Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On The Moral Arc 20150208

Welcome to the Cato Institute institute. I am david boaz executive Vice President of the institute and its my honor today to be able to introduce and moderate this program. We hear a lot these days for the past few decades about moral decline in america, moral decline in the world. It covers a lot of different areas. Not clear that those are always the most relevant areas to what we might consider public morality. Bill bennett made a career out of talking about moral decline. Lots of radio talk shows have that is a common theme. Most days theres an oped in the Washington Times decrying moral decline in america and indeed i saw recently that threequarters of americans think that we are in a period of moral decline. So it seems pretty convincing but there is an argument that we are in an era of moral progress and i think more people are starting to speak up on the side of both moral progress and economic tangible progress in the world. As i point out in my own forthcoming book, the libertarian mind, we have in fact seen a reduction in the world in war, slavery violence of all kinds. We have seen a tendency toward individual rights, Economic Freedom and democracy. Those are important elements of progress including moral progress. The new issue of cato policy report the newsletter for cato sponsors includes a transcript of a speech i was given at this podium and not one ago by stephen pinker who says the world is Getting Better and better so hes trying to understand why people are so pessimistic. The Cato Institute has created a web site called human progress. Org. At over 700 sets of data on this web site everything from childbirth to womens rights to democracy that suggest a great deal of progress in the world. Im not sure that web site though tells you why this progress has come about and that is one of the topics in a new book from henry holt publishers that we will be talking about today. The author of this book Michael Shermer is the founding publisher of skeptic magazine name monthly columnist for Scientific American and a regular contributor to time. Com and the president ial fellow at chapman university. He is the author of numerous previous books including the believing brain from ghosts and gods to politics and conspiracies, how we construct the leaves and reinforce semester is the mind of the market on the evolutionary economics, why darwin matters and the science of good and evil. Today he is here to talk about his newest book. Please welcome the author of the moral arc how science and reason lead humanity toward truth, justice and freedom Michael Shermer. [applause] thank you david. Hi everybody. Thanks for having me here and thanks for the snow. It was 80 degrees on saturday when i left Southern California for my book tour so i forgot a jacket. I dont even have a jacket. You make adjustments i guess. Human progress web site is really quite good. I wish it would have come out when i was doing my research. There are quite a few of us talking about moral progress. Its not really popular. As peter described here there are reasons why pessimism sells better than optimism. For me its been natural extension of what i do for my day job. I have written books and talk a lot about science pseudoscience, science and religion, science and morality to what extent can science have anything to say about morality and the standard line is that has nothing to say about right and wrong and human values. That is a whole separate thing in human philosophy i disagree with it and its one part of the thesis of my book. Science and reason are the primary drivers of moral progress and not religion as much. My title comes from the inspirational speech from the second greatest speech Martin Luther king jr. Gave and at the climax of this march from selma to montgomery which is beautifully portrayed in the film which is up for an oscar now. I didnt know would become a film. I just does a great story of what it took to get there. The speech was given not on the steps the capital. Pretty much every story youll read about the selma march that king gave his famous speech from the Capitol Steps of montgomery and he didnt. Wallace put him on the Government Property there so they had to do it on the back of a flat bed truck parked in front on the street. I was sort of interesting. He was a 19th 19th century abolitionist preacher named Theodore Parker who said the moral universe my eye reaches but little ways and i cant tell for sure but it looks to me like the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice and that is where king got that. And in fact it works. The Civil Rights Movement in the demanding of equal rights resulting in the Voting Rights act of 1965. For five months later you can see king standing over president johnsons shoulder signing that into love. Granting the franchise to all adults in society is what we mean by a liberal democracy where everyone gets to vote. This particular dataset shows there were none in 1800. In fact it wasnt until after the First World War and the Second World War where there was a real burst in the spread of democracy. The policy project rates democracy on a scale of one to 10. Some are more transparent and some are more corrupt. Fortunately in our spiny does not influence the democratic process. [laughter] i think america slid from an aide eight to a seven. In any case that is a sign of moral progress. If you think that expanding the moral sphere many people have more ago rice and thats a sign of progress. Part of it is the granting of the franchise to women and womens rights and you can see the process here. Sorry about that. Thats okay. I