This is covers a few categories, but thought it best in Philosophy
They touch on Trump, and wokeism on universities. I wish they’d gone more in depth on those. An interesting question was at 34 min, can you make a rational argument that rationality should be circumvented? Is there a reason to not be reasonable. Pinker gives a “gotcha” way to answer that, but then follows up. I wouldn’t really be interested in this if I didn’t see people trying to make this argument all the time.
Part of it is the goal. If you want to win some game, then being irrational might get you there. But if you are talking about the future of humanity, I don’t think it’s a game. This is the response to “Reason should be the slave to passion”. Pinker says, emotions inform our goals, and who is to say what our emotions should be? If someone says I am using reason to suppress their freedom to follow their spiritual path, I can respond that I am responding to my instincts, my compass that can’t be fully explained, and that leads me to seek data, to consider the input of my senses. I could just as easily claim they are trying to suppress my path.
Did you do the est training or something? They played around with the word a lot. You couldn’t do anything right according to them. They told you to make outrageous promises, to aim high, then berated you for making excuses about failing. Not everyone did it, but it made for a culture of abuse
Well, that might be good. But this idea of “unreasonable” people being the winners is still some word play. It might apply in something like sports, where you take chances or you break rules because you have skill that doesn’t fit the mold, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Being unreasonable with the laws of nature doesn’t usually end up so well.
Leftist weirdos who are trying to get rid of biological identities are the only ones who come to mind. The laws of nature don’t let anybody break them.