The task of evolutionary psychology is not to weigh in on human nature, a task better left to others. It is to add the satisfying kind of insight that only science can provide: to connect what we know about human nature with the rest of our knowledge of how the world works, and to explain the largest number of facts with the smallest number of assumptions.

People consider the harms they inflict to be justified and forgettable, and the harms they suffer to be unprovoked and grievous.

The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.

The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The doctrine of the blank slate... is a totalitarian's dream.

If you look in general at people who live in anarchy, they have quite high rates of death from either homicide or warfare or both. Anarchy is one of the main reasons for violence, and it may be the most important.

Anything that makes it easier to imagine trading places with someone else increases your moral consideration for that other person.

As long as your ideology identifies the main source of the world's ills as a definable group, it opens the world up to genocide.