will just use my hands. Anyway you can see the United States. We are still quite a ways ahead of everyone else. What i found interesting is these areas in the 1800s where women were granted the right to vote. Karen island there were 12 people they are so easy to get a majority. Pretty much every country in the world has them with the exception of saudi arabia. Perhaps this year in 2015 and like the vatican city said never. How do rights come about . They start from the bottom up. Its a process of the people that dont have rights demanding that they have them. They march, they protest and they say this is not right and we are not going to put up with this anymore. I came across an amazing photograph of one of the early rights revolution leaders Inez Milholland in her march in 1913. She led this march on a white stallion. I would follow her anywhere on that white stallion. It would be hard to object to that standing in front of that. I have a chapter on civil rights and womens rights and an all right so i will be talking about this in turn. You can see the turning point in the mid1990s when the percentage of 25 to 32yearold woman had a 4yearold for your College Degree went to reversing it to a 7 gap crossing the line in the early 1990s. Having a College Degree correlates with Economic Prosperity so that closing of the gap from 25 to 34yearolds is the peak of when you really start generating your income. The 67 difference in 198293 difference in 2012. You often see a much smaller number like 73 but thats because theyre counting all age groups. What often happened is there is a gap demographically across time but this is the most important one that shows progress. Now we are in the middle of another rights revolution. The amazing thing about this rights revolution is that we can see it unfolding before our eyes and keep track of who is against it and he was for it and how the change comes about. Of course it began in 1979 in new york with the protests and you can see the changing attitudes from the early 1970s when most people believed that should not have equal opportunity to crossing over in the mid2002 over 50 for most people in gallup polls and General Social survey polls. Even the president changed his mind. In 2008 he said i believe marriage is between a man and a woman and im not in favor of marriage and he is a liberal saying this. Now in 2012 he says i have just concluded for me personally its important for me to go ahead and affirm that samesex couples should be able to get married. You can see where it crossed pretty close to, right around the time that he changed his mind that is of course what politicians do but in fact that is what everybody does. People get swept along with the tide of the changing rights revolution and those who are opposed to it just quit talking about it. Rarely does anybody come out publicly and say ive changed my mind. Most people change their mind quietly and dont say anything more about it. More secular European Countries like germany marriage and samesex marriage and is truly noncontroversial. These are friends of my wife who is german. There is lots of samesex marriages there. Its no big deal. Its a nonevent and they look at us like we are just barbaric for even having this conversation. So you can see how it comes about in terms of age. Millennials are in the most in favor of it. Generation x is lagging behind people born after 1965. Baby boomers are slowly being pulled up with her for her nails dug into the past and hanging on for dear life for the oldschool as assigned generation not likely to give it up but they will all be gone soon anyway. [laughter] that some old observation. Max plonk observed in science evolution only changes when the old guard dies out and the new guard comes out. Who opposes this . Of course primarily religious fundamentalists and literalists. White evangelicals, black protestants, white mainline protestants and catholics have been largely against it and the revolution has been led primarily by their religiously unaffiliated and give credit where credit is due, and the episcopalian sense were in favor of marriage long ago. And by the way i have some good news for you libertarians that are in favor of the legalization of pot and marriage. I found biblical support for both. [laughter] in leviticus chapter 20 it says if a man lies with another man he must be stoned. [laughter] so other signs of progress the evolution abolition of torture collapse by the mid19th century. The United States of course its injunction against cruel and unusual punishment and apparently not enhanced interrogation but these are his words. Certainly not what used to be common like breaking on the wheel. After you poke the guy full of holes and you burn him and strapped them into wheel and brake them with hammers or burning at the stake or signing someone in half upside down. It takes longer to die impaling on a pole or scraping where you ripped the skin off of somebody. The reason this happened is not because of some new religious interpretation of the bible or revelation from the deity and an interpretation of that. It came about from enlightenment philosophers trying to think how can we improve society through some rational means of changing social policy and political policy. People like Jeremy Bentham and baccarat particularly the 1764 book on as book on essays. An essay on crime and punishment. This was the first to propose the idea of proportionality. There ought to be a fixed proportion between crimes and punishment. That was a new idea. They invented that idea. If you want to change Human Behavior and get people to do Something Different rather than punish them rather than retributive justice