It should be noted, though, that Pinker subtly mischaracterises Mao’s expression. Pinker’s right that if people really were ‘blank slates’, without evolved capacities to orient themselves, then Mao’s engineering could have been much more destructive. However, when Mao called people ‘sheets of white paper’, he was referring to their impoverished economic conditions rather than their psychological or biological endowments. This does nothing to mitigate Mao’s destructive legacy, but it does call into question Pinker’s rhetoric. Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, London: Penguin Books, 2003, p. 11. ↩