ピンカー「政治的正しさがトランプを当選させた面もある」（大意）

少し前のインタビューで，ピンカーがそういう話をしている．

• "Steven Pinker on Sex Differences, Human Nature, and Identity Politics (Pt. 1)" The Rubin Reports (YouTube), March 3, 2018；28:05あたりから．

ここで言ってるのはだいたいこういうことだ：

• 馬鹿げたアイディアも，そもそも表明されなければ反論を受けて修正される機会がなくなる．
• 男女が異なるという可能性すら公言できないタブーになると，男女のちがいに関する馬鹿げたアイディアが反駁されないまま極論に育ってしまうかもしれない．
• 他の例を挙げると，人種間の犯罪率のちがいも公に議論しにくい話題だけれど，実際に統計を見ればちがいがあるのははっきりしている．とはいえ，「やっぱり黒人は生まれつき白人より暴力的なんだ！」みたいなアイディアは馬鹿げている．2つの人種・民族集団の犯罪率が同じになることなんてないし，時とともに変化する．昔のアイルランド系住民の犯罪率は高かったけれどいまでは低くなっている（だから，アイルランド系が生まれつき暴力的だったわけではない）．でも，そもそも人種・民族集団どうしの犯罪率がちがうということを表だって発言できなければ，そうしたことが議論できなくなって，馬鹿げたアイディアが反駁される機会もなくなる．

ちょっと書き起こしをしてみたよ（途中の (...) の箇所はうまく聞き取れなかった）：

Pinker: (...) The topic of the event was "Did political correctness help elect Trump?" It was held almost on the anniversary of the election. And I suggested that I thought it did in part because when you have certain ideas that are just not discussable on campus and you've got a savvy interconnected community as the original alt-right were a lot of people associate alt-right with the torch-carrying skinheads but what I had in mind was the term as it originally applied to internet discussion groups. And that the danger of restricting debate on a campus, of making certain ideas taboo, is that when smart people do stumble upon them then they, number one, are completely alienated from the mainstream intellectual life because they think, well, this is a truth that they can't handle what other truths can't handle. And since the ideas never get expressed, the kind of pushback and contextualization and counter-arguments - the kind of thing that you want for any idea - never happens and within this like-minded community they sometimes jump to the most extreme conclusions.

Rubin: So it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

Pinker: Yeah, so an example being gender differences, if it's taboo even to mention the possibility that men and women differ, then you stumble across some pretty good scientific evidence that they do, then you might be like you know (...) saying "Oh we should have fewer women in medical school because they're just gonna drop out and have babies." Now I mean it's a totally, y'know, idiotic idea, but the reason that he could put forward an idiotic idea is that since the whole existence of sex differences never [gets] discussed, I never said that's an idiotic idea. And likewise there are a number of other facts that are undiscussable that you can take to extreme conclusions if you're not challenged, whereas if you bring them out into the open then you can put them into perspective.

Rubin: Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Pinker: In many cases it is. Another example is that rates of crime differ between blacks and whites. Now that's a fact that's almost non-discussable, but just go to fbi.gov, look up that then break down rates of crime by age, by race, by state, and you know, there it is. Now if you have never even notice that, then you can say, "Oh gee, I wonder if you know African-Americans are innately more violent than Whites." I thought that's completely wrong because we know that no two ethnic groups ever have the same crime rate, and they can shift over time. It used to be the Irish that were the.. they had sky-high rates of violence compared to non-Irish, and we know that that vanished over time, and the black-white difference might as well. But that second fact, namely ethnic and racial differences are ubiquitous and they can change over time, will never even get mentioned if the mere fact that there is a difference is unmentionable in the first place. So that was my argument.

Rubin: Yeah.

Pinker: I gave some other examples...

Update (Nov. 12, 2018): 同様の話をこっちのインタビューでもしている：

• "Joe Rogan Experience #1073," YouTube, February, 2018.