Part Two: The Rise of Cancel Culture, Distrust in Science & Misinformation: Dr. Steven Pinker Reveals The Hidden Psychology That Threatens Society.

Summary

Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown – Part Two: The Rise of Cancel Culture, Distrust in Science & Misinformation

Guest: Dr. Steven Pinker
Date: September 24, 2025

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Overview

In this electrifying second part of the conversation with renowned psychologist and Harvard professor Dr. Steven Pinker, Mayim Bialik (joined by Jonathan Cohen) dives into the complex intersections of cancel culture, the politicization of science, Big Pharma, mental health, and the line between skepticism and open-mindedness. The episode crescendos into a heated debate about the nature of reality, God, near-death experiences, and the value of subjective versus scientific truth. The tone is candid, sharp-witted, and frequently confrontational, providing an unvarnished look at how materialist and spiritualist worldviews collide in a contemporary context.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Politicization of Science and Cancel Culture

• Mayim Bialik asks where the boundary lies between science and politics, particularly regarding truth and veracity.
• Dr. Steven Pinker asserts that science should be about facts and best assessments of reality—these inform political decisions, but fact should be separated from value as much as possible. He laments recent failures in academic objectivity, especially in the wake of “wokeness.”
  • “The idea of science is that you try as much as humanly possible to separate what you want from what is. And that's what scientists have to convince others of by showing their work, acknowledging their fallibility…” (02:24)
• Pinker notes the danger of undermining science’s credibility when objectivity falters, giving ammunition to political actors who already distrust academia.
  • “...when science becomes too politically correct, too woke, it ceases to earn respect as a truth seeking institution, giving them the excuse to blow off the things they don't like.” (04:37)
• He underscores the need to keep science apolitical, sharing that it's why he co-founded the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard.

Memorable quote:

“The whole enterprise of science, scholarship, academia is corroded when people sometimes correctly think that there's a thumb on the scale; that if you say things that go against the consensus, you get canceled.” — Dr. Steven Pinker (05:31)

2. Academic Freedom, Funding, and Antisemitism Debates

• Jonathan Cohen raises the issue of defunding academic research, especially at institutions like Harvard.
• Pinker criticizes what he calls the “Harvard Derangement Syndrome,” where anti-Semitism has been weaponized for political purposes, risking crucial scientific research funding.
  • “It’s obviously a pretext.” (08:04)
• Pinker clarifies that while anti-Semitism exists and must be addressed, claims that Harvard is systemically anti-Semitic are false and political.
  • “It is just not true that Harvard is a deeply anti-Semitic institution. ...Three out of our last four presidents ... have been Jewish.” (09:09)

Memorable quote:

“We're not really doing the Jews a favor by saying, ‘Oh, your career is going to go up in smoke. All of the research that promises cures, we're going to cancel in order to further the interests of the Jews.’” — Dr. Steven Pinker (08:18)

3. Big Pharma, Mental Health, and Scientific Motivation

• Mayim Bialik voices skepticism over Big Pharma and the over-prescription and over-promotion of SSRIs, expressing concern about financial motivation in scientific research and mental health.
• Pinker concedes that psychiatry has become too medication-focused, with GPs often prescribing SSRIs rather than exploring cognitive or behavioral therapies.
  • “If you give a boy a hammer, the whole world is a nail. ...Their toolkit is drugs.” (13:49)
• Pinker argues that the problem isn’t just Big Pharma—it’s professionalization, journalism, and licensing structures that limit public access to alternatives like cognitive behavior therapy.
  • “Just because mental health...is so complex...We have to approach it with some humility.” (15:10)

Notable moment:

“People want the magic pill, right? We want the SSRI for our entire life. And that's not actually how the world works. And I think social media ... make people feel that there are much simpler answers than there actually are.” — Mayim Bialik (16:07)

4. Rationality vs. Mysticism: The Philosophy Showdown

Skepticism of Transcendental Claims

• Bialik and Cohen challenge Pinker on his staunch materialism, raising topics like ESP, remote viewing, and near-death experiences.
• Pinker dismisses all such phenomena as lacking credible evidence and being contradicted by fundamental scientific laws.
  • “Nature, the world does not go to a state of lower entropy. That violates the most fundamental law of science ... There's no such thing as esp. There's no higher power.” (20:26)
• He applies a high “extraordinary evidence” bar, citing Carl Sagan’s maxim.
  • “If ESP existed, the world would be unrecognizable. ...It also means that the laws of physics ... would have to be false.” (23:02)

Near-Death Experiences and Subjective Truth

• Mayim Bialik shares clinical stories of patients recounting remote events while unconscious, referencing researchers like Bruce Grayson.
• Pinker attributes these to misremembering, confirmation bias, or the brain filling in gaps, not evidence of consciousness outside the body.
  • “As a psychologist, people misremember stuff.” (25:50)
• Bialik defends subjective experience as worthy of curiosity; Pinker maintains it’s not evidence unless it can be objectively validated.
  • “People believe all kinds of false things, which is interesting to someone like me as a psychologist.” (33:19)

Indigenous Wisdom & Science

• Bialik presses Pinker on whether indigenous/traditional wisdom holds value.
• Pinker says he values knowledge only when empirically validated:
  • “A lot of indigenous wisdom is not so wise. ...It's superstition, it's ignorance.” (29:02)

5. The Ethics and Impact of Belief

• The panel debates whether it’s ‘bad’ to allow people to hold untrue beliefs if those beliefs are benign or even beneficial (e.g., spiritual comfort after a loss, or as with psilocybin research and end-of-life care).
  • “There is an ethical question of do you allow people to persist in a delusion that makes them happier? Sometimes yes.” (36:49)
• Pinker draws a line where false beliefs can motivate harmful policy, medical neglect, or violence.
• Jonathan Cohen brings up research that spiritual belief can objectively benefit health. Pinker is open, but warns against the “placebo effect” being conflated with evidence for supernatural claims.

