This was the first to propose the idea proportionality. That is, the ought to be a fixed proportion between crimes and punishment. That was a new idea. They invented bad idea. If you want to change Human Behavior and get people to do something different, rather than just punish them, rather than just justice like give them just do, lock them up lets see if we can improve society by changing people by giving them different motivational structures like proportionality. That book is still in print by the way. As well as same kind of arguments that only they can scorcher but also against the Death Penalty and in europe the Death Penalty is dead. In the United States its on its way to extinction. Heres some of the more colorful ways that humans have practiced killing each other. This is the earliest portrayal of execution ever found by an archaeologist, Something Like 20,000 years old. He interprets it as an execution because you have 10 archers and 10 arrows in the guy lying on the ground. This comes from christophers work on the study of Capital Punishment almost hunter gatherers today. The reason for this is because in order to have a relatively peaceful just society that is stable yet to deal with free riders and bullies. So theres all sorts of ways of dealing with them nonviolently gossiping about them embarrassing them, not inviting them to your party, all sorts of social pressures you could put a people that are not nice. But ultimately pretty much, almost every Group Practices tactical Capital Punishment. Just because you have a large enough populatiopopulatio n that you do if somebody was just a real bastard who would not come around, is not a nice fellow, a real bully. So hes the sort of stories about how they do it and its an eyeopener. They dont have some of the more techniques, humane techniques like the guillotine or the firing squad or old sparky, the electric chair or the process of botched executions through drugs. But instead know, they just take them out for a hunting expedition and they dont come back within. Various ways you get rid of him throw him off a cliff action on the head, that sort of thing. Thats a fairly barbaric way of dealing with problems like that. The United States death sentences have been collapsing. The granting of death sentences has dropped dramatically since the mid 1990s which was reflecting the crime wave of the 70s and 80s as more and more death penalties were handed out. Lagging slightly behind that are the number of executions that are actually carried out. Thats also on the decline. As you know probably most criminals on death row by of old age before theyre executed, which costs i dont know, Something Like 100 more to house somebody on death row. Its quite a bit more. So im predicting these you follow that curve out and the rate that states are changing their policies on the Death Penalty it would be extinct by the mid2020s like 2025 23, sometime in there. It will not be would have been in the United States. Thats my prediction. The abolition of slavery, of course was driven as we know by quakers in minutes and so on so yes, there were religious people who promoted the abolition of slavery to the rate at which states start to abolish it. But really if you look at what they were inspired by if you looked with the abolitionist wrote about they were primarily inspired by the United States declaration of independence and french revolutions declaration of the rights of man. And so what you see in their literature is talking about of equal rights and rights were invented in the 18th century. Theres nothing in biblical scripture or holy books that says that slavery is wrong. So 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 that enslaving people was wrong . Not only does he not mention it, he says heres all the different ways you should do it and how you should treat your slaves and so forth. So it really doesnt come about until enlightenment philosophers created the idea of equal treatment under the law, that people should never be treated as a means to an end but always end to themselves thomas jefferson, john locke and so forth came up with these ideas. So how far is the moral arc event . I claim that todays conservatives are more liberal than liberals were in the 1950s. Just think about that for a minute. Social attitudes, im not talking about Economic Policy budgets and social attitudes of the people that they treat blacks and women and minorities and so forth gays want not animals compared to the 1950s. So i will come back to that in just a moment. Theres of course exceptions. What about terrorism . I have to address this because its a news much every day. Its a problem but im not sure if the problem really, what we are told we should be concerned about although it may work by terrorizing government is spending trillions of dollars on saving just a handful of allies but, in fact the real threat was debunked by political scientist Erica Chenoweth who had this really amazing a data set for the last three course of a century or so of every campaign for political change both violent and nonviolent then track the percentage of successful campaigns. To nonviolent campaigns are about twice successful as violent campaigns, and then partially successful again and nonviolent are twice as successful as violent. And then failed attempt at political change, violent campaigns are much more likely to fail. She drags it over time and you can see where it shifts in the 1950s and continues on much more dramatically today. She points out that no terrorist organization has ever overturned a state and establish a new government. And so if were worried about terrorists like taking over the country or Something Like that thats not going to happen. Even isil is not even really a state although calls itself a state. Of course, you could get into power and become a corrupt government like in syria, or in the case what the nazis did that its different than the terrorist threat. In terms as an existential threat i think its not, unless