Steven Pinker and Rory Sutherland

Sense and sensibility: Steven Pinker and Rory Sutherland on reason vs instinct

[Illustration: Morten Morland]

Steven Pinker’s latest book is called Rationality. Rory Sutherland is The Spectator’s Wiki Man. We arranged for them to meet at the Cucumber restaurant, where they discussed the logic of monarchy, gender-bending, and why academics are unreasonably obsessed with wine.

Steven Pinker: Part of the reason I wrote Rationality was to ask, how there can be so much irrationality in an era that has the resources for unprecedented rationality. We invented a vaccine for Covid in less than a year. So why do people today believe in conspiracies like QAnon?

Rory Sutherland: Conspiracy theories aren’t always irrational, and instinctive responses can serve you well. An instinctive person with no knowledge of virology wouldn’t go into a cave full of bats.

SP: Instinct also produced the miasma theory of disease.

RS: But I think the miasma theory had good outcomes. It led to ventilated hospitals during the Spanish flu outbreak. We can believe things for the wrong reason, like religion, but they can be nonetheless socially beneficial.

SP: There are beneficial aspects, but also a lot of harmful aspects. Miasma theory led to delays in sanitation.

RS: But doctors wore masks in the Middle Ages, whereas science was highly resistant to masks last year. There was a weird idea that, unless you had evidence that masks worked, you shouldn’t bother. Also… think about humour. It’s not rational! Why do we have it? It must be evolutionarily valuable in some way. Does it just allow you to say some things you couldn’t say seriously without conflict?

SP: That’s right. It’s a way of puncturing dignity which can be done aggressively if you are taking the priest, the teacher or the politician down a few pegs. But it can also be used convivially and self-deprecatingly. In groups of friends, you don’t want a hierarchy to develop. So it’s used to emphasise that I don’t have any properties that I am going to lord over you or vice versa.

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