Memorable quote:

“There are cases where we indulge people...But when it comes to anything that's a matter of policy...then it would be a problem allowing them to persist in a delusion.” — Dr. Steven Pinker (40:42)

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Debating Science, Belief & Objectivity

Pinker’s Position

• Asserts a materialist, scientific worldview.
• Insists all extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
• Warns against conflating subjective experience with empirical truth.
• Is open to benefits from the placebo effect or spiritual practices, but doesn’t grant those beliefs objective reality unless scientifically corroborated.

Bialik & Cohen’s Rebuttals

• Advocate for curiosity about subjective experiences, especially when widely reported and life-changing.
• Discomfort with Pinker’s “certainty,” calling it as dogmatic as the religious faith he critiques.
  • “There’s a vibe about him ... that's so stupid, that's so ridiculous. ... I actually find [that] a real turnoff.” — Mayim Bialik (45:10)
• Point to research like Dr. Lisa Miller’s (on spirituality and mental health), suggesting benefits don’t rely on metaphysical truth for practical value.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “When science becomes too politically correct, too woke, it ceases to earn respect as a truth seeking institution.”
  — Dr. Steven Pinker (04:37)

• “If you give a boy a hammer, the whole world is a nail. Psychiatrist ... their toolkit is drugs.”
  — Dr. Steven Pinker (13:49)

• “Nature, the world does not go to a state of lower entropy. That violates the most fundamental law of science, the second law of thermodynamics.”
  — Dr. Steven Pinker (20:26)

• “If ESP existed, the world would be unrecognizable. ... It also means that the laws of physics ... would have to be false.”
  — Dr. Steven Pinker (23:02)

• “People believe all kinds of false things, which is interesting to someone like me as a psychologist.”
  — Dr. Steven Pinker (33:19)

• “I think it's better that people believe true things and not believe false things.”
  — Dr. Steven Pinker (33:51)

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Key Timestamps

• 01:06: Introduction to Part Two and framing the upcoming debate.
• 02:19: Pinker on distinguishing science from politicization and the importance of scientific objectivity.
• 06:50: Academic freedom, defunding, and the politicization of antisemitism (Harvard case study).
• 10:48: Big Pharma’s influence on mental health care, medications versus alternative therapies.
• 17:00: The human temptation for simple answers and scapegoats.
• 20:26: Heated debate on the reality of ESP, God, and mysticism (start of philosophy showdown).
• 25:50: Near-death experiences: are they real, misremembered, or explained solely by psychology?
• 33:19: The validity and psychological value of personal spiritual/mystical experiences.
• 40:42: The ethics of allowing “beneficial delusions” versus the harm of policy-level false beliefs.
• 45:10: Post-interview reflections on the confrontational dynamic and the limits of certainty.

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Conclusion

Part Two of Mayim Bialik's conversation with Dr. Steven Pinker does not shy away from controversy or intellectual sparring. What begins as a structured critique of cancel culture and the dangers of politicizing science quickly morphs into a broader, deeply philosophical confrontation over what constitutes knowledge, belief, and well-being. Pinker stands firm in materialist skepticism, while Mayim and Jonathan champion a more open, experience-based curiosity—particularly when it relates to mental health and meaning-making. The episode provides no easy answers but leaves listeners with an engaging, honest, and sometimes fiery look at the ongoing battle lines between science, skepticism, belief, and the complexities of the human mind.

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For further discussion and reference:

• Dr. Steven Pinker’s website and works
• The Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard
• Dr. Lisa Miller’s Spirituality Mind Body Institute (Columbia)
• University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies
• End-of-life psilocybin research at MD Anderson
• Previous Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown episodes with Lisa Miller, Bruce Grayson, Scott Barry Kaufman

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(End of Summary)

Transcript

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[Mayim Bialik]

PG hi, I'm Imb Alec.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

[Mayim Bialik]

And welcome to part two of our conversation with psychologist Dr. Steven Pinker, the Johnstone professor of Psychology at Harvard University, the author of When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power and Everyday Life. In our first part of this conversation, we talked about many aspects of honesty, lying, social media, and what cancel culture says about all of us. And part two is where we talk about the politicization of science and the possible nefarious motives of the medical industry. And we're gonna have a pretty heated debate about if God exists. What is the nature of reality? Does the mind exist or is it just a brain and a body? Dr. Pinker is a pretty staunch materialist and we definitely have a healthy conversation. Can't wait for you to hear part two of our conversation with Dr. Pinker. Break it down. I wonder if you can talk a little bit. It came up here and there in the book. But I wonder, you know, in terms of truth, right? In terms of veracity, where does science end and the politicization of science begin? And what can we do to keep those separate?

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Yeah, it's, you know, where I mean. The answer is that the science should be our best assessment of reality, of facts. They ought to enter into our political convictions. Which policies work, which policies are a waste of time and money? What does history tell us about the most effective systems of government, et cetera? What do people really believe? What do people want? These are all factual questions that then affect policy. But we should try to separate fact and value as much as we can. We can never do it completely because we're Humans, there's some things that we want and they're going to color our assessment of what's true or false. But the idea of science is that you try as much as humanly possible to separate what you want from what is. And that's what scientists have to convince others of by showing their work, acknowledging their fallibility, crowing about their successes, but also explaining how those successes came into being. Science is just the attempt really to understand how the world works. And there is reason to believe that there have been some failures within academia recently. Scientific journals have actually sometimes departed from the policy of publishing the best methods and saying, well, if any finding seems to portray some group in an unflattering light, then we're not going to publish it or we're going to retract it. During the whole kind of wave of wokeness, there was a concerted attempt to actually back off from principles of scientific objectivity and to have science be a vehicle to advance social justice in the minds of those advocates.

[Mayim Bialik]

What does it mean for science to say that we are living in an era where there are things that are being influenced by aspects that aren't necessarily helpful for a scientific understanding of something?

