Ontological mishap and one-sidedness a la Steven Pinker.

A long time ago I wasn't willing to make philosophers partially responsible for the toxic elements of our current political struggles and I accepted the belief that it was all the result of the way their ideas got distorted by those who weren't able to think deeper or in a more rigorous manner.

Slowly, I have discovered that when philosophical ideas are born they carry a universality which, if given enough time and a more detailed analysis, reveal their hidden one-sided stands away from their holistic ontological stands.
At the time of their inception, these ideas appear and are taken as universally valid and as non-partisan by those who endorse them. Yet, later on, they begin to show their limited ontological scopes even when many other aspects can remain valid.

This historical pattern of philosophical mishaps raises some questions. What if we were able to see and think of this one-sidedness from the moment a universal idea is born? What if the ontological validity of a newborn belief could be rigorously inspected for subtle one-sidedness? Is this one-sidedness, not inevitable, but inherent to the development of ideas? Is this ontological mishap only inherent to the humanities and not to the natural sciences? Can we do such detective work to see, for instance, if women are really universal holders of a non-megalomaniacal intelligence as Steven Pinker is leading us to believe in this video? Is Pinker silencing his one-sidedness and granting an ontological weight to women as it has been done historically with men?

Michel Foucault did it with his concept of micropolitics and his iconoclastic correlations between knowledge and power. Such was the impact of Foucault's ideas of micropower that today the concept of microaggression has taken an ontological validation as equal to crime in many identity politics groups.

Jacques Derrida also did it with his concept of phallocentrism-logocentrism and his method of deconstruction, which can be and have been made universally pervasive. We got today a whole feminist universal validation of Patriarchy as a male system of historical oppression only equal to the Marxist concept of historical class oppression.

Does Steven Pinker do it too by subtly putting women on a higher moral pedestal while silencing what its words say of his own vision of men?
Does Pinker analysis do it too with the concept of simplicity when he quotes Dolly Parton as saying?

"You wouldn't believe how much it costs to look this cheap."
Let's analyze first the feminist ontological mishap and later the simplicity one.

If there is something we should probably keep in mind about Pinker when it comes to gender differences is one of his dictum:

"The truth can't be sexist."

At the same time that Pinker finds relevant to emphasize the above he also needs to tell us that he is a feminist.

If there is one thing we would need to figure out, as Pinker try to back up with data his theories about gender differences is if all this data allow for an ontological statement beyond the nature-nurture dilemma regarding women being non-megalomaniac as a tendency.

The data might be saying that men have consistently behaved in a particular manner and women too, but from that to say that women are categorically non-megalomaniac is an ontological leap that Pinker is silencing. Pinker doesn't use the word "categorically", but such statement is implicit in his very ambiguity as a tendency.

The data Pinker brings to the discussion table is highly relevant in telling us which are the differences between men and women and how they have played out historically. However, from the data to actually saying anything conclusive about the nature of women is completely at the mercy of Pinker's ontological speculation.

The funny and interesting thing about human gender data behavior is that no matter how strong is the evidence of repeated patterns of behavior the data never tell us which are the ontological traits for each gender, but rather which are their tendencies without neither side bringing more than the other to the betterment of society.

Out of such tendencies, we are unable to say that biological factors are stronger than environmental ones or the reverse. Hence, any attempt at an ontological posturing of the sexes is just a fanciful speculation.

Pinker tells us:

"Single-mindedness and competitiveness are recurring traits in geniuses in both sexes."

This statement obviously leads us to believe that megalomaniac tendencies must be in both, men and women when both are affected by single-mindedness and competitiveness.

But then, Pinker tells us:

"In early childhood boys engage more often in aggression and competition while girls engage more often in cooperative play."

The fact that women engage more often in activities different from men says little about the general essence of women, let alone of any general moral advantage of one in relation to the other.

Pinker makes an extraordinary effort to use the right words and stay away from either slippery generations or personal opinions. He, as a great data analyst, is keen to emphasize that the data he is dealing with doesn't say what men or women are per se, but what men and women habits have been in average.

Pinker doesn't attribute explicitly nor exclusively alpha male's psychology to men. He described it as a general tendency of the Darwinian process:
"The intelligence we are familiar with is a product of the Darwinian process of natural selection which is an inherently competitive process."
His observations seem more to describe than to conclude regarding any specific generalization about men or women.

He also tells us:

"A lot of the organisms that are highly intelligent also have a craving for power and an ability to be utterly callous to those who stand in their way."
The problematic term here is "craving for power". We know that, apart from human societies, wolves pack and hyenas clans have both, alphas males and females. However, we wouldn't attribute to wolves nor hyenas a "craving for power" since such behaviors, in both, help to social balance and wouldn't be considered as a megalomaniac.