you want to argue that the spending trillions of dollars to prevent even one death by terrorism, maybe it works to that extent. What about Donald Sterling trayvon martin, ferguson, these are stories in the news. Donald sterling, im from l. A. , you know the owner of the clippers. It was in the news every night and people like, civil rights leaders today are calling for a crisis intervention that americas are more racist than theyve ever been or at least as racist as they were in the 1950s. If anything the Donald Sterling k. Shows quite the opposite, that in private to his mistress he complains about africanamericans at his game. Most old guys in the 1950s thought like he did come in toward particularly private about the a were pretty vocal about it. My father my bio dad and my stepdad were not like Donald Sterling but they were not particularly quiet. Thats how people thought and they dont think like that anymore. Trayvon martin case, ferguson, these are tragedies but on the other hand, the Police Brutality and innercity crime was much higher in the 1950s 1960s than it is today. Max roeser is another great latest source for tracking optimistic trends about human civilization in things like this. Has this nice data set on lynchings in the late 1800s, pretty much zeroes out by 1950 and remember when interracial marriage was a big controversy . Well, i dont really. It was so long ago but people used to make arguments that blacks and whites should not be allowed to marry but if you look in 1959, 4 of americans approved of marriage between blacks and whites. I dont know anybody that even discusses the even anymore. Although i am perplexed by the 87 figure. You think theres 13 of americans who said they would not approve of the marriage between a black and white . Why isnt 100 . I dont. Maybe to just shoot out a few outliers. Finally, have to address the Charlie Hebdo messmer. Im worried about this because im a magazine publisher and i dont want to end up like this guy. Fortunately, skeptic doesnt deal with islam. We dont do that and portraying famous people in sort of nasty sarcastic satirical ways is not our style but still the freedom to be able to do the is a real issue. So lets address what the real problem is here. Im going to give you a little quiz, if you remember. What did the murderers shout when they killed the staff at the Charlie Hebdo . Moses rocks, jesus saves buddha thrives, atheists rule or a la carte. Of course, you know the answer to so this is the elephant in the room. All my liberal friends are sort of ringing their hands about this. We really know what the problem is that we do what is it because we dont want to offend people. Liberals are in favor of free speech but liberals are also in favor of not to be offensive. Sometimes those will conflict. I think its good to clarify the what were criticizing, whatever your style is the mine is just to address claims from a scientific perspective or rational perspective. Humor works for other people well. But its the ideas i think we should be focusing on, not the people. But even saying Something Like religion is the problem is too broad. It doesnt help us understand the particular cause of something. Even saying religious extremists are a problem is not correct either. They wont do anything. Different if you want kill a bug. They will sort of crawl and the ground, move around. Thats extreme but im not worried about the changes coming to the skeptic magazine headquarters and causing problems. So its violent religious extremists, in particular those who hold beliefs that lead to violence, thats the problem. Its the part of the sharia law that leads to violence that think are the ideas we should be focused on debunking bad ideas. The analogy i make and a book by the way is i call it the which theory of causality but if you believe that women cavorting with demons in the middle of the night causes bad weather and crop failures and disease, then you either insane or you live five inches ago when everybody believed that. And to the extent were these people immoral for burning women at the state . No, i dont think so. They were mistaken. They believed they were doing something twice moral for helping our group, solving this problem. Of course, they did didnt know about rights back in because rights werent invented but rights would trumpet even if that were true if women can 40 with demons and cause bad weather. We have a deeper principle of Human Flourishing and equal rights. But nevertheless often i think a lot of moral problems are just factual errors. People think this is a good way to treat people and its not. Or this will have this particular effect and it wont. So was my friend sam harris said, sharia law ideas, islam is the mother load of bad ideas is it crazy to. He was talking to some these ideas. Just a few of the percentages, im slightly concerned about the moral arc bending backwards here in some areas, and these are percentage of muslims who favor enshrining sharia law. Im just putting these up as get a general sense that this is not a tiny handful of bad apples that we dont really have to worry about. It is something to be concerned about. The higher support for sharia higher where islam is the officially favored religion. 