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Well, it leads to two problems. One of them is that we start believing things that are not true. The other is that we discredit science. And so especially this enters into polarization where a lot of the American right, a lot of the Trump administration just kind of blows off science, in part picking up on the fact that when science becomes too politically correct, too woke, it ceases to earn respect as a truth seeking institution, giving them the excuse to blow off the things they don't like. So I've heard it said, you know, when I, you know, make the case for, for, for, for science and say, you know, let's say, you know, human caused climate change. Some people on the right say, well, you, you say that it's a scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet. But what, why should I believe a scientific consensus? Everyone knows that in academia if you go against the consensus, you get canceled. And so it's just what a bunch of guys believe. It's not, why should I believe it? So you undermine credibility in science itself, even when it's clearly correct, if you sow grounds for skepticism that the methods for coming to it are objective, open minded. I think that's why it's crucial to safeguard the reputation of science by making it apolitical. It's one of the reasons I co founded the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, that the Whole enterprise of science, scholarship, academia is corroded when people sometimes correctly think that there's a thumb on the scale that if you say things that go against the consensus, you get canceled.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Can you talk a little bit about the sort of defunding of the nation's very rich academic history which has led to an enormous number of breakthroughs, which has also led to recruiting some of the world's most intelligent and successful people to participate. Are you concerned and scared about the defunding of academic research?

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Oh, that would be an understatement, yes. And I wrote a pretty long essay for the New York Times called Harvard Derangement Syndrome over the Trump administration's attempt to cripple Harvard based on, I think largely bogus charges of anti Semitism. Even though I'm sensitive to anti Semitism, as a Jewish faculty member, I am concerned, but it has been so weaponized, exaggerated, lied about that it's used as a pretext to, in Harvard's case, zero out funding of research. A judge, district court judge just ruled that that was unconstitutional. But it's damaging for number of reasons. One of them is that the American university system is something that has just achieved fantastic breakthroughs. It's the envy of the world. It has, you know, come up with. And Harvard in particular is responsible for having, you know, invented or co invented the defibrillator, the syphilis test, functional mri, a long list of breakthroughs. But also it's not so good for the Jews if you cancel funding of scientific research. An awful lot of scientists are Jewish, an awful lot of students who want to go into science, and a lot of the people who aren't Jewish. We're not really doing the Jews a favor by saying, oh, your career is going to go up in smoke. All of the research that promises cures, we're going to cancel in order to further the interests of the Jews. That's, you know, no, thank you. That's not something that in the long run is going to be to the benefit of Jews, even if that was their main motive, which it patently is not. It's obviously a pretext.

[Mayim Bialik]

And I think also it's important just to say you're not saying that the, the accusations of anti Semitism are fabricated or that they are lies, but that the Trump administration absolutely has hidden behind the charges of antisemitism in an attempt to meet their own needs in terms of curtailing Harvard activity.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

That is right. Although some of them are lies. It is just, it is not true that Harvard is a deeply anti Semitic institution. It really isn't. And I can say that with some authority. I am an openly Jewish faculty member. I've been at Harvard for a good part of the last 50 years. And we've had, you know, three out of our last four presidents serving longer than a year have been Jewish. Three of our last three provosts have been Jewish. The chairman of the board is Jewish. 40% of our top ranked university professors are Jewish.

[Mayim Bialik]

We know they think we run everything. We get it.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Well, yes, exactly. But, you know, Harvard has been. When it came to militant anti Israel protests, Harvard was sometimes kind of confused in how to deal with them. There are pockets in Harvard that are just, you know, fountains of anti Israel propaganda. 24 7. Harvard has 400 centers completely separate from its departments. And two or three of those have become kind of propaganda factories. And, you know, they should be controlled. So there are some Israeli students have been discriminated against which should not have been tolerated. I don't think antisemitism was treated with the same gravity as racism. And they should be on a par. So there are things to be fixed. But the idea that. Which has been said in the right of center press and taken up by the Trump administration, such as the dominant view at Harvard is destroy the Jews as a first step to destroying Western civilization. That's a lie. That's just flat wrong.

[Mayim Bialik]

I think one of the places that many people do get a little conspiratorial regarding scientific research is in the field of mental health. And you know, I'll give the example of SSRIs, which help a lot of people. Just gonna go ahead and say that they help a lot of people. I don't have a problem with SSRIs. If people would like to take them, that's your prerogative. But the fact is that there, there are, for example, other things that often help more than SSRIs, which do not get the same funding or attention as SSRIs. And I guess one of the concerns that Jonathan and I have and that we do talk about here on the podcast, especially because we tackle mental health and we talk so much about mental wellness and, and the things that we can do and the things that we can tap into, right, to kind of help us feel better and live better. There. There is this huge, huge issue of, you know, what many of us call Big Pharma, but I can be more specific. But with the motivation of many pharmaceutical companies to sell medications that in many cases may not be appropriately prescribed, in many cases, they're part of a System that is not really addressing people's needs, but helping sedate them. And in many cases the research that's being presented. And you know, I, I worked in research, I got a doctorate, I had to do research. I know how it works. I totally understand how the presentation of data works. And there are many ways though that that much information, for example, about SSRIs has slipped through the cracks in terms of the transparency that I think the public deserves to have. And the motivation behind that is financial. How do we get around that? Because for many of us this becomes a political issue. Right. Who's supporting Big Pharma? Who's getting paid off to say we should do this? I mean, for many of us, RFK is like, is a very, very complicated person because some of the things he says many of us believe in, I don't know, you want to eat unpasteurized cheese? I don't really like, to me, that's your business. But there are many, many aspects to this that are funded by finances, which many of us could see by RFK Jr. You know, eating a Big Mac on an airplane. So can you speak a little bit to the financial component of the motivation of scientific research?