Pinker doesn't specify whether he is referring exclusively to human organisms or to any other organisms. The ambiguity helps him not make humans and specifically men the exclusive holders of megalomaniac qualities. But then, to attribute megalomaniac tendencies to wolves or hyenas wouldn't make much sense.

If competitiveness is part and parcel of evolution it wouldn't be valid to associate it with megalomaniac tendencies since such tendencies would have alienated many species in their struggle for survival. We know that a mix of competition and cooperation has propelled evolution. We also know that competitiveness has been a factor in creating better and more sophisticated societies. Hence, the direct association of competitiveness and megalomaniac behavior cannot hold valid and even when Pinker doesn't make such direct association, it can be easily implied in his narrative.

In a final move Pinker concludes:

"We know that it is possible to have high intelligence without a megalomaniacal or homicidal or genocidal tendency because we do know that there is a highly advanced form of intelligence that tends not to have that desire and they are called women."

Thus, women, in Pinker personal view, as the feminist he is and unable to avoid being sexist, are the undisputed holders of an intelligence with more proclivities to cooperation and societal harmony.

Pinker's data doesn't say anywhere what men and women are, and he has often stated so, but through his narrative, he dialecticises enough the habits of men and women to arrive at a synthetic conclusion which doesn't hold valid: women might be more apt for a society of cooperation and harmony.
However, by him emphasizing on those "women" qualities and not also in the values of competitiveness for a better society, he, in reality, is being regressive and reversing the relationship by subtly privileging this time women as the other side of the gender divide. This reversal becomes apparent as he assumes that competitiveness has been historically privileged too much by men bringing megalomaniac tendencies as a result.
Pinker's gender analysis has almost the perfect aura of being impartial, nonpartisan and scientific, but with a more patient analysis, we can see how it has the tendency to leak his feminist agenda.

This one-sidedness of Pinker's analysis not only shows in his understanding of gender identity but also in his understanding of simplicity.

Let's us go back to Dolly Parton quote:
"You wouldn't believe how much it costs to look this cheap."
To show how one-sidedness can manifest in Dolly Parton truism we would need to ask a few questions. We are obviously assuming that simplicity is to make things simple, not simpler. That would already imply some level of complexity which is black boxed to the viewer or the reader. However, in the same vein, we could say that to show complexity is not to make things complicated, but neither to make them simple. Showing complexity also wouldn't be just to give access to the black boxed elements of something that on its surface has been made simple like, for instance, a computer's screen.

No doubt, showing complexity can be the result of lack of clarity or lack of simplicity. However, that is not always the case.

The idea of simplicity goes as far back as the original intent of Oakham's razor. Funnily enough, the efforts to simplify Oakham's razor has completely distorted its original intent. Hence, we have to blame for the good intentions of using simplicity which has gone wrong due to simplification of Oakham's idea.

Oakham's quote states:

"More things should not be used than are necessary."

Such quote has been simplified to this:

"Suppose there exist two explanations for an occurrence. In this case, the simpler one is usually better."

The relevant information in the above quote is "usually" since "usually", for the sake of simplicity, can be reduced to "always."

If we followed Oakham's quote rigorously we would have to include the possibility that the "necessary" might sometimes have no other choice but to include complexity.

One thing is the complexity of writing simple things and another the simplicity of writing complex things. One cannot substitute one for the other one. Doing so would be being simplistic rather than simple.

Things are not necessarily easy to read because they are complex to write. Sometimes things are easy to read not only because they are easy to write, but also because our mind is equipped with both, tools for processing better simplicity and tools for processing better complexity. Thus, it makes us able not only to grasp the author's intent but also much more.

When Pinker agrees with Dolly Parton's quote but silences the intricacies of simplicity he is in a way siding with simplicity in a simplistic way even when he explicitly clarifies that that is not his intent.

Pinker's silence sides implicitly with two invalid assumptions. First, that when a piece of writing is considered complex is very likely that it is gibberish. Second, that simple writing has more likelihood of expressing things better than complex ones.

It might be taken as a surprise that I have reached the above conclusion by just analysing Pinker's agreeability with Dolly Parton's quote. That is probably the most simple and effective way to detect an ontological mishap in a thinker who is not completely aware of the implications words can have in silence when not enough evidence has been given to support a claim.
With Dolly Parton's quote Pinker's understanding of simplicity came across to his audience as profound and simultaneously simple, but when analysed for what it doesn't say and doesn't account for it actually comes across as one-sided and simplistic.

Pinker in a quote tells us:

"We should study human nature objectively without putting a moral thumb on either side of the scale."

I would respond to Pinker's quote in this manner:

We should study human nature objectively without putting any biased thumb on either side of the scale."