Brain, Belief, and Politics Quotes

“Rather than there being two distinct and unambiguous categories of
constrained and unconstrained (or tragic and utopian) visions of human
nature, I think there is just one vision with a sliding scale. Let’s call this the
Realistic Vision. If you believe that human nature is partly constrained in
all respects—morally, physically, and intellectually—then you hold a
Realistic Vision of human nature.”
― Michael Shermer, Brain, Belief, and Politics

“The Realistic Vision recognizes the need for strict moral education through parents, family, friends, and community because people have a dual nature of being selfish and selfless, competitive and cooperative, greedy and generous, and so we need rules and guidelines and encouragement to do the right thing.”
― Michael Shermer, Brain, Belief, and Politics

“There’s a technique we use in our local rationalist cluster called “Is That
Your True Rejection?”, and it works like this: Before you stake your
argument on a point, ask yourself in advance what you would say if that
point were decisively refuted. Would you relinquish your previous
conclusion? Would you actually change your mind? If not, maybe that point
isn’t really the key issue. You should search instead for a sufficiently
important point, or collection of points, such that you would change your
mind about the conclusion if you changed your mind about the arguments.
It is, in our patois, “logically rude,” to ask someone else to painstakingly
refute points you don’t really care about yourself.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Brain, Belief, and Politics

“Yet basically, libertarians are for freedom and liberty for
individuals, while recognizing that in order to be free we must also be
protected. Your freedom to swing your arms ends at my nose.”
― Michael Shermer, Brain, Belief, and Politics

“The Realistic Vision acknowledges that people vary widely both physically and intellectually—in large part because of natural inherited differences—and therefore will rise (or fall) to their natural levels. Therefore governmental redistribution programs are not only unfair to those from whom the wealth is confiscated and redistributed, but the allocation of the wealth to those who did not earn it cannot and will not work to equalize these natural inequalities.”
― Michael Shermer, Brain, Belief, and Politics

“The evidence from behavior genetics and twin studies indicating that 40
to 50 percent of the variance among people in temperament,
personality, and many political, economic, and social preferences are
accounted for by genetics.”
― Michael Shermer, Brain, Belief, and Politics

“In every known culture,
humans experience joy, sadness, disgust, anger, fear, and surprise. In every
known culture, these emotions are indicated by the same facial expressions.
This empirical observation, which is predicted and mandated by the
structural logic of evolution, is known as the psychic unity of mankind. (I
prefer the term “psychological unity of humankind,” but I didn’t invent it.)”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Brain, Belief, and Politics

“Complex adaptations like “being a little selfish” and “not being willing to
work without reward” are human universals. The strength might vary a bit
from person to person, but everyone’s got the same machinery under the
hood, we’re just painted different colors.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Brain, Belief, and Politics

“The Soviets were not 50% right, they were entirely wrong. They weren’t
quantitatively wrong about the amount of variance due to the environment,
they were qualitatively wrong about what environmental manipulations
could do in the face of built-in universal human machinery. Having said this,
though, I now feel no particular impulse to vote Republican.
Also, it’s quite possible that someday you could create perfectly unselfish
people… if you used sufficiently advanced neurosurgery, drugs, and/or
brain-computer interfaces to engineer their brains into a new state that no
current human brain occupies. Whether or not this is in fact possible isn’t
something that ideology gets to decide. The reasoning errors of past
communists can’t prohibit any particular future technological advance from
being possible or practical. Having said that, I feel no particular impulse to
turn “liberal.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Brain, Belief, and Politics

“What makes me a libertarian is that the prospect of having that
reconfiguration done by the same system that managed to ban marijuana
while allowing tobacco, subsidize ethanol made from corn, and turn the
patent system into a form of legalized bludgeoning, makes me want to run
screaming into the night until I fall over from lack of oxygen.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Brain, Belief, and Politics

“1. The clear and quantitative physical differences among people in size,
strength, speed, agility, coordination, and other physical attributes that
translates into some being more successful than others, and that at least
half of these differences are inherited.
2. The clear and quantitative intellectual differences among people in
memory, problem solving ability, cognitive speed, mathematical talent,
spatial reasoning, verbal skills, emotional intelligence, and other mental
attributes that translates into some being more successful than others,
and that at least half of these differences are inherited.”
― Michael Shermer, Brain, Belief, and Politics

“7. The principle of reciprocal altruism—I’ll scratch your back if you’ll
scratch mine”—is universal; people do not by nature give generously
unless they receive something in return, even if what they receive is
social status.
8. The principle of moralistic punishment—I’ll punish you if you do not
scratch my back after I have scratched yours—is universal; people do
not long tolerate free riders who continually take but almost never give.”
― Michael Shermer, Brain, Belief, and Politics

“The almost universal nature of within-group amity and between-group
enmity, wherein the rule-of-thumb heuristic is to trust in-group
members until they prove otherwise to be distrustful, and to distrust
out-group members until they prove otherwise to be trustful.”
― Michael Shermer, Brain, Belief, and Politics

“The almost universal desire of people to trade with one another, not for
the selfless benefit of others or the society, but for the selfish benefit of
one’s own kin and kind; it is an unintended consequence that trade
establishes trust between strangers and lowers between-group enmity,
as well as produces greater wealth for both trading partners and groups.”
― Michael Shermer, Brain, Belief, and Politics

“This is one of the
primary mechanisms whereby, if a fool says the sun is shining, we do not
correctly discard this as irrelevant nonevidence, but rather find ourselves
impelled to say that it must be dark outside.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Brain, Belief, and Politics