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Well, the, you know, the scientific research is what allows us to know that SSRIs are not a panacea. So it's not the scientific research. There are obviously interests of Big Pharma. There are temptations of people. Namely, if there is a pill that promises a big jump in mental well being, people are naturally going to, going to take it. There are problems in the professionalization of mental health. So that more and more psychiatry consists of dispensing medicine. And psychotherapy is something that psychologists do. And these are totally separate professions. People are more apt to get their entry into the mental health system through their doctor who refers them to a psychiatrist. And then the psychiatrist, as they say, we give a boy a hammer and the whole world is a nail. Psychiatrist, their toolkit is drugs.

[Mayim Bialik]

Well, general practitioners are now prescribing SSRIs. People aren't even being referred to psychiatrists in a very large percentage of cases, which I also understand its limitations. Most people can't even afford a psychiatrist. So now you just go to your GP and oh, you're feeling sad. Here's this.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Yes. And we know, for example, that cognitive behavior therapy has, can have efficacy rates that are comparable to medication in many cases. So there's, you know, but it's, you know, you know, obviously whenever there's a profit motive, there are going to be Incentives to maximize the profit. But it's, I think, dealing with a complex problem by identifying the evildoer and saying, if only we could punish the evildoer, the problem would be fixed. It probably isn't the best way to address it either because it also has to do with things like professionalization, with journalism. How many people know that cognitive behavior therapy has pretty good success rates? Maybe that's a problem of big Pharma, but maybe it's a problem of science journalism. Maybe it's a problem of the way that, of our licensing system that makes it actually rather onerous to get a license in clinical psychology. So there are a lot of aspects to it. We need more information out there, more knowledge. We have to acknowledge that we're often really unsure. Just because mental health, mental well being is so complex, we don't really have answers just because, as you know better than anyone, the human brain is this massively complex system. We don't really understand it. So we have to approach it with some humility, with some attempt to get out the best knowledge that we have, but also to get more knowledge that is more, more, more research really has to be done in something that has such a huge effect on human well being.

[Mayim Bialik]

I really appreciate that. And I also appreciate, you know, kind of the, the bringing us back, you know, even in this conversation, the kind of bringing us back to a place of reasonability because, you know, many people, I mean, I'm speaking about myself, I, you know, feel very outraged by many things that I don't like going on in the medical system, in politics world. And it's true, we want someone to blame. We want the thing that if only this was better, I'd feel better, right? We want the magic pill, right? We want the SSRI for our entire life. And that's not actually how the world works. And I think social media and these kinds of forums make people feel that there are much simpler answers than there actually are. It's like we've literally lost nuance.

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[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Yeah, especially since there's a temptation to find the, the, the evildoer, the villain. I One of the things that I've pushed this is not in, in the current book, but in my book Enlightenment now, where I talk about human progress, including expanding life expectancy, literacy, affluence and so on, is a lot of these came from just trying to solve problems. And problems are inevitable. The world is complex. It's not. Nature is not in the business of making us happy. We've got to figure out how to do it ourselves. People disagree. What some people want, other people are not going to want. Stuff happens, pandemics appear, crops fail, there are weather disasters. Human nature is not uniformly nice and benevolent and wise. We've got to deal with the fact that all of us are fallible. All of us have some degree of self centeredness. So just like problems are really hard when things go wrong, it isn't always that some bad person wants them to go wrong.

[Mayim Bialik]

But for all those examples, I know the bad person. I, I do.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Well, that's, you know, that could, I think that is a problem because it isn't. Even if everyone was nice, there'd be huge problems. Just because the world doesn't have any particular interest in our well being, the world is indifferent to, to our happiness.

[Mayim Bialik]

Well, you know, great transition, Dr. Pinker. This is a great transition. We, we talk to many people who have either exceptional near death experiences, exceptional transcendental experiences, exceptional extrasensory perception and abilities. What if nature does care? What if there is a power in the universe that actually tends towards lower entropy, as Thomas Campbell says? Why is that not an option?

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Because it's false. It is absolutely false. Nature, the world does not go to a state of lower entropy. That violates the most fundamental law of science, the second law of thermodynamics. It is just false. There's no such thing as esp. There's no higher power. I think the wrong approach is to look for any kind of mystical, teleological, intentional forces in nature as a way to improve our well being. We get better because we invent stuff, because we have institutions like science, like democracy, that, that we, that we come up with, that we test, we see whether they work. Nature is not going to do it for us.

[Mayim Bialik]

You don't believe there's any, any extrasensory abilities that exist?

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

No.

[Mayim Bialik]

So the, the government trains people to, to use remote viewing. It's a technique that's been used since the Soviets started using it.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Developed in Stanford, rolled out by the CIA.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

It's total nonsense. It is, it is a total boondoggle. A government wait. Total waste of taxpayer dollars. Yeah, the government, the military does all kinds of crazy stuff.

[Mayim Bialik]

So you don't believe that any of the techniques that are used in many governments all over the world, including ours, to teach people. It's basically a deep meditative state and they're dropping into this place and they're coming up with data and things. It doesn't exist.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And These are doctors, PhDs, who claim to have statistically significant outcomes that couldn't be replicated by other methods. That this is all nonsense.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Have you seen any, any, any of those studies that. Actually, I don't, I actually don't. I don't think that is true. I mean, they claim, you know, I'm a, I'm, I'm, I wear a white coat. I'm a, I got a PhD, I got a doctorate. Those studies don't exist.

[Mayim Bialik]

What is it like to be so certain as a scientist that something doesn't exist when people say that it does?

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Well, why am I certain that the Easter Bunny doesn't exist? Or Santa Claus, or ghosts, fairies and leprechauns? Because they're extraordinary claim. As Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[Mayim Bialik]

Absolutely.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

If ESP existed, the world would be unrecognizable. People would be making billions speculating on commodities, futures. They'd be making billions of the racetrack. It also means that the laws of physics as we understand them, which are pretty well established, would have to be false.

