Word: pinkering
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Bass Professor of Government Michael Sandel and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker went head to head last night in a John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum discussion, debating the ethics of designer genes, free-market eugenics and hyper-parenting...
Sandel’s warning about genetic engineering was followed by responses from Pinker, who is also the Director of Harvard’s Joint Program on Religion and Public Life...
...response to Sandel’s critique of the human desire to exert mastery and control over the human body—an argument Sandel dubbed “the hubris objection”—Pinker noted that this type of hubris is commonplace in our society today...
This ability to engage people outside academia makes Pinker stand out among his peers. “He is, above all else and above most other people, an excellent craftsman at communicating many ideas simply,” Sahin says. “Simple in this case means reducible to concepts that are digested by an interested and intellectual but not necessarily expert listener or reader...
...Pinker himself realizes the value of accessibility in academic research. “It multiplies the value of what my entire field has done, if it isn’t just shared with utter specialists, but if everyone else can learn this neat stuff too,” Pinker said...