lets see if we can improve society by changing people by giving them different motivational structures. The book is still in print by the way. As well as the same arguments not only against torture but the Death Penalty and in europe the Death Penalty is dead and in the United States is on its way to extinction. Here are some of the more colorful ways that humans are practiced killing each other. This is the earliest portrayal of an execution never found by an archaeologist Something Like 20,000 years old and he interprets it as an execution because you have 10 archers and 10 arrows and the guy lying on the ground. This comes from the work of the study of Capital Punishment among hunters and gathers today and the archaeological record to the extent that you can figure that out. The reason for this is because in order to have a relatively peaceful just society that is stable you have to deal with free riders and bullies. There are all sorts of ways of dealing with them nonviolently shunning and gossiping about them embarrassing them not inviting them to your party all sorts of social pressures you can put on people that dont play nice by the rules. Ultimately almost every Group Practices Capital Punishment. Just because if you have a large enough population by chance you will get somebody who is just will not come around who is not a nice fellow, real bully. He has got several stories about how they do it in its an eyeopener. They dont have some of the humane techniques by big lead like the guillotine or old sparky the electric chair or the process of botched executions through drugs. Instead they take them out for a hunting expedition and they dont come out with them. There are various ways you can get rid of them. Throw them off the cliff, bash them in the head and fill them with arrows on that sort of thing. That is an unfairly barbaric way of dealing with problems like that. The United States death sentence has been collapsing and has dropped dramatically since the mid1990s which was reflected in the crime wave as the 70s and 80s as more and more death penalties were handed out. Lagging slightly behind that are the number of executions carried out. That is also on the decline. As you probably know most criminals on death row die of old age before they are executed which costs Something Like 100 more to how somebody on death row. Its quite a bit more and so im predicting if you follow that curve out and the rate that states are changing their policies on the Death Penalty it will be extinct by the mid20s, 20 to 25 to 2030 there wont be a Death Penalty United States. Thats my prediction. We will see. The abolition of slavery of course was driven as we know by quakers and mennonites so yes there were religious people who promoted the abolition of slavery. This is the rate which states started to abolish it but really if you look at what they were inspired by if you look at what the abolition is wrote about they were primarily inspired by the United States decoration in attendance and the french were revolutions declaration of the rights of man. And so what you see in their literature is talking about equal rights and rights were invented in 18th century. There is nothing in the vocals scripture or the holy books that says slavery is wrong. In that sense if the creator of the universe wrote a book that purports to be a guide to morality how come he never mentioned enslaving people was wrong with not only does he not mention this he says here are the different ways you should do it and treat your slaves and so forth. It really doesnt come about until enlightenment philosophers created the idea of equal treatment under the law and people should never be treated as a means to an end but an end to themselves. John locke cant so forth came up with ideas. How far is the moral arc bend . I claim todays conservatives are more liberal than the bulls were in the 1950s. Just think about that for a minute. Social attitudes, not talking about Economic Policy the social attitudes treating blacks and women and minorities and so forth animals compared to the 1950s so i will come back to that in just a moment. There are of course exceptions. What about terrorism so i had to address this issue because its in the news pretty much every day. Im not sure its a problem of what we are told we should be concerned about although it may work by terrorizing governments into spending trillions of dollars and saving a handful of lives but in fact the real suppose it real threat was debunked by political scientist Ericka Chenoweth who has this to merit amazing dataset for the last threequarters of a century or so of every campaign for political change most violent and nonviolent and the percentage of successful campaigns. Nonviolent campaigns are twice as successful as violent campaigns and partially successful nonviolent are twice as successful as nonviolent and failed attempts at political change violent campaigns are much more likely to fail. If you track it over time you can see where shifts in the 50s and continues on much more dramatically today. She points out that no terrorist organization has ever overturned a state and establish a new government. For example if we are worried about terrorists taking over thats not going to happen. Even isis is not a state even though it calls itself the state. Of course you can get into power and become a corrupt government like in syria but in the case of the nazis thats different than the terrorist threats. In terms of an existential threat unless you want to argue spending trillions of dollars to prevent even one death by terrorism may be worse to that extent. What about Donald Sterling Trayvon Martin ferguson . These are