[Mayim Bialik]

Is Thomas Campbell someone that you would listen to or.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

No, No, I mean, that is, I don't think that, I don't think that he has convincing evidence at all. And of Course, the vast majority of physicists would roll their eyes at this kind of stuff.

[Mayim Bialik]

I don't agree. Wait. The vast majority of physicists who came up with quantum mechanics that absolutely described irrational numbers as part of the formula for understanding the way that we explain waves and particles and everything, they were all deeply fascinated with the mystical explanations that for thousands of years have described the things that physics was trying to describe in the 1920s and 30s.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

I, I, I actually, I, I would disagree with that. They, you know, they, they, Quantum mechanics does challenge a number of our intuitions. It does not prove that ESP exists because any absolutely correct to demonstrate esp. They're all failures, all of them. When you rule out either trickery by stage magic or over interpretation of coincidences, there's nothing left. And there is no physical basis for, for the idea that people can know something outside of their senses and derivations from the senses.

[Mayim Bialik]

Okay, so this is, this is the question I will, I will present to you. We've talked to Bruce Grayson and to Jim Tucker and kind of that whole group from the, you know, University of Virginia perceptual studies. So they study near death experiences. They study all these, you know, incredible stories and many of them say they don't necessarily have an explanation for this. We also talked to Jeffrey Long. So Bruce Grayson discusses how when he was first, you know, a young doctor, he had a patient who was not conscious, she was in a coma. And he had many conversations far away from her room that she recounted to him with tremendous detail. This is what led him on his life study. And he said she knew things about conversations that were happening for which the only explanation would be that her consciousness did not exist in her body. So what is the skeptical, the skeptical interpretation of that to a man who has spent his entire career studying how it could possibly be and he doesn't know, and I don't know either, I'd be surprised if you would say that, you know, one way or the other. But what is your explanation?

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

My explanation? As a psychologist, people misremember stuff.

[Mayim Bialik]

Okay, so you think it's all misremembering.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Yeah, because the studies that I've seen that try to establish a priori what the predictions are independently, confirm them with some ground truth or they show nothing. That is if it's simply we know that people are wildly subject to confirmation bias, that is, you remember all of the positive examples, forget all the cases that disconfirm.

[Mayim Bialik]

Sure.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

If someone could from, you know, from the great beyond, hear a voice telling them under which floorboard Grandma hid the jewelry and sure enough the jewelry was there.

[Mayim Bialik]

Yes.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

That is, if there was infinite confirmation rather than post hoc selection of confirmation. Like the people who say, well, I dreamed something and then it happened, forgetting about all the times they dreamed it and it didn't happen.

[Mayim Bialik]

My question would be, why would something exceptional necessarily have to obey the same laws of things that are not exceptional and happen all the time? Is there any room for that in your world?

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Well, there is if you could. If there was good evidence for it, which there isn't.

[Mayim Bialik]

Well, I don't know that I'd say there's good evidence. There's not. There's not the kind of evidence that is consistent with the kind of evidence that, that you believe in. Correct.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

That is the way I would put it. The way that is good evidence. It has nothing to do with me.

[Mayim Bialik]

Right.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

It has to do with. If you're skeptical of extraordinary claims, as you require that they have extraordinary evidence, can they convince someone whose default position is there's no magic, there's no woo woo, there are no vibrations, there's no cosmic field. There's what the laws of physics have established. And quantum mechanics does not establish esp. It really doesn't.

[Mayim Bialik]

No, I didn't say that it did. So I will stand. I did not mean to imply that.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

So when it comes to things that contradict everything that we know about both physics and everyday experience, given that we know that people can be deluded by all kinds of pseudoscience, witchcraft, necromancy, seeing things in entrails, that's just a human vulnerability, you know, that's why we have science.

[Mayim Bialik]

Do you believe in any wisdom of like, indigenous cultures, for example, for thousands of years, you know, that indigenous tribes have had different interactions with nature, a different understanding of the world that in many cases aligns with a lot of our, you know, current scientific understanding of how we do relate to nature. For example, for example, you know, Neil Th, who was the, you know, the, the, the first person to, to prove that fascia is an actual sort of organ that lives in our bodies and is, you know, interconnected. People thought that was exactly the same line of, you know, poppycock that you're talking about. Right. That's crazy. It doesn't matter what microbiome you're breathing and someone else's breathing. What about things like that? What about indigenous wisdom? Is there anything there?

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Or.

[Mayim Bialik]

I mean, I'm not trying to set you up, but like, you know, how do we frame that?

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

If they've been validated by scientific methods and by scientific methods, I don't mean some particular exotic rights. I mean just convincing a reasonable person that they're true. Well, the ones where we have scientific evidence that show that they're true. Well, yeah, I believe that they're true. I think there's an awful lot of indigenous wisdom that's false. Spirits, lines of energy, energy fields, trances, human sacrifice. What I'm saying is a lot of indigenous wisdom is not so wise. It's just, it's superstition, it's ignorance. Occasionally, since people do observe reality, they can have intuitions of things that may be validated. And if they are, we should believe them because they've been validated. In general, I don't think that the whole point of science is it isn't just another source of tribal belief. It's just the attempt to discriminate between stuff that's true and stuff that isn't.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What do you make of a university like the, like University of Virginia that has this entire Department of Perceptual Studies?

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Yeah, there are institutes all over the world that, you know, there are religions that have theories of the origin of the planet and the universe that we just know are wrong. The fact that they're institutions proves nothing. And universities often have hundreds of centers, some of which have been set up on dubious grounds. It takes a while for the dean to realize that they're studying nothing. So the fact that there's. The question is how well have they made their case? That is, have they done studies that would convince someone who doesn't believe it in the first place that there's anything there? And Virginia, I don't, you know, I guess we could Google it. I don't think there's a whole department devoted to aesp. Is there a program?

