Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.
Interpretation
Photography allows us to create a simulated experience of fascinating realities.
In this quote, Steven Pinker emphasizes how photography serves as a medium to construct a virtual reality. It suggests that through the lens of a camera, one can manipulate perceptions and evoke emotions, effectively inviting viewers into an intriguing crafted world that may not exist in the same way in true life.
In practice
During a photography exhibition, you might say this quote to explain the power of visual storytelling.
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.
The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness.
I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies.
Movies took you right up to the edge but kept you safe.
O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
A true musician, like Johnny Cash, should be able to walk into a room with nothing but an instrument and capture people's attention for two hours.
An artist cannot be partially sincere any more than art can be an approximation of beauty.
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