stories in the news. Certainly the owner of the clippers and there was a human cry about this. He was in the news every night and people like civil rights leaders today were calling for crisis intervention that americans are more racist than they have been or at least as racist as they were in the 1950s but its anything but Donald Sterling case shows quite the opposite. In private to his mistress he complains about africans americans. Most guys in the 1950s thought like you did and they were particularly private about it. They were pretty vocal about it. My fathers my bio dad and my stepdad were not liked him sterling but it was understood that the people thought. They dont think like that anymore. The Trayvon Martin case of ferguson these are tragedies but on the other hand Police Brutality and innercity crime was much higher in the 1950s and 1960s than it is today. Max roser is another great source and tracking optimistic trends about human civilization and things like this. It has this nice dataset on lynchings from the late 1800s through pretty much zero state out by 1950. And remember when interracial marriage was a big controversy . I dont really actually it was so long ago. People used to make arguments that blacks and white should not be allowed to marry. And if you look at 1959 4 of americans approved of marriage between blacks and whites. I dont know anybody that even discusses that anymore although i am perplexed by beat a 7 figure. 13 of americans said they would not approve of a marriage between a black and white. And then finally i have to address the Charlie Hebdo murder. I am a magazine publisher and i dont want to end up like this guy. Fortunately skeptic doesnt deal with islam. We dont do that emporer training famous people in nasty sarcastic satirical ways is not our style. But still the freedom to be able to do that is a real issue. Lets address but the real problem is here. Im going to give you a little quiz to see if you remember. What did the murderers shout when they killed the staff that Charlie Hebdo . Boses rocks, jesus saves budha rise, atheist rule are allah akbar. Of course you know the answer. This is the elephant in the room. All my liberal friends are wringing their hands about this. We really know what the problem is that we dont want to say because we dont want to offend people. Liberals are in favor of free speech but also in favor of not being too offensive. Sometimes the things are going to conflict. I think its good to clarify what we are criticizing whatever your style is. Mine is just to address claims from a rational perspective. Im actually laughing at people although works for their people well. Its the ideas we should be focusing on not the people. Even saying Something Like religion is the problem is too broad and it doesnt help us understand a particular cause of something. Even saying it religious extremists are problem is not correct either. James are religious extremists are way out there. They will kill anything. They only want to kill a bug. They will crawl on the ground to move around not to get a gnat or an aunt. That is extreme but im not worried about the janus coming to the headquarters and causing problems. So its violent religious extremists. In particular those that hold beliefs that lead to violence. Thats the problem. Its the part of sharia law that leads to violence or the ideas we should be focused on. Debunking bad ideas. The analogy i make in a book by the way as i call it the theory of causality. If you believe women cavorting with demons in the middle of the night causes crop failure or disease you are either insane or you lived 500 years ago when everybody believe that. Were these people and moral for burning women in the state . They were mistaken. They believed they were doing something moral like helping our group to resolve this problem which they didnt know about rights back then. Rights would trump that even if that were true that women could work with demons and overnight it is somehow causes bad weather. We still wouldnt do it because we have a deeper issue of moral rights. A lot of moral problems are factual errors. People think this is a good way to treat people and its not for this is going to have this particular effect and it wont. As my friend sam harris said this sharia law idea that islam is the motherload of bad ideas which was afraid to use on the bill maher show. Who is talking about these ideas so few of the percentages of wide im concerned about the moral arc bending backwards just a bit in some areas and these are percentage of muslims who favor enshrining sharia law so i started putting these up to get a general sense that this is not a tiny handful of bad apples but that we dont really have to worry about it and it is something to be concerned about. The higher support for sharia is higher where islam is the favored religion. 