There are many changes to our institutions and our norms and our ideas that can reduce or eliminate the risks of nuclear war without what I consider a rather quixotic attempt to change the course of human evolution.
One of the primary questions, or problems as I see it, is this “illusion” that sameness will bring safety. People start to thinking that if we are surrounded by similar people, like-minded people, if we have communities based on sameness, that will bring us safety. That’s an illusion. That’s not the case at all.
When I look at the signs today, I see a very strong trend back to what I call tribalism, back to nation-states, nationalism, religiosity, all those divisive forces that many intellectuals in the 1940s, ’50s, thought were going to disappear gradually. That did not happen.