[Mayim Bialik]

I think it's the Division of Perceptual Studies. It's the uva Division of Perceptual Studies.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Division. Uh huh. I mean, I know what the University of Virginia Department of Psychology is. I've spoken there. I have a lot of friends there. But you know, universities have promoted various kinds of pseudoscience, you know, inadvertently. They're not the mainstream, but that can happen. But the question is just how well have they made their case? That is, have they actually. The fact that they're a bunch of people who think something is not enough to believe it.

[Mayim Bialik]

You know, I think one of the other points, and one of the things that we choose to entertain here is a much, you know, no insult implied, it's a much more open perspective. Meaning if, if thousands and Thousands of people report a very specific experience that is studied by legitimate psychiatrists at, you know, government funded universities. Yeah, Jonathan and I tend to be very curious about what does it mean to validate thousands of people's experience. Right. What does it mean to validate. Well, I'm just speaking to you from my heart. What does it mean to validate one person's experience to say you have experienced something, you had a near death experience where you died, you believe you met God, you found the purpose of your life. We just had Anita Moorjani on who had, you know, who was in a coma from advanced cancer.

[Jonathan Cohen]

This is actually very well medically documented with her. She wrote a book with her oncologist who, her oncologist said, I cannot have, provide any scientific reason why she wakes up from this coma and four weeks later her advanced stage 4B cancer has disappeared.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

A few things. Thousands of people read their horoscopes, probably millions of people. That doesn't tell you anything about whether astrology is valid.

[Mayim Bialik]

I wasn't saying it was valid. I was saying I choose to listen when people say I've had a life changing experience or I believe, I believe that I witnessed things that have been documented that occurred when I wasn't in the room. I think that's worth questioning, you know, it's worth talking about.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Well, I do too. I'm a psychologist, so this stuff fascinates me in terms of how the human mind works. It doesn't mean that there's anything to it. I mean, people believe all kinds of false things, which is interesting to someone like me as a psychologist.

[Mayim Bialik]

Well, I know that God exists, so I think it's fascinating that you don't feel the need to believe that. But it doesn't change my belief that God exists.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

It doesn't, but nor does it convince me that God does exist.

[Mayim Bialik]

But it doesn't matter. That's the thing, it doesn't matter to me. It seems to matter to you a lot more that people not believe what they experience than it is to me that you believe what I believe.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Yeah, actually it is important to me. I do think that people, you know, Bertrand Russell said, is it undesirable to believe something when there are no grounds whatsoever to believe that it's true? I guess I believe that. I think it's better that people believe true things and not believe false things.

[Mayim Bialik]

I think it's completely subjective. I think that if I would have told you that there are sounds that other people, that other animals can hear that we can't. You'd Tell me I was crazy. I think if I told you that the earth was the center of the universe, you'd say that's crazy. The sun is the center, right? Like, to me, it's just this is just the moment that Dr. Steven Pinker's in. We're just in this moment. Go all in on fall with Abercrombie Kids. Their newest drop of on trend outfits are ready for everything from the bus stop to family bonfires. And it wouldn't be fall without football gear up.

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[Mayim Bialik]

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[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Do you think that it's. Well, let's say someone believes that. I think the the Jews stabbed the Germans in the back, resulted in the defeat in World War I and are conspiring to impoverish the German people. Therefore the Jews should be wiped out. Now they believe it. They were sincere. Do you think that it would be legitimate to say, well, that may be your experience, you might believe it, but you're wrong and terrible things will happen if more people think that you're right or that African Americans are suited only for slavery. A lot of people believe that, you know, they were wrong. It's really important to show they were wrong.

[Jonathan Cohen]

The difference in that, of course, is that you're in that has a negative consequence to someone else versus people who have come back from these experiences having an a significant internal shift.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Well, if, you know, if people have a maybe there are Beneficial delusions. And in the case there is an ethical question of do you allow people to persist in a delusion that makes them happier? Sometimes yes. But when it has any implications for people other than themselves, or when people might think, well, I'm going to be rewarded in an afterlife with, you know, with 72 virgins, so I should, you know, blow myself up and a bunch of other people too. If you say, well, you know, there really isn't any afterlife that could have, you know, real benefits or if I pray my child will miraculously recover from cancer, so I'm not going to bring him to an oncologist, you know, that's a real problem. And the fact that they believe it sincerely is not a reason to, to indulge them, especially when it comes to the well being of someone else like their child. So in general, I think that it is bad when people believe false things and good when they believe true things or when they are agnostic.

[Mayim Bialik]

I think that's so. But don't you think that's subjective?

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

No, that's what science is all about is making things as objective as we possibly can.

[Jonathan Cohen]

If, if we take away the potential negative consequences to other people, for example, I want to blow myself up for some future reward or I'm only going to pray and therefore have pursue medical attention. Let's just touch on your potential for people shouldn't believe delusion. If the delusion makes them healthier, objectively healthier, then, and it's seen repeatedly, then it may. Like for example, Dr. Lisa Miller believes that and she's done studies where people who have a spiritual connection, um, their immune system increases, they fight disease faster, they recover from depression. They, she's done studies with mentally ill people who develop some sort of spiritual practice and they're, they're able to recover from depression more significantly significant than SSRIs. She, she started the spiritual department in Colombia. So in that case you're seeing that what may be considered a delusion by one is seen not as a delusion by other and having widespread physiological benefit.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

You know, I think there is, you know, an ethical issue of whether you should allow people to be deluded if it, if they're probably, if there are only benefits and no harms. I think there is a problem in withholding the best knowledge from people, but possibly an argument could be made there. But what if it is therefore a leads them to refuse antibiotics or antiretrovirals if they have, you know, hiv? I have, you know, I'm going to summon my immune system. I Don't need antiretrovirals or I don't need antibiotics. I think that would be a problem. So, you know, there are cases, I'll give you an example where. So you know, a woman who did some jobs for me, she had a terrible tragedy. Her, her sister and a couple of her grandchildren were killed in a car accident. She said, well, my only consolation is that we'll all be reunited in heaven. Now frankly, I don't believe they're going to be reunited in heaven. It would just be cruel to say, well, there's no evidence for an afterlife. I would not be that much of an asshole. So there are cases where we indulge people, we don't. But when it comes to anything that's a matter of policy, when it's something a matter of them leading them to make decisions that would harm them or others, then you know, I think then, then it would be a problem. Allowing them to persist in a delusion.

