Talk:The Blank Slate
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Why is the summary of the book only one sentence long, while the feminist critique gets a whole paragraph?
Good point I think. This article as it stands is but evidence that Pinker may be right when he claims the questions addressed in his book are rarely discussed openly, without feminist bias. (Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to add more details about his book but perhaps someone else can...) -Abaris
The book has problems, you can read the reviews on amazon.com and the Skeptic magazine's critique and then add to this article based on what you read there. What one editor has already removed that I wrote here is that people with free will can choose not to do the things the statistics for their group suggest they are likely to do. The feminist's critique is gone now -- I personally know intellectual women and left it alone after it was added as it was an inoffensive personal appraisal of the position stated in the book, and also to see how the article would grow without further input from me (I started this article not so long ago.) You might consider looking at the history of the article to see how it "evolved"... However, I don't think wikipedia should link to blogs either, I didn't want to be the one to remove a dissenting opinion. I enjoyed reading the book, mind you. Jok2000 02:13, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I removed the feminist criticism because unattributed opinion is even worse than opinion from an unworthy source. If the opinion of that one feminist weblogger is to be included in this article, the reader should be made aware where it comes from. If someone wants to reinsert the feminist criticism with proper attribution to the specific source, I have no objections. I personally feel the article is better without it for now, but I have no strong opinion on whether blog entries should be cited in Wikipedia and won't bother reverting over it. -- Schaefer 02:23, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Confused by the word "conservative"
I'm confused by the word "conservative" in this sentence:
Reviews of the book have been mixed. Steven Johnson praised the book in a review in The Nation, arguing that Pinker's Darwinian theory of the mind is not intrinsically conservative.
Does this mean "not intrinsically politically conservative"? Considering the quote is from The Nation, I think this must be so. But The Blank Slate is not really a political theory at all. Of all the possible reviews one could cite, it seems to me strange to site a politically-based review. If one is going to have several sections of the article, one entitled "Political Consequences" or something, it would make sense. But in a stub like this it seems like one should provide a review based upon the scientific basis of Pinker's argument.
In response to Jok2000's comment: "What one editor has already removed that I wrote here is that people with free will can choose not to do the things the statistics for their group suggest they are likely to do" - I can see why it was removed. "People with free will" is a loaded term. And as for that people can behave different from the "statistics for their group", I'm not too sure what that means either. What is "my group" or anyone's group? Assuming a group is defined and agreed upon (sex is a pretty clear grouping), the comment doesn't reveal anything. Statistics, by definition, are summary numbers that are not meant to stand in for individual values in a distribution. And if this was a criticism of Pinker, Pinker acknowledges this clearly in the book.
SJS1971 23:45, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