99 in afghanistan, 91 in iraq. 89 and these are nontrivial numbers. Those who believe sharia is the revealed word of god versus grid by humans, you can see the right side is much bigger and darker than the left side. And then Corporal Punishment for crime such as theft. Sucking this is going backwards against the enlightenment idea or those who believe in punishment for adultery not the guys mind you just you know how it works. Or sharia, those who support the sharia idea of executing those who leave islam on the right for example, Corporal Punishment and solar. I know some of these teens and whippings are kind of symbolic. You seize on youtube where the guys are sitting there bent over and they just sort of happen like that. Okay. Not really punishment but but there are ones where it really happens, where it actually is really painful and destructive. The idea here is that that the moderates are enabling the extremists by holding the simply. Yes, i believe in the sharia law law. Somebody else is i believe it but i think we should actually execute somebody. Its a small step once you believe a bad idea, and thats what i think we should be focused on these bad ideas. To that we should say no, you shall not murder our freedoms. This was the berliner courier the day after the happening. And in the independent additionally powerful youve probably seen hundreds of these know the there are all european but there were no American Press doing this but in the land of free speech people are terrified about offending people. I think thats a concern. It is a debatable subject. I like this one. Will just going to keep criticizing bad ideas and we will publish the very things you dont want people to see. Thats how we make progress. So sort of the second part of the talk here is explaining what caused all this good news. Im willing to acknowledge the potential setbacks but for the most part the art is been a big begins with an evolution model. That is expand the moral sphere that begins a concern for the self and jordi immediate kin and kind and then going out to your extended family and then out to your fellow in group members. A basic evolution model gets us out to the yellow portions of the curve, no problem. The first moral principle is to help your can and kind and the second moral principle is reciprocity, i will scratch her back if you scratch my. That takes care of everybody where related to our everybody we know. Your genes are more likely to be propagated into the future by helping someone else whos either genetically related to you or is a friend or somebody that will help you when youre in need so you should help them when theyre in need, and thats all been worked out mathematically by the biologist. Then imagine we have the dark side the bullies and the free riders and so on. We need to adjust that and show we have a dual nature of good and evil fairness and justice, helping and hurting, cooperative and competitive, altruistic and greedy. As steve pinker says we have better angels and inner demons. So now i will show you a video clip i think nicely captures this dual nature that we have a sense of want to help somebody and also a sense of not hurt somebody but impose justice on somebody who hurt somebody else. So one day i stumbled across this short video clip. Its only about 20 seconds long when i wasnt watching cat videos. You will see these three people are talking, i dont even know where this is. I think its in europe summer and the guy on the left reaches out and shoved this will backwards and she stumbles back and i got in the middle reaches out to grab her and he misses her and into the pit she goes. You would think his helping instinct would go in he starts then he stops and then another urge bubbles up like that no good bastard, he just called cox this guy twice. And then you see them there was Something Else i supposed to do. Oh, yes. And then runs over and pulls her out of the pit. And then he says something to her like are you okay, or whatever. She acknowledges. He goes back after this guy so you will see that. I will show it twice because theres also guy at the top of the screen who looks like hes wanting to go help this woman and then all of a sudden know he turned and chases this guy. So here we go. Again, watch it again. Are you okay . Yes. And the of the guy zooms in. We are seeing it a second time. And then wait, there was Something Else. Oh, yeah. Then the guy takes off and this guy, he goes after him. Are you okay . Yes, okay. So we have this dual sense a sense of justice, things have to be made right. Somebody wrongs you, they need to be taught a lesson or punished. This is part of our nature. And, of course, we have a sense of helping and altruism at august the. Theres another video that shows, make the argument this is part of our nature. These are monkeys, and experiment. You may have seen this before in which, so these monkeys are taught just classically conditioned to associate these pebbles that they give them with food that they like. So its like a money. Theyre given a pebble so its like ive got the doll and have to give that double back and they get a cucumber or a great. They like grapes better than cucumbers because who doesnt . They will work for the cucumber. Is also by the way i write about that their supply and demand curve that goes along with this protective they have wait for Office Supplies way more the demand, the supply changes and so on. So these are deeply ingrained instincts. But then what you will see is the one on the left he changes the rock and he gets his kick him and hes happy. The one on the right exchanges his rock and hes gets a great. The one of us sees he gets a great for the same price and think hes given a cucumber again and you see is not too happy about this. She gives a rock and we give her a piece of cucumber. The other one needs give a rock to us and thats what she does. She gets a grape the other one sees that. Gets again a cucumber. [laughter] she throws the rock up against the wall. She needs to give it to us. [laughter] so we all have this instinct, and i can prove it to you but i would just ask you this thought questionquestion but have you ever fantasized about killing someone you dont like . Show of hands, be honest come on. Thats right. Almost all of us at the this is the research from david butz reported in this book the murderer next door why the mind is designed to kill. Heres the data city . Males versus females. Men are about twice as likely as onewounded frankly think about killing somebody, but the women start to catch up on the occasional. He provide rather colorful examples of this like one guy said he went 80 of the way killing towards a toaster and an hour ago. [laughter] all right. The point is the mind is designed to kill because where this deep instinct