Violent movements attract thugs and firebrands who enjoy the mayhem. Violent tactics provide a pretext for retaliation by the enemy and alienate third parties who might otherwise support the movement.

Since the point of erotica is to offer the consumer sexual experiences without having to compromise with the demands of the other sex, it is a window into each sex's unalloyed desires. Pornography for men is visual, anatomical, impulsive, floridly promiscuous and devoid of context and character. Erotica for women is far more likely to be verbal, psychological, reflective, serially monogamous and rich in context and character. Men fantasise about copulating with bodies; women fantasise about making love to people.

If anything, Powerpoint, if used well, would ideally reflect the way we think.

The brain is not a bag of traits. It's startlingly complex. There are few or no single genes with a consistent effect on the mind.

Academics lack perspective. In a debate on whether the world is round, they would argue, 'No,' because it's an oblate spheroid. They suffer from 'the curse of knowledge': the inability to imagine what it's like not to know something that they know.

The more you think about and interact with other people, the more you realize that it is untenable to privilege your interests over theirs, at least not if you want them to listen to you. You can’t say that my interests are special compared to yours any more than you can say that the particular spot that I am standing on is a unique part of the universe because I happen to be standing on it that very minute.

There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization.