Interview with Steven Pinker
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- Опубліковано 17 жов 2024
- We're really excited to have gotten to interview Steven Pinker recently! Dr. Pinker is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard, and a best-selling author whose books, including The Language Instinct, the Stuff of Thought, and the Sense of Style, help to broaden knowledge about linguistics, language, and cognitive psychology.
We got to ask him about a lot of great topics, including:
the role of social media in promoting science
the unifying themes under all of his work
the ongoing resistance to the idea that language is innate
the role of emoticons and emoji in discourse
the videos he watches on UA-cam
three questions from our followers on machine learning, advice for starting out in research, and social media's influence on language
And much more! We even have an extra video this week, posted Thursday, that has a book recommendation and news about Dr. Pinker's next book.
Hope you all enjoy it!
Some related videos:
How will language change in the future?: • How Will Language Chan...
How do computers understand our speech?: • How Do Computers Under...
How do we interpret sentences?: • How Do We Interpret Se...
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We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Sources:
Steven Pinker's bookshelf ad: • Steven Pinker on I Wan...
Pinker with Kanye West: / 656344464001118208
Books mentioned:
The Language Instinct: www.indiebound....
The Blank Slate: www.indiebound....
The Stuff of Thought: www.indiebound....
The Sense of Style: www.indiebound....
The Better Angels of Our Nature: www.indiebound....
Clear and Simple as the Truth: www.indiebound....
Style: www.indiebound....
Looking forward to next week!
Oh no, what I have seen cannot be unseen. I have watched the "steven pinker bookshelf" video. Now I will forever think that cubes make Steven Pinker calmer.
This is delightful! Steven Pinker's book the Language Instinct is what I first got me interested in psychology. So neat that you got to interview him. Great questions!
+Developmental Enthusiast Thanks! And the Language Instinct definitely had a big impact. We were so happy to be able to do this. We got lucky that he had time in his schedule on a recent visit to Montreal to meet with us, and we're very glad that he did. ^_^
+Developmental Enthusiast that's what happened to me ^-^, especially languages
I was really surprised to see this pop up in my subscription box. I've learned a lot by watching many of his talks on youtube, and here you have provided me with even more video to learn from. Steven Pinker always has something interesting to say about language, and I think it's amazing that you got him on here! Thanks for the video
+wizima We think it's pretty amazing, too! We were really glad he agreed to meet with us, and that we got to do a good interview with him. Glad you liked the video! ^_^
That was really good :D thxx for picking my question :)
+Mohammad Hisham Glad you liked it! And thanks for asking the question - it was a good one. ^_^
The real question is, are you taking it more fun than a job?
+Aws Najjar yes 😃
+Aws Najjar Yeah. Research can be challenging a lot of the time, but it's very rewarding, too. Still, it's not for everyone, and finding the right topic to research really makes a difference! ^_^
Your voice is a lot deeper in this interview. Do you deliberately change your voice in your usual videos?
+George Becker It's definitely not conscious! I think when we do the normal videos, I'm in kind of excited teaching mode, and it changes the quality of my voice from what I sound like in regular conversation, which this was closer to. But I hadn't actually noticed it until now! Thanks for pointing it out. ^_^
This is a wonderful interview! Great questions, great answer, even the perfect length (imo). I don't always have time for these huge 1-2 hours discussions, but dislike the shallow experience of a 3 minute clip.
Awesome! Glad you liked it. We really tried to come up with interesting stuff, and we were glad Dr. Pinker had such good things to say. ^_^
I enjoyed this very much. Great questions! The Language Instinct was my gateway drug to linguistics too!!
+Punk Kimono Glad you liked it! And I think it's pretty common for that. I wasn't even the only one on our team who had that experience. ^_^
btw, you should ask him to tweet about the interview--getting *his* audience to see your show would be fabulous marketing!
+Diana Kennedy Yep, he's been very kind to us for this! He actually offered to tweet this out, and he's also done so for many of our episodes since. The belief that he's had in the project has been very exciting and motivating for us. ^_^
+The Ling Space very cool. And what a person to be rooting for you!
Pleasant to watch/listen. Thank you.
I like that you have the mic on the table that isn't plugged in :P
+Jared Janes We tested using it, but it didn't really work as well as the wireless mics! But we thought it looked pretty cool as a prop, so we left it there. ^_^
+The Ling Space is a cool looking mic, i get comments about mine often :) became a staple in the series I did.
+Jared Janes Cool! I'll have to go take a look over at some of those, too. ^_^
The bookshelf commercial is still on UA-cam =P
+Vondur Yep! We did manage to find it. Although I do wonder if it's a different version of the original video, because the view count on the one we had was pretty low. But either way, people can still see it for themselves. ^_^
thanks for the interview..
+sugeeban ! You're welcome! Thanks for watching. ^_^
I love his point about academese sometimes being to cover up that someone has nothing really to say. The single phrase that helped me decide not to get my phd in English lit was in an essay about commercials--they said that commercials offered viewers "a paratactic seriality of illimitable choice." Why?
+Diana Kennedy Yeah, I agree. I do try to give people the benefit of the doubt when I read articles that are rather opaque that they're not doing that, but sometimes, it's more difficult to succeed than others.
+The Ling Space yeah--especially when you can think of at least a dozen ways to have said the same thing in a simpler, clearer fashion. Like, for my example, advertising offers an unlimited, unrelated series of choices. Clearly that would have been easier both to write and to read, the the author had to have tried to obfuscate, or at least sound fancy. But my own teenage students will take a perfectly good sentence and make it passive and more circuitous because they think that is what their classroom teachers want. As their ed therapist, it is hard to convince them that clarity and directness really are ok.
+Diana Kennedy Yeah... I mean, you can sound formal without sounding opaque, but it's a developed skill. Some of my favourite academics, like the person I went to grad school to work with, Lydia White, do a really great job of this. But sometimes, it's just really hard to get what people want to say. I do think it's good to point at the people that are well-respected in their fields that are really doing a good job of writing about complex things clearly, to provide positive examples, but the stuff you run into on a regular basis just doesn't do the best job of it.
I also think (and I bet you agree) that the use of the passive in scientific writing to try to remove the researchers from the equation is a big part of the problem at this point. I was definitely told to leave myself out and passivize everything in descriptions, but I think that my writing became a lot clearer once I backed off that approach. Using the passive in some cases works, but it works itself into stuff a lot more than I think is really good.
+The Ling Space Yeah. But then it is used even when it isn't a way to get out of using I. Sadly, it sounds to a lot of people more formal simply (I think) because it is less exciting. For high school and college students, at least, stilted, boring writing mimics their experience of academic writing, so they think they are being more formal just by becoming more stilted.
He is brilliant!😎
Wonderful interview! Great job! :)
+Evillepandas Thanks! Glad you liked it. ^_^
I loved this! Moti, you are so cute.
+emerlemur Glad you liked it! And you're the first person who's passed along that particular reaction to this, for sure. ^_^
Amazing .
+Fahad Alqahtani Thanks! It was a lot of fun to do. ^_^
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤😊
omg why does he look at the camera a lot