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RSA ANIMATE: Language as a Window into Human Nature

Royal Society of Arts

790K subscribers • 6 videos on Rounds

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  • Recommended by 2 people, in Hacker News, across 4 different months.
  • Presented by Steven Pinker, experimental psychologist, as the video describes them

For anyone, no background needed. Education, not medical advice.

1.6M views15 years ago2 recommendations

Brain and nervesNeuroscience

Steven Pinker explains how the structure of language reveals insights into human thoughts, social relations, and cognitive processing.

In this new RSA Animate, renowned experimental psychologist Steven Pinker shows us how the mind turns the finite building blocks of language into infinite meanings. Taken from the RSA's free public events programme www.thersa.org/events. Follow the RSA on Twitter: twitter.com/RSAEvents Like the RSA on Facebook: facebook.com/rsaeventsofficial/ Listen to RSA podcasts: soundcloud.com/the_rsa See RSA Events behind the scenes: instagram.com/rsa_events/ ------ This audio has been edited from the original event by Becca Pyne. Series produced by Abi Stephenson, RSA. Animation by Cognitive Media.

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended for its clear explanation of mutual knowledge and how language is used to manage social relationships.

dbuxtonin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Randi Zuckerberg Runs in the Wrong Direction on Pseudonymity Online”

…hole "social media toppled authoritarian regimes" stories that have been going around after Tunisia/Egypt but I do think that to the extent real anonymity is possible it has the potential to help people living in places where dissent is both stigmatised and punished by allowing them to realise that others feel the same way. This Steven Pinker talk link to this video (I think; I don't have Flash so can't check it's the right one) talks about why this type of communication is essential to free societies and why freedom of assembly is protected in all free societies. On the same general topic researchers in public health give people some wiggle room on truth telling by introducing random noise into their…
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vanderZwanin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Taarof”

It sounds like the ambiguity of it all is a feature, which makes me think of this wonderful RSA Animate of Steve Pinker's discussion of how we use language: link to this video I have a feeling a lot of the insights of this talk also hint at why something ta'arof can be useful to a human society.
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vanderZwanin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Can Multilingualism Survive?: How cities preserve and abandon languages”

…. In this light, stuff like youth slang always evolving into something unintelligible to adults makes perfect sense. As long as there is a desire for selecting who doesn't understand you (which I think will always be the case), language diversification will be a thing. If you have access to New Scientist articles, this one1 sums it up nicely 0 link to this video 1 link…
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vanderZwanin Hacker News • Recommends

On “The Kolmogorov option”

> the vast majority of people might actually wish for rebellion, but none of them actually acts out on that wish. You're talking about Mutual Knowledge0. Basically, the Emperor's New Clothes scenario: I know the emperor is naked, but does everyone else know and do I want to risk myself finding out? This short Stephen Pinker video1 explains it really well: 0 link 1 link to this video
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Joakalin Hacker News • Mentions

On “Behavioral reprogramming (overcoming social anxiety)”

…(don't do it directly sometimes) 1, etc. Some people can't magically overcome that when meeting people but I believe they can learn (at risk of exacerbating their self-consciousness). 0 How Do You Use Body Language to Read Minds?; link (It's said to be inaccurate, I'm not sure either) 1 RSA Animate - Language as a Window into Human Nature; link to this video…
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jimwormin Hacker News • Mentions

On “Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)”

…voting system to arrive at an optimum result 1, and it also destroys the only credible method of communicating the lack of confidence in the system to each other 2. Everybody knowing that everybody else knows that everybody have lost faith in the main blocs is not sufficient to create real change, but it certainly is necessary. 1 link 2 link to this video…
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pdkl95in Hacker News • Mentions

On “'Dissent,' a New Type of Security Tool, Could Improve Online Anonymity”

No, anonymity by itself won't save you, though can sharply decreases the odds of getting caught if you are careful. What anonymity does instead is probably the most important part of starting any movement that is mutually exclusive with "acceptable" political views. When a political situation starts to work against the interested of the common person, most people tend to notice, at least in some small way. If nothing else, they notice some of the harmful effects that are starting to affect them. As they (greatly) outnumber the people "in charge", they only need to use their strength in numbers (either politely with the vote/etc or violently with the pitchfork and molotov. Unfortunately, this…
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vanderZwanin Hacker News • Mentions

On “Review of Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now”

> As I read Pinker, I sometimes imagined a book published in 1923 about the astonishing improvements in the condition of Europe’s Jews following their emancipation. Such a book might argue: look, obviously past results don’t guarantee future returns; all this progress could be wiped out by some freak future event. But for that to happen, an insane number of things would need to go wrong simultaneously: not just one European country but pretty much all of them would need to be taken over by antisemitic lunatics who were somehow also hyper-competent, and who wouldn’t just harass a few Jews here and there until the lunatics lost power, but would systematically hunt down and exterminate all of t…
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vanderZwanin Hacker News • Mentions

On “What the Hell Is Going On? Effects of Information Abundance”

> It discounts without comment the possibility that the pre-internet style of governance had substantive problems which the working class didn't like (e.g. globalization leading to a race to the bottom in manufacturing wages). It's there between the lines: the author mentions the power of the big companies in the 20th century to shape the narrative through mass media and a lack of proper information among the public, and how that power is now crumbling and how the narrative is being democratized. Basically, it boils down to mutual knowledge, and large shifts in that causes power-shifts in society. 0 link to this video
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chewbachain Hacker News • Mentions

On “Censorship in China Allows Govt Criticism but Silences Collective Expression [pdf]”

…eady knew. Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes understand this and remove the ability to congregate openly on how the system works. They disappear dissidents and control the media. They essentially gaslight the citizenry in the hopes that independent suffering stays independent and never is discussed openly where it could incite rebellion. 1 link to this video…
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js8in Hacker News • Mentions

On “Are popular toxicity models simply profanity detectors?”

> Has anyone realised yet that almost all of this folly? This guy did: link to this video Humans are inventing double-entendres to create the ambiguity.
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