I do believe that what I have called populist democracy is to be preferred to what I have called elitist democracy.

I have now come to the conclusion (roughly) that capital punishment is defensible, if it can be shown to have a deterrent effect on murder. In that case, a few executions save not only some people from being murdered but also some people from becoming murders.

We own ourselves. This is the core of a libertarian theory of rights. But on this theory, while we are at liberty to kill ourselves (regardless of the consequences of others), we are not allowed to kill others, not even if this means that there we be fewer murders in the future, totally speaking.

I do believe that what I have called populist democracy is to be preferred to what I have called elitist democracy.

People in different cultures think very differently about abortion. Abortion is not seen as a moral problem for example in Sweden or Russia, but it is seen as a difficult moral problem in China and in the USA.

The best explanation why people agree is that they have converged on true answers.

My conjecture is that most people will refuse to let go, even when their lives have become boring (at least in comparisons with possible lives lived by new generations). If this happens, there will eventually be no room for new generations. A kind of collective irrationality will lead to a bleak life for the last generation that decides to stay around. Unless we put and end to the human race (through global warming, for example), before this happens, individual egoism will block the path to a better world.