Steven Pinker: the mind reader

In room 10-250 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the brightest undergraduates in America are filing in for the start of their Thursday afternoon lecture. These students, taking psychology 101, are drawn from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, and all of them, men and women, are dressed in the same baggy, designer-labelled sportswear. They are fresh-faced and polite, chattering about assignments and movies, and seem overwhelmingly confident that life will go well for them.