…of Advisors, the brain trust for TED, so-called, on the website, The main people in the area of consciousness studies are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett, both of whom are extreme militant atheists and materialists. We just don't know what kind of people…

…must be flawed and there's no point wasting time looking at it and actually A couple of years ago, the rationalist Steven Pinker wrote a book called Rationality in which he actually said there's no point looking at the evidence because we know it's…

…into school and university students all over the world, because this stuff goes pretty unchallenged within academic science. What's interesting is that Pinker also goes on at length in his book, The Blank Slate, that we are in fact not blank slates at all.…

…understandable reasons. But it's not because they're all fanatically committed to ideological materialism. There are some who really are. Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett. There are a number of people for whom this is a kind of lifelong crusade.…

…them is not worth taking seriously or even looking at. Now, I'll finish by saying that that's not just a vague accusation. Steven Pinker, in his book Rationality, where he argues for a rational and scientific approach, says that there's no need to look at…

…drawer problem and so on. This is very common, not just, in psychical research, but all research, right? So acknowledging that, Pinker is skeptical of half of these psych experiments. You're standing at the top of the escalator, you give more money than…

…them is not worth taking seriously or even looking at. Now, I'll finish by saying that that's not just a vague accusation. Steven Pinker, in his book Rationality, where he argues for a rational and scientific approach, says that there's no need to look at…

…file drawers called the file drawer problem. This is very common. in psychical research, but all research, right? So acknowledging that, Pinker is skeptical of half of these psych experiments. You're standing at the top of the escalator, you give more money…

…dismiss the evidence altogether and simply to say it's impossible, therefore the evidence must be flawed. Yes. That's, for example, Steven Pinker, who says that these things are impossible. In his book Rationality, he actually argued you don't need to look…

…And that debate actually happened at How the Light Gets In last year at Hay-on-Wye. And Michael Shermer did exactly what Pinker does, which is that he evaded the evidence at every step. He made general remarks about the fallibility of human judgment…