I think that a failure of statistical thinking is the major intellectual shortcoming of our universities, journalism and intellectual culture.

Today we take it for granted that war happens in smaller, poorer and more backward countries.

With violence, as with so many other concerns, human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution.

Consistent style prevents presentation from getting in the way of content.

Parents provide their children with genes as well as an environment, so the fact that talkative parents have kids with good language skills could simply mean that and that the same genes that make parents talkative make children articulate.

Disgust is intuitive microbiology

The doctrine of the sacredness of the soul sounds vaguely uplifting, but in fact is highly malignant. It discounts life on earth as just a temporary phase that people pass through, indeed, an infinitesimal fraction of their existence…the gradual replacement of lives for souls as the locus of moral value was helped along by the ascendency of skepticism and reason