Overreaction, Bullshitting, Death Penalty
Links and recommendations
You can now watch the panel discussion I joined at ARC (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship) in London earlier this summer. My remarks start at 7:48:
From the archives:
The Evolutionary Advantage of Overreaction
The Psychology of Morality:
My new lecture series “The Psychology of Morality” is now available exclusively at Peterson Academy.
I delivered six lectures in front of a live studio audience that explore the origins of morality. The course examines the distinction between moral philosophy and moral psychology, showing how emotions and intuitions often guide our judgments more than rational principles. It also investigates frameworks such as Haidt’s moral foundations theory and Gray’s moral dyad theory. The series also covers dark personality traits and their relationship with moral behavior, and concludes by examining the relationship between morality and happiness, sex differences in moral judgment, and moral development across the lifespan.
Enroll here for immediate access.
Here’s the trailer:
Links and recommendations:
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Three interesting findings:
1. 76% of Americans support the death penalty for murder involving sex crimes or torture. 71% support it for rape of child. (source). Reminds me of Wilfred Reilly’s point that there are many ways to be a “prison abolitionist.” One is to support public execution. Many progressives misunderstand that prison is the moderate option; the actual gut instinct preference for many people is firing squads for criminals.
2. A traditional view is that rape is perpetrated by men who are unable to get sex in other ways and therefore resort to force as a way of ending their frustration. That stereotype has been debunked, and indeed rapists generally have more sex than the average man. (source: Concise Introduction to Social Psychology by Roy Baumeister).
3. The most violent category of human being is the toddler, and the only reason we don’t worry more about the epidemic of toddler violence is that toddlers are small and cute, and can’t do much damage with their tiny fists. (source: A Billion Years of Sex Differences by Steve Stewart-Williams).
The paperback version of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is now available.
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Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)
