The tragedy of ignorance
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing very well. It strikes me that this is a formal way of me say I want you to be happy. If you remember last week's email, I talked about a lot of the stories we frame our existence around and how they...
On Communication and Politics
Hello everyone, How are you doing? Think about that question carefully, what you tell yourself in response is important. I have been taking steps to improve my craft as a writer recently. A chance to practice writing to an audience regularly has also been a pleasant side-effect of being able...
The Tragic and Utopian Visions of Human Nature
The Blank Slate is a book about the question of whether we are nature or nurture. Are we born like blank slates to be written on by our life experience or do we have an innate nature that remains consistent through our lives?...
Book Recommendation
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Engagement with politics is like sports fandom in another way: people seek and consume news to enhance the fan experience, not to make their opinions more accurate.Steven Pinker
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It is the very nature of argument to stake a claim to being right.Steven Pinker
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Think of it this way: The average American now retires at age 62. One hundred years ago, the average American died at age 51.Steven Pinker
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Human life has become more precious, while glory, honor, preeminence, manliness, heroism, and other symptoms of excess testosterone have been downgraded.Steven Pinker
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The American poverty rate has declined by ninety percent since 1960, from 30 percent of the population to just 3 percent.Steven Pinker
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People see violence as moral, not immoral: across the world and throughout history, more people have been murdered to mete out justice than to greed.Steven Pinker
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A typical person today is smarter than 98 percent of the people in the good old days of 1910.Steven Pinker
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In many surveys it turns out that every student, questioned privately, thinks that binge drinking is a terrible idea, but each is convinced that his peers think it's cool.Steven Pinker
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Today's conservatives are more liberal than yesterday's liberals.Steven Pinker
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Humans can thrive on a modern vegetarian diet and animals' interests in a life free of pain and premature death surely outweigh the marginal increase in pleasure we get from eating their flesh.Steven Pinker
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Pain and humiliation distract children from pondering what they did wrong.Steven Pinker
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In 1987 only half of Americans thought it was always wrong for a man to strike his wife with a belt or stick.Steven Pinker
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The evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane, when asked whether he would lay down his life for his brother, replied, 'No, but for two brothers or eight cousins.'Steven Pinker
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No two countries with a McDonald's have ever fought in a war.Steven Pinker
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If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.James Madison
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We find that living in a civilization reduces one's chances of being a victim of violence fivefold.Steven Pinker