The Stuff of Thought | Steven Pinker | Talks at Google
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters cite it for Pinker's analysis of profanity and of why talking about taboo words differs from using them.
What it is
Steven Pinker presents his book The Stuff of Thought at Google in 2007. He covers language as a window into human nature, including taboo words, swearing and the psychology and game theory of indirect speech like bribery.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2010 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends jasode · 2014-08 · on “An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented (2012)”
>, politeness is bolstered by some level of ambiguity. Rather than explicitly state your needs, desires or opinions, you imply them at some level of abstraction, allowing other participants in the conversation to accept or decline more easily. Steven Pinker explores this point in an entertaining presentation[1] for RSA. He also covers other language topics such as spacetime encoding, and profanity but the last part analyzes the need for ambiguity in a language. I deep-linked into the relevant portion of the presentation although the the entire talk is very enlightening. It's worth rewinding to the beginning to watch the entire talk. The 2nd youtube video[2] is the mostly the same material bu
Recommends ggreer · 2015-07 · on “The Evolution of Profanity”
For more on this topic, I recommend Steven Pinker's 2007 talk at Google. In the second part of it, Pinker tries to answer the question, "Why do people get so upset over certain words?"[1] He falsifies some popular hypotheses and finds interesting commonalities across languages. Obviously, the video contains lots of swearing. 1. [this video]
Cites jambo · 2010-09 · on “Bribing maitre d' to skip the line”
I first encountered this story when Steven Pinker retold it at an Authors@Google talk: [this video] About 40 minutes in, Pinker talks about the psychology, linguistics, and game theory of bribery and talks for a few minutes about the article.
Cites gliese1337 · 2011-11 · on “Profanity Doesn't Work”
It has well-understood powers to fire off pain circuits in perfectly normal brains. Stephen Pinker gave a talk on the subject at Google a few years ago: [this video] Swear words are swear words because they actually are processed differently in your brain than regular propositional speech is. They're the linguistic counterpart of the emotional signals used by other social animals. The difference is that the sounds associated with our signalling systems are learned as part of language, rather than being hard-coded and instinctual. Hence, there's the possibility for different people to have their brains trained in different ways. So, for some people, the "f-word" may not have any ill effect, but do
Cites ggreer · 2018-12 · on “Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt”
Again, what Sargon said wasn't racist. It was stupid, offensive, and probably an impulsive attempt to get more eyeballs, but it wasn't racist. If what Sargon said was racist, then so is Steven Pinker's talk on language[1] (specifically the segment on profanity and racial slurs). > The parent's concept of free speech is fully compatible with this point, specifically because alternatives exist (and will always exist, given liberal enough laws protecting freedom of speech). This argument proves too much. Alternatives always exist; they just vary in how inconvenient they are. By the same logic, it would be OK if every online payment service banned Sargon and every bank refused to let him open an
Cites ggreer · 2021-03 · on “NYTimes Peru N-Word: My side of the story, in four parts”
Using the word has been taboo for a very long time, but mentioning it has not been. Plenty of respectable people have mentioned the word and kept their careers. Here's a talk that linguist Steven Pinker gave at Google in 2007 where he mentions the word.[1] Later in the Q&A he says, "I don't swear. I talk about swearing. Any of you who have taken philosophy will recognize the use versus mention distinction."[2] It's utterly bizarre that so many people today refuse to recognize this distinction. I think this video has only stayed up because nobody has brought it to the attention of the public. Pinker would never be able to give that talk today, and Google would never have uploaded it to YouTub
Cites 0xWTF · 2026-05 · on “The Gay Jailbreak Technique”
This reminds me of Steven Pinker's Tech Talk on taboo words [this video] He didn't say f* , he talked about saying f*