Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1073 - Steven Pinker
Uploaded: 2018-02-04T20:44:53.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1073 - Steven Pinker' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-02-04. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1073 - Steven Pinker' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-02-04. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1073 - Steven Pinker

I can keep it in check
four three two
And we're live first of all Steve, thank you very much for doing this. I really
appreciate it. Oh, thank you for having me
I've been a big fan of your work for a long time and you you bring up some
really fascinating subjects and we were talking right before the podcast about
social media and how weird it is that you got lumped in with the alt-right for
a comment saying something along the lines of
That you find what was the exact quote something along highly intelligent
people seem to which is not saying?
They're good people. No, that's right. And I think a lot of people who are
Ignorant of the alt-right
equate them with the the skinheads and the neo-nazis carrying the tiki torches
Yeah, but when I was referring strictly to the alt-right from its origin in
internet discussion groups
Right and I you know
I know some of them some of the former students and some of them are highly
intelligent
And and highly read so
But but but that's not what people often think of when they think of the alt-right
And that's what I was referring to. There are people in tech. There are some
people in universities who stay undercover and I was
Made some remarks on how to starve that movement not how to feed it
But so many people jumped on it as if you were endorsing the alt-right
It was it was the exact quote you were just basically saying something along
the lines of
There's a lot of intelligent people that are involved in this well
Well, it wasn't so much that
It was also that that because of the
The various taboos in mainstream intellectual culture the the because of
political correctness
There are certain things that are just kind of not discussable
But then when people in the alt-right discover them they feel tremendously
empowered
Like we are now
Privy to the truth that the establishment can't handle you can't handle the
truth and
Since it was never discussed in the open there are no counter arguments to some
of the most toxic interpretations
And so the alt-right can run with the never having been in a forum where these
things are debated and criticized and put into context
They take like one fact and then they draw the most extreme conclusions
If these things were debated in the first place then you'd realize that those
conclusions are not warranted
Oh, an example is there are average differences between men and women and a lot
of psychological traits
Now if that's and that's often quite taboo in intellectual circles for I think
bizarre reasons
I think there are people who think that somehow women's rights depend on men
and women being indistinguishable
Right
Which I think is a bad equation in the first place
I agree
But as soon as you come across the fact that men and women on average are
different
You also come across the fact that men and women overlap in a lot of these
traits
That whatever trait you name that men on average are better at than women or
vice versa
There are a lot of women who are better than a lot of men or vice versa
And so you can't really judge an individual from the average of their sex
Also, even though there are some traits where men score a little better than
women
There are some traits where women score a little better than men
And that's the complete picture
But the thing is that if the entire subject is out of bounds
You never get to present the complete picture
And some people run away with oh men and women are totally different
What are your thoughts on how the subject got out of bounds?
Because it's very confusing to me that certain subjects like the differences
between genders
Are so taboo when they seem so obvious
I mean you just could go to a mall and just look at the way the men dress and
the women dress
And you go well there's some obvious distinctions here
There's a history to it
Right
Because there were a lot of cockamamie theories in the 19th century
And a lot of the 20th century
That men were intellectual and women were not
And women were governed by their emotions
And if women thought too much it would take blood away from their ovaries and
their womb
And they wouldn't be fertile and then they'd be all miserable
I mean really like crazy stuff
And as a reaction to that
In the 70s when the second wave of feminism became prominent
It became almost an article of faith that there were no differences between men
and women
And so if you say that there are differences between men and women
You're sending women back to the kitchen and the nursery
So this is a total non sequitur
Because fairness is not the same as sameness
So obviously women should have equal rights to men
Whether or not they're exact copies of men
Or have a distinctive profile as men have a distinct profile
So I think it was just a mistake to conflate the issue of women's rights
With men and women being identical
But that's the way it kind of shook out
And it became kind of an article of faith in a lot of
In some feminists, some kind of left liberal circles
That men and women have to be identical
And if they aren't that means you're a traitor to women's equality
Yeah and articles of faith are always dangerous
Always dangerous
Especially in that regard
Articles of fairness are always important
I mean being fair to each other
But being fair is also recognizing differences
That's right
And not assuming that any difference is a deficiency
Right
I mean if you're really doing an honest comparison
Of the differences between men and women
Men wouldn't come out looking so good
Yeah right
Yeah I have a whole bit about that in my act
When we're looking at the reaction to this though
What was strange to me
Was how many people seemed like they wanted to jump on board
And criticize you
And I think a lot of it is almost like to take away
Some of the potential criticism of themselves
