Conventions are unstated agreements within a community to abide by a single way of doing things - not because there is any inherent advantage to the choice, but because there is an advantage to everyone making the same choice.
Interpretation
Conventions are collective agreements that allow communities to function smoothly, even if the specific choice isn't inherently better.
The quote by Steven Pinker emphasizes the importance of conventions as unspoken agreements that facilitate cooperation within a community. These conventions exist not because one method or way of doing things is superior, but because when everyone adheres to the same standard, it creates a predictable and cohesive environment. This mutual understanding fosters social order and enhances communication, enabling communities to work more efficiently.
In practice
In a team meeting discussing project standards, this quote could highlight the importance of adhering to agreed practices.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
If you don't have a moral question governing your society, then you don't have a society that is going to survive.
At some point you have to stop acting as though life is happening to you and acknowledge the ways you are happening to it. Once you take responsibility for your side of the street, you grant yourself the power to improve every aspect of your life by simply acting and behaving differently.
There are always people willing to commit unspeakable human atrocity in exchange for a little power and privilege.
Champagne had the taste of an apple peeled with a steel knife.
I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.
A dairymaid can milk cows to the glory of God
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