Expert Lecture: steven pinker

Steven Pinker believes that in order to fully understand the people we are today, we have to understand how we got to that point. He believes that we take a lot of things for granted. For example, we take for granted our vision, if it weren't for evolution, we'd walk into trees. This is important because humans change in order to be better adapted in this world. Just like history is important to understand current events, our evolution through the course of time is essential in order to better understand who we are today.

Pinker also talks about family, how even though we share 50% of our genes with our family, we do not necessarily have the same expectations or behave the same way toward ourselves, with whom we share 100% of our genes and behaviors with. For example, because we know ourselves, we know our limitations and ablities the best. Thus we would definitely have the different expectations for ourselves than our closest family members would. Pinker, in a way, calls family members hypocrites because we are all selfish beings. There is no way we can ever be completely selfless, even when it comes to family.