“Capitalism saved the world, and there is even a heretical theory now, moving up from the level of individuals to countries: countries that trade more and have more open economies are less likely to fight wars and less likely to have genocides.”

Canadian cognitive psychologist and public intellectual

Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is known for his work on the mind, language, and human nature, and for presenting those subjects to a wide general audience. Pinker supports evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. He is the Johnstone Family professor of psychology at Harvard University, and his writing often returns to questions about how people think, speak, and understand the world.