I think we're going to care more about Americans than Africans. I don't think that's ever going to go away, and I don't think it's ever going to go away that people care more about their families than strangers, and their communities over other communities. But I think it would transform the world in such a good way if we could just acknowledge, at least intellectually, that an African life and an American life are the same.

When people want to inspire you to turn against some group of people, they'll often use empathy.

It's hard to pull apart empathy from compassion. What is really clear is that we innately care for other people at least to some extent.

I think we should really discourage this sort of empathic engagement when it comes to making moral decisions. I think we should focus on something like compassion, on getting people to care more for others without putting ourselves in their shoes.

I think Americans are always going to care more about Americans than about Mexicans.

Because of empathy, stories of the suffering of one person could lead us into a war that could kill millions of people.

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.