New Steven Pinker interview : Gene Expression

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Posted on: August 25, 2007 10:33 PM, by Razib Khan

Check out this new interview with Steven Pinker. It ostensibly focuses on his new book, The Stuff of Thought, though it covers a lot of ground. My own feeling is that the interviewer should have let the focus be more on Pinker than his own pet theories, but there's a lot of good stuff in there.

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Comments

Reads a bit more like "Dan Schneider talks Dan Schneider with Steven Pinker in the room". I kept expecting the interviewer to say, "Oh! Are you still here?"

Posted by: pough | August 25, 2007 11:48 PM

LOL. i know exactly how feel.

Posted by: razib | August 25, 2007 11:52 PM

Yeah, I agree. The first sentence reads to me like this [with my interlineations]:

"As I [me, myself, I say while looking in a mirror at how handsome I look holding this microphone] embark on a fourth DSI sojourn [not unlike any of the great heroes of the past hacking through the jungle or reaching the peak of the mountain] with one of today's leading writers and thinkers [all whom I trust recognize me as at least their equal], Steven Pinker- noted cognitive psychologist at Harvard University, I want to first thank you for agreeing to be queried [because it so nicely advances my agenda]. Since several other interviews have occurred in this series [and there will be a million more and win me fame and adulation], you know that I have striven to make these not just interviews of the moment, but to still have much of, if not all, the relevancy it now contains if someone should read this years later, online, in a book [which might win me a Pulitzer or, dare I say it, a Nobel Prize], or in some yet to be written biography of you [or anyone else who makes me look smart, as I know I am, and that's cogntive science, isn't it?] [But enough about me. What do YOU think about me?]."

Posted by: Jonathan V. Post | August 26, 2007 3:25 AM