Claims

Factual · Their own work or organisation

“My counterargument said nothing about maleness, polyamory, paranoia, or other irrelevancies.”

Steven Pinker, author of open letter · 26 September 2026 · Steven Pinker Replies to Scott Alexander on AI (Quillette)

Pinker's counterargument to the criticism that the Enlightenment and the ideal of progress would lead to human extinction, for example through runaway AI, said nothing about maleness, polyamory, paranoia or similar irrelevancies.

Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.

The second judge said resolved false; the verdict shown is the first judge's.

What would count as true or false

Judge as of 2026-09-26 against the text of the counterargument Pinker refers to (per the proposition, the relevant passage of 'Enlightenment Now'). True: the passage makes no argument about maleness, polyamory, paranoia or similar personal or irrelevant traits. Mostly true: the passage mentions one of these only in passing, and not as part of the argument. Mixed: one or more of these topics plays a modest role in the argument. Mostly false: one or more of them forms a substantive part of the counterargument. False: the counterargument relies explicitly on maleness, polyamory or paranoia.

Evidence

1. An Open Letter To Steven Pinker On AI Astral Codex Ten (Scott Alexander) · 6 October 2026

   “Would an artificially intelligent system deliberately disable these safeguards? Why would it want to? AI dystopias project a parochial alpha-male psychology onto the concept of intelligence.”

2. Steven Pinker's fake enlightenment: His book is full of misleading claims and false assertions Salon · 26 January 2019

   “Dr. Pinker is no exception, and he uses his deep knowledge of psychology to make pseudo-profound statements about AI risk such as: “It’s a projection of evolved alpha-male psychology onto the concept of intelligence”

3. Enlightenment Now - Wikipedia Wikipedia · 16 February 2018

   “In particular, Pinker departs from scholars such as Nick Bostrom regarding the possibility of accidental existential risk from artificial general intelligence”

Reasoning

E1 and E2 quote Pinker linking AI fears to 'alpha-male psychology', but neither shows that this remark is in the counterargument passage the criteria point to. E3 says only that Enlightenment Now disagrees with Bostrom on AI risk and does not quote the passage, so the evidence does not settle what the counterargument contains.

Cite this claim

Steven Pinker, “Pinker's counterargument to the criticism that the Enlightenment and the ideal of progress would lead to human extinction, for example through runaway AI, said nothing about maleness, polyamory, paranoia or similar irrelevancies.” (said 26 September 2026). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_fccc8c846eb0, method 0.1.0+28da144b. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_fccc8c846eb0