Humans are products of natural selection and are therefore naturally competitive.
Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
Reasoning
The claim rests on the undefined term 'naturally competitive' and cannot be checked against a clear standard.
Cite this claim
Steven Pinker, “Humans are products of natural selection and are therefore naturally competitive.” (said 7 October 2026). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_82f1d279d02b, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_82f1d279d02b
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Steven Pinker
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Mostly true
“But in other kinds violence, such as homicides, the progress has definitely continued.”
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Mostly true
“I float a number of hypotheses as to why cooperation and human flourishing in general have increased.”
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Mostly true
“Those were as old as civilisation.”
Slavery and imperialism were as old as civilisation, predating the Enlightenment.
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Mixed
“Nuclear doomsday scenarios in the 1960s set off not disarmament but an arms race with the Soviets.”
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Mixed
“More countries are democratic than not, even though if it’s fewer than it was 20 years ago.”
More countries are democratic than not, though fewer than 20 years ago.
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.