Like it's instant claiming of the moral high ground
Virtue signaling
And it's just very disappointing when you see this from intellectuals
And college professors
And people that should know better
I mean to be fair
I did not get into much trouble from my peers
And among professors and grad students and so on
There are a couple of trolls who ran with it
But by and large the mainstream reaction
Was that this is almost a sign of
As the New York Times put it
That social media is making us stupid
Yeah that was the title of the article in the Times
Yeah so it was by and large
You know I came out of it okay
But it was a real indication of how these mobs of outrage
Can corrupt any kind of intelligent discourse
Yeah well subtle discussions
Discussions that involve nuance
Like complicated issues that are
They're complex
They require a long sort of description of the issue
And a very complex sort of take on these various differences between men and
women
And the alt-right and the left and political correct
These are long discussions
I mean these aren't something that you can smash into a very short sound bite
And completely cover your take on things
All the more reason that they shouldn't be taboo
Because if you can't discuss them
Then the only interpretation you're going to have is the simplistic one
If you could bring them out in the open
Then you can start to have that discussion
Yeah I'm hoping that this is turning around
I'm hoping that what's happened is the outrage culture
The outrage culture has become almost a parody of itself
It's gotten so ridiculous that people will sort of shy away from outrage
Seemingly like the same reason why people are terrified of talking about the
differences between men and women
Is because they don't want to be grouped into the people that literally or
legitimately rather were sexist
Yeah
In the, you know, the 1900s and the 1800s
And these people that did have these terrible ideas
So now we're trying to go so far away from that
That we've become a little bit ridiculous
And I'm hoping things
I'm hoping it's a swing
And it'll just kind of bounce back towards the middle again
Yeah, and in fact there's some hope that
That just when any medium is new
There'll be these excesses
And it takes a while for the system to kind of re-equilibrate
To have an immune response that damps down the worst of it
I mean I've been on the internet a long time
And in the 80s when it was mainly academics and computer scientists who were on
the internet
There were these discussion groups
This was before the World Wide Web
So it was all text
And there was this concept of flaming
Yes
I don't know if the word is used
Flame Wars
Flame Wars
Yeah, those were great
Those were the good old days
Well it came from the
There was an award given
I mean a jokey award called the Flaming Asshole Award
Oh really?
To the worst insulter in these kind of intellectual discussions
And the trophy was supposedly an asbestos cork
But from the Flaming Asshole Award
There was the noun of flame
The adjective flame wars
The verb to flame
And then it did damn down
As people became aware of flaming as a phenomenon
In the discussion groups it was
Well let's not turn this into a flame war
Or enough flames
Yeah
And when people kind of realized that this was a thing
Then they could push back against it
And let's hope that that happens with this social media again
Yeah, I hope so
It was a sport in like the late 90s early 2000s
It was essentially like an online sport
Like someone would say something about you and you'd go
Okay, all right, how do I attack this?
All right, how do you?
And it was it was more fun than anything
And I felt like there was very few people
Relatively speaking involved in discussion groups back then
In terms of like the mass amount of people that are on social media now
Yeah, that's right
It's seemingly like everyone is in some form of
Most people are in some form of social media now
Whereas back then the number of people that were on message boards was so small
Oh yeah, so small, that's right
And you're right, there is an art form of ritual insults
Yes
Like in Shakespeare and African-American snapping
There when people realize that this is a sport
Then no one gets hurt
It's just like martial arts
It's part of the fun
But the thing is that when it goes out of control
And it really does attack people's reputations
Then you've got a problem
We have a thing in comedy called Roast Battle
Yeah, roasting another example
Yeah, absolutely
And Roast Battle is this great show that they do at the comedy store every
Tuesday
Where comedians will prepare insults against each other
Right
But my friend Brian Moses who hosts it
At the end of everything they always hug it out
Right
Like it's always like no this is a joke writing exercise and a fun joke writing
show
And no one really, you know, no one means any of this
They're not really mean
Exactly
So at the end everybody hugs
I mean just like professional boxing or ultimate fighting
Yes
There are rules, there's an arena
Yes
And when you're done, it's over, you don't plot revenge
Right
But, you know, sometimes people can misunderstand it
There's that famous press roast where Obama had some fun at the expense of
Donald Trump
When he was still just a reality show
And you could see famously the camera zoomed in on Trump
And he was not amused at these jokes at his expense
And there's a theory that one of the reasons that he plotted his presidential
run was to get revenge
Well, that's one of the things that Obama said during that roast
Here's one of the things that I am that you'll never be
President of the United States
And everybody went crazy and cheered on
Boy, history, we could have turned out very different if he hadn't made that
one joke
Isn't that amazing?
Yeah
Well, apparently he had been thinking about being president for a long, long
time
But that might have been the straw that broke the camel's back
Yeah
Oh, Barack, what have you done?
When you see social media today, like as a psychologist
When you see this thing that people do when they can behave anonymously in the
absence of social cues
Not in front of each other
Not seeing how the cruel things hurt each