[Mayim Bialik]

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the, one of the most prominent side effects of people who have near death experiences or transcendental experiences is that they come back and don't want to hurt other people and they see that they have a larger purpose in life. The psilocybin research, right, with terminally ill patients is showing that letting people touch something that is bigger than them allows them to not have fear of death. They don't have fear of pain. They're, you know, able to experience their, their life and even their transition to the next world as something that's not tragic and devastating. I mean, I've seen a lot of people die. It's not so fun, you know, I would much rather have a perception. I mean this is sort of like, and from a 12 step perspective, you know, like live your life as if God exists makes you a very different person than if you live your life as if God doesn't exist. That's at least, you know, been a lot of people's experience that I know.

[Jonathan Cohen]

We know of a research being done at MD Anderson on. I don't know what to call it. I guess the only way, way to summarize it is in energy healing. It was, you know, rigorous scientific research on people who received hands on healing for specific cancer diagnoses versus those who didn't. And it's going to be published in Nature. The date has not been confirmed yet. We're going to pass it on to you just for your curiosity when it does come up.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Absolutely, absolutely pass it on. You know, there look, there is, there is such a Thing as a placebo.

[Mayim Bialik]

Effect, which is fantastic. Yes, we should utilize it more.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

But the thing about the placebo effect, it doesn't mean that people's beliefs are actually real. It may be that people believe things that put them in a positive frame of mind, which then potentiates their immune system, which then has real effects. But it is all still mechanistic, cause and effect. It's the things happening in the brain. Brain is connected to the body, causes things to happen in the body. There's a difference between indulging some belief that maybe through physical means help with the disease and saying, well, that means that we should agree with them in the content of those beliefs.

[Mayim Bialik]

Dr. Pinker, we really appreciate all of the things we've talked about with you. We appreciate being able to somewhat intellectually spar about some of these bigger esoteric concepts. And we also really appreciate when everyone knows that everyone knows. So where can people find out more about you or more about the book?

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

If you Google me, my own website probably is the first hit. And the book will be sold in stores, sold in online dealers like Amazon. Easy to find. And I do a lot of media and interviews, and I'm pretty easy to find.

[Mayim Bialik]

Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Thanks to both of you. Thank you, Mayim. Thank you, Jonathan.

[Jonathan Cohen]

That was just getting good. We had so much more to talk to him about. I want to know what he thinks of Tara Swart. This is a psychiatrist and an MD who now believes that she can communicate with her dead husband. He just dismisses her.

[Mayim Bialik]

No, don't bring it up.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I want him to talk to Dr. Bruce Grayson. I want to facilitate a conversation with a pure materialist like him and Dr. Bruce Grayson and Dr. Lisa Miller and, like, get some of the heavy hitters to gang up on him because I. We don't have.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

We.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I feel like we weren't prepared for the level of. Of evidence that he needs.

[Mayim Bialik]

Well, I think that there. There doesn't exist the kind of evidence that he needs.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Think about a conversation between him and Thomas Campbell. First of all, Thomas Campbell would have.

[Mayim Bialik]

Been so calm, which I was not.

[Jonathan Cohen]

No, you got a little riled.

[Mayim Bialik]

The last time that I had that intense of a debate was literally when I was arguing in college with orthodox boys who didn't think women should be rabbis. That was the last time that I got like, that deep, like, hip deep in a debate that I let kept going.

[Jonathan Cohen]

If you're just listening at some point during that conversation, Mime started taping her knuckles to put the boxing gloves on here's the thing.

[Mayim Bialik]

And I have great respect for Dr. Pinker and he's a really wonderful scholar and academic and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. The thing that I have a problem with, which is a separate conversation, is the level of certainty that he has. And there's a vibe about him when he's talking about this that's just like, that's so stupid, that's so ridiculous. And that I actually find a real turnoff.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It's the actual opposite of what he was doing when he was talking about the need for science to have an open mind and to not have a finite knowledge.

[Mayim Bialik]

Correct. And look, we spoke to, I thought of our conversation with Dr. Amir Roz, who is himself also a bit of a downer. Also a bit of a downer in this, in this way. And our conversation with Dr. Ross, I do feel like there's, I totally get it. And I think that for certain kinds of scientists or people doesn't have to just be scientists, there is a need to be so self assured that they have the truth that it's like that's the antidote to what they see as this kind of nonsense. And I'm not gonna deny that many people believe that God is telling them to kill people. Like I totally get it.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Well, hold on, hold on. We have to differentiate between a spiritual connection, a connection, a personal God and people who are carrying out acts of religious, I don't know, ideology that is creating an enormous amount of, of death and, and destruction in the world.

[Mayim Bialik]

Except that's like the entire Catholic Church. Right. Some people would say, or like all.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Of the Crusades, suicide bombings.

[Mayim Bialik]

And I'm talking bigger than that, the Inquisition, like these, these are very troubling things. And I understand why people want to have nothing to do with whatever this so called higher power is.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And also psychosis being, you know, connected to the idea that God told me that I need to blow up this building.

[Mayim Bialik]

I call it religious mental illness. Yossi Klein Halevi used to be a radical right wing activist who was, you know, essentially turned his life around and admitted that he was part of an elaborate brainwashing cultural system that trains him to believe things that he now, you know, can distance himself from. But that, that, that notion aside, the way that I Describe it is Dr. Pinker seemed much more intent and much more religiously fanatical about me being wrong than I am about him being wrong. For example, I am willing to allow that he is, has his own perception. You know, I wasn't just being cheeky like I believe that there's a power in the universe. He doesn't have to believe it for that to be true or for me to believe it. And that doesn't bother me. What bothers me is him saying that, you know, thinking that there could be a higher power or thinking any of these things is ridiculous. It's nonsense. It's a delusion. You know, it's all of these sort of like clinically diagnostic things.

