The effects of Twitter and Facebook and all those things on people's psychologies is a really interesting question to which nobody knows the answer.

Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans — language, rationality, culture, and so on. I'd stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce.

Stories turn anonymous strangers into people who matter.

When people want to inspire you to turn against some group of people, they'll often use empathy. When Obama wanted to bomb Syria, he drew our attention to the victims of chemical warfare. And in both of the Iraq wars, politicians said, "Look at the horrific things that are happening." I'm not a pacifist. I think the suffering of innocent people can be a catalyst for moral action. But empathy puts too much weight on the scale in favor of war. Empathy can really lead to violence.

This enthusiasm [for empathy] may be misplaced. Empathy has some unfortunate features – it is parochial, narrow-minded and innumerate. We’re often at our best when we’re smart enough not to rely on it.

A religion such as Judaism or Catholicism might survive even if it comes to reject a literal account of God creating man and animals. But it cannot survive the rejection of an immaterial soul.

I'm really interested in the pleasure we get from stories and the pleasure we get from movies, and certainly the pleasure we get from virtual experiences. My complaint is against empathy as a moral guide. But as a source of pleasure, it can't be beat.