99 in afghanistan, 91 in iraq, 89 in palestinian. These are nontrivial numbers. Those who believe that sharia is the revealed word of god versus created by humans you can see the right side is darker and thicker than the left side and then Corporal Punishment for crimes such as theft so again this is going backwards against the enlightenment idea are those who believe in punishment for adultery. Not the guys mind you. Thats just how it works. Or sharia those who support the sharia idea of executing those who leave islam Corporal Punishment and so on. With concern for the selfie band your immediate kid is inclined to going out to your extended family so basic evolutionary model gets us out no problem. The first moral principle is to help is a kind the second is reciprocity i will scratch your back if you scratch mine. Your genes are more likely to be propagated into the future from somebody that could help you. Then i mentioned the dark side. So we actually have a dual nature of fairness and justice with the altruistic that we have inner demons. With that dual nature end to have justice on somebody. From web wasnt watching cats videos. [laughter] it is then europe somewhere to shove this woman back words in the guy in the middle reaches out to grab her in into the pit she goes. His hoping instinct takes it and then he stops then another urge and then that cold bastard. He called cox him twice. Then there was Something Else i was supposed to do. Then he pulls her out then he said Something Like are you okay then he goes back after the guy. I will show which twice because there is a guy at the top of this screed it looks like he is running to help slow woman but then he turns to chase him. Here we go. [laughter] what did it again. Are you okay . Are you okay . Okay. So we have of a dual sense of justice. Things have to be made right. They need to be taught a lesson this is part of our nature. There is another video clip to make the argument this is part of our nature these dire capuche in monkeys. So they are conditioned to associate couples with food that they like. Is like money. Then they get a cucumber or a grape. They like them better because you doesnt . And what i write about supply and demand curve that goes along with this there is way more supply so these are deeply ingrained. But the one on the left he changes his rock and he gets a grape for the same price then he is given the cucumber in he is not too happy. She gives the rock canal is said to cover. [laughter] it then she gives a cucumber again. [laughter] we all have this instinct and i can prove it. Have you ever fantasized about killing somebody that you dont like . Show your hands. Be honest. Almost all of us. This is a research why the mind is designed to kill with males verses females frequently thinking about did or occasionally. The there twice as likely to think about killing somebody he provides a colorful examples one guy said he won 80 percent. For summer break every bone in his body to did way to the larger ones than a few other organs to give to miss much paid as possible before killing him. Another one said 60 percent who tried to make public their sex videos. Actually did this and invited him over for dinner as he was peeling carrots to make a salad i came to him laughing gently said he would not suspect anything. I thought about grabbing then id quickly stabbing in the chest to pave the until he was dead. I saw a did the first thing but he saw my intention and ran away. [laughter] it is because we have the deep instinct for wanting revenge. There is too much moralizing. The victim deserved to die. So we all want justice if there is sent courts to adjudicate properly properly then we will do it ourselves and it is a selfhelp justice so where people dont believe that Law Enforcement is fair to undertake justice themselves with an increase of violence. With eight times higher than in europe but we also had Illegal Drugs and then to violate our turf says you have to settle it yourself. That is an increase of violence. To be applying the methods of science to social problems that it is the problem to be solved. Homicide, of course, and theyre all scientists. They did not call themselves that the natural philosophers. That they wanted to do in their field of physics and biology to solve political and social problems. That the Alliance Fund is a behalf social contract of the body of people. So this explains why did ferguson had been . Never a good idea to reach inside a cop car to grab his gun. So there is really only one results that will happen. If citizens dont feel the police are fair then we have conflicts like that. Budget decreases incentives and reduces the need for vengeance and replaces selfhelp justice replaces culture of honor with lot in the shadow of enforcement to make sure we are nice to one another and moral. You cannot rely on human nature alone. So with the altruistic punishment you may be familiar with these experiments that each gets 10 you can make an anonymous contribution however much you want and nobody knows how much. So whatever amount is in there i will multiplied by 1. Five and distribute equally. So if you give 10 then divided equally so each get 15 a year of 5 richer. But what happens if theres no transparency is anonymous here is what happens. One says i will put did 5 but the other players give 30 but now they have 18 so a few free ride the system and cheat a little bit you can gain an advantage. Do people really do that . Yes. They certainly do. The data shows contributions over six rounds very quickly. As soon as somebody doesnt then everybody else thinks wait a minute. I will hold some back. And the element of transparency . Then the opportunity to punish them people got very generous and nice with one another. The scales for fair and balanced but this sordid to enforce the rules. We are libertarians but that is too general. The same thing with live life on states. The murders of civilians by government so it is not fair to say that but to first make that distinction death by government of have then murdered by their governments but then he showed democracy said this was first put forth the book gives intel perpetual peace. With membership in international community. It was tested using a 2300 militarize disputes plus the project on no one through 10 scale found when both countries are fully democratic conflicts increased by 50 percent but the less democratic the increase by 100 percent so basically as it increased violence decrease. You cannot gsa note to