Moving this conversation to books.
@ Taleb and Pinker
I haven’t read Taleb yet, and I know some of you guys really like him. @loppar and @dchris, what would be the best place to start with Taleb?
I read the John Gray critiques of Steven Pinker that you put up @loppar. Thank you. In that first link, he’s talking about Pinker’s newest book, Enlightenment Now, which I haven’t read, so I can’t really speak to that. There’s some overlap in topics, but as I mentioned, I’m starting with The Blank Slate and it’s a great read, IMO.
There are ongoing hot debates within that field, (the anthropology of war), and Pinker covers a lot of that in Blank Slate, but the points covered in Gray’s reviews there are only a very, very small fraction of the ideas in The Blank Slate. The book covers a lot of ground in cognitive science, evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics. WAY more in there than anthropology of war stuff.
You can read Pinker arguing back and forth with people in his field, but most of us aren’t going to know enough to take a stance on these arguments.
It’s heavy reading for me. Lots of science and philosophy.
Here’s one discussion, if you’re interested.