Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the web: They might as well not exist.
~ Steven Pinker
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Think about what you will add to the world. Some lucrative professions, (e.g., ultra-high-tech finance,) are dubious applications of human brainpower.
~ Steven Pinker
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Don’t think that the arts and verbal professions are the only respectable occupations, (a common mindset of grandchildren of workers.) The elites sneer at commerce as tawdry, but it’s what gives people what they want and need, and pays for everything else, including the luxury of art.
~ Steven Pinker
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Focus on effectiveness—what your actions will actually accomplish—and not self-actualization or other ways of trying to feel good about yourself.
~ Steven Pinker
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Ignore advice to simply follow your intuition or gut without thinking through whether the course is likely to be fruitful and rewarding.
~ Steven Pinker
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Find a new topic or area or concern that has a small number of people that you respect behind it, but which has not become a culture-wide fad or conventional wisdom. If it’s already common knowledge, it’s probably too late to make a major contribution. If you’re the only one excited, you may be deluding yourself.
~ Steven Pinker
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We will never have a perfect world, and it would be dangerous to seek one. But there’s no limit to the betterments we can obtain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing.
~ Steven Pinker from, https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_is_the_world_getting_better_or_worse_a_look_at_the_numbers
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I feel constantly pushed to take on a myopic and biased view that the sky is falling, that this moment right now it the last chance to avoid catastrophe, that the human race has never been closer to the brink of– blah, blah, blah.
I choose to celebrate progress. I choose to shine light on the people who are making a difference. I choose to point out the positives. I choose to engage with only a tiny few of the myriad of complex issues the world faces because that’s the scale where I can make a difference. That’s the scale where each person makes a difference: Individual reasoned thinking, enlightened discourse, and responsible action.
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