Trump's War on the Enlightenment (w/ Steven Pinker)

In this episode of The Bulwark, host Mona Charon engages Harvard professor and author Steven Pinker in a deep exploration of the Enlightenment's enduring legacy and its current threats, particularly from populist movements like MAGA. Pinker argues that the true triumph of Western civilization lies not in its religious or cultural icons, but in the Enlightenment's core principles: reason, science, humanism, and the belief that knowledge can improve human well-being. He contrasts this with the MAGA worldview, exemplified by Marco Rubio's Munich speech, which celebrates tradition and faith while omitting Enlightenment figures like Kant, Locke, and Newton. Pinker attributes widespread societal ingratitude for modern progress to psychological biases like loss aversion and the 'negativity bias'—where people notice problems more than gains, especially when those gains have become infrastructure. He emphasizes that the Enlightenment liberated humanity from superstition, scapegoating, and authoritarianism by promoting rational inquiry, falsifiability, and institutional checks. The conversation extends to the nature of science itself, rejecting the myth of a rigid 'scientific method' in favor of Bayesian reasoning and adversarial truth-seeking communities—found in courts, democracy, journalism, and even Wikipedia. Pinker warns that when these institutions are undermined by dogma, groupthink, or anti-intellectualism, society risks reverting to pre-Enlightenment chaos. The episode closes with a critical reflection on pandemic-era public health responses and the erosion of trust in expertise. Key takeaways include: 1) The Enlightenment’s greatest gift is the belief that progress is possible through reason and evidence; 2) Modern comforts—clean water, medicine, longevity—are not natural but achievements of Enlightenment values; 3) We undervalue progress due to cognitive biases and media focus on crises; 4) Science thrives not through infallible individuals but through communities that critique each other’s ideas; 5) Institutions like democracy, journalism, and academia depend on adversarial truth-seeking to function; 6) The rejection of Enlightenment ideals enables scapegoating, authoritarianism, and misinformation; 7) True scientific thinking is probabilistic and provisional, not dogmatic; 8) Protecting truth requires defending pluralism, free speech, and institutional diversity.