[jerf]

My point is the only solution to that criticism is to elaborate on it more.

It reminds me of one of my favorite observations by Scott Adams (from long before he turned into a political commentator), which is that all characters start out as shallow caricatures. The only solution to that is giving the author time to elaborate; if you instantly and irrevocably label the character as a caricature and don't give that time, you'll never have find any characters that aren't caricatures. Similarly, yes, this quote may be shallow, but unlike a freshman essay where this is the conclusion, Stephen Pinker does elaborate, expand, and defend at some length. If you judged all arguments this way, you'd look around you and find that the world has nothing but shallow freshman arguments.