democracies see you can see what happened with the guideline of societal conflicts when it surpassed surpasses autocracy around 1992. Of course, we all love this one that second element that trade is good because the cost money to steal peoples stuff. We could invade canada and take their nickel but it is cheaper to buy it. To improve technology as people can benefit from that. But then it is cheaper to buy it and as a result i am not so concerned at the hockey stick of wealth that is a good thing but the projection of the world gdp but i tell this from economist paul much richer everybody would be. To see more wealth accumulated. But my point is because of the income inequality debate it is true. The rich have gotten richer from the top quintile if you break them down in four parts you can see the super richard getting super rich but what has not happened they got richer by 49 percent but isnt as bad as it seems. But imagine according to the Gates Foundation when 94 percent are in poverty so that is moral progress. In den governmental organizations. Nine then to run a regression analysis. And intergovernmental organizations. A pair of countries with all three variables 33 hands of intergovernmental organizations said the triangle increases of probability. North to rivers says south korea you can see the difference from pro between to 3 inches shorter and the difference of the percapita said gdp 19,600. How would you like a 1700 percent standard of living in your income . We know it is good than that is what we ought to do. We ought to expand trade to cuba. And spread democracy wherever we can to place more possessed emphasis than in the other. High the dollar is something is moral . I start with the individual. Races are genders dont have brains. People have brains. Genders dont go. Womenfolk and people vote. They are individuals. Imagine making that evolutionary argument that the constitution of Human Society ought to be built on human nature and i conclude with another about the dual nature that we have with the great burden of life is to keep the higher self in command of every time the lower self accept it allows a higher self to tell us we were made for the stars board for eternity. We are made from the stars as atoms were formed to in spectacular supernova explosions that disperse those atoms into space where ever they coalesced into a new Solar Systems of planets capable of such knowledge and moral wisdom. We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion years old carbon. So morality is something that carbon atoms can embody given 1 billion years of evolution. Thank you. [applause] we will take some questions now on the book the moral arc if we run out to it is online. Please wait for a microphone. Then and now its your name and affiliation. You say about such a good case but people dont believe it. But why do you think that . Is a religion . With a 24 hour news cycle . Behalf with the average person is a very convincing argument. Just a few months ago on that question it is the product of the news media to report on the bad news. Here we are standing in front of a school with no shooting today. You only hear the bad news. So as most of us saw are risk averse the way it is raised that losses hurt twice says much as skeins feel good. But it probably paid to be more focused on things to take us out of the gene pool. Because Natural Selection would have selected that. Those are the two underlying things. There is a sense that would ever achieve your honor, your ideology always with the other guy not to do as well because also for fundraising for nonprofits we really dont need your money that much. It will not doing it. It is bad and getting worse. I run a nonprofit. [laughter] because science is so perfect no no. Congratulations on another excellent book. Since al qaeda made famous is i have a dream speech speech, 400,000 blacks have been killed by a other blacks. There is a demographic issue so you can see the crime rate going down however you do see it is value issues. With get Police Brutality whether that was the case or not that to you see the underlying value problem to stifle future progress . One that causes is writing in ferguson and that causes police to be irresponsible. Is day negligence from autonomy with irresponsibility. But there is some underlying common factor. Clearly there are factors on both sides to cause these problems. Cab day value statement to give opinions about blacks. We have been doing that quite a bit. With sensitivity training and so forth. This is the way that all police are. The ferguson case was a little different than long island and the grand jury did try that cop. But in the case of ferguson you have a couple of different things. With the innercity that there is of racism in the Police Department as they are taught to be profiled or targeted in the middle of the street the cop said move to the sidewalk. I dont think we know exactly how he said it but it triggered know i am not so now you have a problem with lawenforcement. Then there is a social problem so then you have chaos. But the moment you reach for the cops gun is over. You will be shot because at that point for word panic kickstand it is the term with the amygdala in the win big system if floods your whole brain with fight or flight ended is survival time for pro the classic example is the rodney king beating. A pack of wolves. This was the culmination of a long series of things that happened that got the cops all riled up that the frontal cortex that causes the person to be super emotional are kept in check. But that could be overridden in that is probably what have been in the case of ferguson. So maybe some poverty or racism was