Here’s a short Big Think talk by Steve Pinker, much demonized by the success-hating Pharyngula crowd as well as those who make their living by prognosticating the demise and degradation of humanity or our lack of social progress. Here Steve advances the well-known arguments for both free speech and academic freedom, which is simply free speech (as well as freedom of inquiry, the right to pursue what interests you) in a university setting. The arguments may not be new, but in this generation need to be repeated endlessly, for many young people and Leftists are beginning to mutter darkly that free speech is overrated.
And so Steve’s rationael for free speech is worth hearing again:
“We just don’t know any route to knowledge other than what Karl Popper called ‘conjecture and refutation’: throwing an idea out there and seeing if it withstands attempts to falsify it.”
This of course refers…
View original post 241 more words
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments