Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another. β¨ How the Mind Works. Book by Steven Pinker, 1997.
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- All over the world, belief in the supernatural has authorised the sacrifice of people to propitiate bloodthirsty gods, and the murder of witches for their malevolent powers. β¨ Steven Pinker (2011). T β¦ βΆ
- Most intellectuals today have a phobia of any explanation of the mind that invokes genetics.
- Most wars are not fought over shortages of resources such as food and water, but rather over conquest, revenge, and ideology. β¨ Steven Pinker: 'Artists used to gush about the beauty of war. The β¦ βΆ
- Commerce, trade and exchange make other people more valuable alive than dead, and mean that people try to anticipate what the other guy needs and wants. It engages the mechanisms of reciprocal altrui β¦ βΆ
- The doctrine of the sacredness of the soul sounds vaguely uplifting, but in fact is highly malignant. It discounts life on earth as just a temporary phase that people pass through, indeed, an infinit β¦ βΆ
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