Really? We just made a version of GPT3 finetuned on the complete works of Plato. It produced some solid new dialogues. About, for instance, the relationship between beauty and the good.
* Is beauty wise, socrates?
* Or rather, I will put the question more clearly: We know, do we not, that which is wise must also be good?
* Certainly.
* And what is good must also be beautiful?
* True.
* Then where there is wisdom there is goodness and beauty.
* Certainly.
* But where there is no wisdom there is no goodness. And where there is no goodness there is no beauty. Nor is this only true of the matter which we were discussing, but of all others as well.
* I agree.
* And therefore, where there is no music, we shall find neither wisdom nor goodness, nor beauty.
* I dare say.
* And that which has no music is unpleasing to the ear. But the unpleasing is the disagreeable, and the disagreeable is the evil, and therefore in music there is the greatness of goodness, and beauty, and wisdom, and lastly, in all that knowledge which relates to the music and harmony of the soul, which we have escaped to the end of our argument, in that, I fancy, you would place justice.
* 19. "And so, glaucon," I said, the cause of every thing, which you want to find, has been found ?"
* Certainly," he said.
* "And is not that cause beauty?"
* "I do not understand you," he said.
* "The cause of all things has the name of beauty.”
Did you just put Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett in "a gang" ?
Wash out your mouth with soap, this instant!
Seriously, is there anything that connects these two other than having written some reasonably accessible books on matters in the realm of cognitive science?
Here’s my guess: Pinker writes sometimes on evolutionary psychology. A controversy I heard around the atheism plus days was that evopsych should be banned. Therefore it’s likely that Pinker has been declared cancelled. Thus, to mention his name is to sin, and a sinner must repent, so wash your mouth out with soap and divert yourself from this path of heresy lest you join him.
Pinker and Dennett were quite chummy at least 15 years ago (along with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris) as part of the "New Atheist" movement in addition to their shared interest in cognitive matters. I don't know what they feel about each other today -- there's been quite a lot of infighting and "New Atheism" as a movement has sort of splintered.
I highly highly doubt that.