[Jonathan Cohen]

He's a staunch, staunch materialist. I would love him and Avi Loeb to have a conversation, because Avi Loeb is a scientist. He wants scientific data, and yet he comes up with theories to explore that I cannot imagine Dr. Pinker being tolerant of.

[Mayim Bialik]

I mean, we didn't even get into aliens. But I do appreciate the ability to talk about it. I'm not really comfortable doing that and I don't think we should ever do that again.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I disagree. I think you're doing great. I think we need to have more debates where we're bringing on these materialists to talk to not only us, because I don't think we can communicate the breadth of the information. We did talk about. Dr. Lisa Miller, we've done an episode with her. It's in the back catalog, if you haven't already listened to it. She's the founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at the University of Columbia.

[Mayim Bialik]

Which he would say should be canceled. He would want it all canceled. Everybody gets their degrees taken away.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Columbia University. Mime. Tell us about her research.

[Mayim Bialik]

So she's done some very powerful. And by powerful, I mean in, in terms of her scientific rigor.

[Jonathan Cohen]

10 year longitudinal study.

[Mayim Bialik]

Yeah, longitudinal study is a very big deal.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I'm not a scientist, but that sounds like a lot of data gathering.

[Mayim Bialik]

Yeah. People who rated religion or spirituality as highly important led to significantly lower odds of a major depressive episode. And these are people who are at risk for, for depression. And 90% lower odds among those who were at a high familial risk. So the, the notion that religious, not just religious belief, it can't just be like, I believe in God. She's talking to people who have a belief system and a structure and typically a set of, I think, kind of practice or kind of mental focus around these things that, that change the way your brain functions. There's a cortical resilience signature that, that she finds there's a lot of mirror image neuron things that are, that are seen to be at, at risk in depression risk. And she believes that when you. When you have this kind of belief system and again, the structure that goes around it, that there's. That there's essentially activation of networks that lead to resilience and can help lower the risk of depression, depressive episodes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What is a cortical resilience signature?

[Mayim Bialik]

The cortical resilience signature looks like a thickening of cortex in certain parietal and occipital regions. And there's. There's other evidence that this is sort of a measure of a cortical reserve that is somehow giving resistance and resilience to depression.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I mean, that's fascinating. You know, what he suggests is that it's not that spirituality is. Is doing it. It's that you're thinking a specific way, which may be caused by the fact that, you know, you think their spirituality, which then has a physiological impact. So it's like it almost like, doesn't matter.

[Mayim Bialik]

Well, so, yeah, he's not wrong there. And I think that's exactly right. It doesn't matter. And what Joe Dispenza talks about, what Tony Robbins talks about, what, you know, name anyone else who's working in that field talks about, what is manifesting. What is Martha Beck talking about? Manifesting positive thinking, all these things. That's what this is trying to do. Loving kindness meditation. I mean, maybe he would say Sharon Salzberg shouldn't have brought that information from India, but, yeah, that's what. That's what deep mindfulness meditation. That's what loving kindness meditation in particular is creating. It's the chemicals in your brain. He's not wrong that for me, there has to be a mechanistic explanation for it. But, yeah, the notion that it's so separate or that the brain is connected to the body, it's like, what about the mind? Where's the mind? Where's the soul? Apparently, it may not exist for some people, which, again, I understand, and I don't feel as fiery about him being as wrong as he is fiery about me not being right.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I think we're going to collect a dossier to hand to people like this, a podcast research dossier that. These are the MBB guests. This is the research they've done with a little executive summaries. I think we need to start winning over the materialists. That's going to be our new adventure.

[Mayim Bialik]

I don't think that we're going to. And I'm okay with that. But Sam Harris, you know, has too much fondness for me to come on here and wipe the floor with me the way Dr. Pinker did. But plenty of people that I know and respect, you know, would, would, would absolutely say the same thing. And the one person that actually Sam Harris introduced us to, who I would also love to get his take on it would be Scott Barry Kaufman, who actually is a professor at Columbia who studies all sorts of these things from a very, very clinical perspective and has a tremendous amount of skepticism, but who is open minded enough to sort of have these conversations. So Scott would be great to talk to about Dr. Pinker.

[Jonathan Cohen]

We had a great episode with Scott Barry Kaufman. If you haven't listened to that, it is also in the back catalog. The episode is titled I Now Believe in Past Lives where he talks about inherited memory. It's actually, it was interesting because our episode with Scott started in a very materialist, normal way and then as he got more comfortable with that, started opening the door to more dualist approaches, energy. He is actually a, he's also a magician and so he talks about perception and what we perceive versus what is reality. He's a fascinating guy.

[Mayim Bialik]

I hope you follow us on Substack. I think there'll be a lot of fun conversations about this over there in the community that we're building, that is.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Where you can get exclusive content not released anywhere else as well as connect with other breakers in the community and interact with Mayim and I on our special Friday lives. People have really connected in a awesome way. Yeah, the comments there are so special. Come check it out. Mayim B. Alec's breakdown on Substack and.

[Mayim Bialik]

We hope you've enjoyed this episode. A lot of ups and downs in this one, but we really are glad you're here for for more breakdown to the one who hope you never have. We'll see you next time.

[Commercial Host / Announcer]

It's Mayim Bialix breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two and now she's going to break down. It's a breakdown. She's going to break it down. And Doug, here we have the limu emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and skill save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu.

[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Is that guy with the binoculars watching us?

[Commercial Host / Announcer]

Cut the camera. They see us.

[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Dr. Steven Pinker]

Company affiliates excludes Massachusetts.

[Commercial Narrator]

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