People are wrong when they say that everything should be more diverse, even, say, rock bands. It's an error, an overgeneralization.

If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.

You can see the rider serving the elephant when people are morally dumbfounded. They have strong gut feelings about what is right and wrong, and they struggle to construct post hoc justifications for those feelings. Even when the servant (reasoning) comes back empty-handed, the master (intuition) doesn't change his judgment.

When you hear someone criticize a policy on the other side, thats fine. But when you start hearing motive-mongering and demonization, stand up to it just as you would if it were something that was racist or sexist. If we avoid the demonization, disagreements can be positive.

Scandal is great entertainment because it allows people to feel contempt, a moral emotion that gives feeling of moral superiority while asking nothing in return.

Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.

I think that we are passionate creatures who really live our fullest life when we are deeply engaged, when we feel successes, and exult in them, when we feel losses and tragedies and are hurt by them. So I came to the conclusion that Eastern ideas of withdrawal may not be right for modern Westerners. If you read the ancient texts, they're pretty severe. I mean, they really are not the sort of thing that you would think compatible with really throwing yourself into life and being a part of it.