the lack of consistency or maybe some family issues with a breakdown of no fathers in the home. Into First Published that now is 60 something . It is politically incorrect but looking for causes to change things. We are disclosing the judiciary government if those who break the oath of office in rehab a wall of shame. So why cant they stand up to say i am sorry i made a mistake . He did not resign because of the crime but the coverup and that is so huge and ridiculous. I am glad you are doing that. With other people that dont play nice is to shave them. You have to be careful with internet bullying but the book called mistakes are made but not by me. [laughter] with the third person reference that something happened and i am sorry that you misinterpreted but it is a halfassed apologies so the answer is cognitive dissidence. With a belief system and start down the road it is almost impossible to back out or change your mind. The cognitive dissidence wednesdays psychologist who went to the top of the mountain in chicago waiting for the mother ship to come. So that was done and a stupid idea but no there would ratchet up the intensity of their belief to say weve miscalculated it was tomorrow night the mother ship did not, and they said it is next year. So they rationalize why they are not wrong. And that we rather spin doctor that it is irrational but people do it. When people come to us to say it was a mistake. I hope that is the case. Politicians that you would commit it profit from that. So we need to hide that net more. Was going to ask if you believe there is a causal correlation between the moral arc with justice and more connected society through technology . Is that isolated . Starting with the publications increasing literacy rates it is part of it. Going up three points every tenures on the i. Q. Test about one century is amazing. Were counting on new students to solve problems before the baby boomers hit the ball. So that reason is in part one of the drivers of moral progress. And i think literacy somoza read literature and a few other task to do with the ability to put yourself in somebody elses shoes. Working through the characters of the novel of the novel. So lets go with this person here. I am of fame and. Making a historical argument if you speculate any structural underpinnings like religion number theology i wonder about axelrod experiment so why is this doing that . I touched on some of that. With the emphasis touche treaties rather than the glory of a nation or emotional aspect. But that is one of the underlying ones. Political economic changes underline that. And the reason for scientifically tested ideas. And how much they are better and the effects that they are caused. So those that pattern themselves that day consciously made the analogy of circulation of the blood it is like blood circulating through the body it is not restricted it is healthy. To much government restriction blocks the flow of capital through a country. Those are all arguments made for rational scientific perspective in then that was the big driver. So lets go to the back. Fait que very rich for your book. I just want to see what is the comment on this statement that says the language of passion . What i talk about is we evolved moral a motion to drive an organism to do something. You dont have to compute calories so if you are hungry that drives you to seek out food so we have a sexual drive cover not to calculate the curves, you dont have to do any of that. Hollander, a sexual impulse our basic emotions do drive organisms. Morally motions are the same way. Jealousy to be not compromised by a relationship with a significant other into deal with injustices you have to strike back. Said you have to be careful. So those demotions are there for a reason. Not as a defect but it is part of our nature. You have to fight back to be a social primates structured in them away of the violent impulses to cause too many problems that people are more cooperative. One thing that pains me to read about is witchcraft that is still very strong that causes kidnapping for body parts. But the basic idea if someone succeeds because they think they have stolen their good luck. It goes way back to the of literature. It is it that we really should not burn all women or drown stranger people but the judge is basically did not real believe witchcraft was a real phenomenon. So can you reflect . I have a story in my book that this german or magistrate who started to sink like you. Sows torturing these women is not a good idea. In that whole inquisitions were total believers. So this woman was tortured so i have strong feelings that these two men i our are warlocks cavorting with satan. Bring up the torture real. What you say now . Oh, yes. I have seen both of them cavorting with the double. And go on and on. Team still think it is a good idea . It was an early experiment to test the hypothesis. But then to say yes of course, so the solution their wealthier to afford education. One more question. Did i read one of your books why people believe weird things. Trying to get marijuana legalized in virginia. There were trying when i was a graduate school. The reason why it has taken so long. It is social and political. That once you go down the path of cognitive dissidence we have been against it half a century to the war on drugs. Because people just rarely change their mind to say i am wrong. Buckram realization is next with gay rights it is not that i feel oppressed. Ive livein la. [laughter] but you hear that they have no morals or should not be citizens. It is all happening very quickly. And i gave you double biblical passages to support [laughter] thanks for being here. [applause]