Greed Isn’t Good: Wealth Could Make People Unethical

“According to Piff, unethical behavior in the study was driven both by greed, which makes people less empathic, and the nature of wealth in a highly stratified society. It insulates people from the consequences of their actions, reduces their need for social connections and fuels feelings of entitlement, all of which become self-reinforcing cultural norms. “

Bioconservatives vs. Bioprogressives

“Opposition to the technologies that make life longer, healthier, and happier creates strange bedfellows.”

Man as Machine

“A peculiar experiment inspired by the Enlightenment sheds light on the age-old question of what makes us human.”

How Mitochondrial Eve connected all humanity and rewrote human evolution

“This month marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the discovery of Mitochondrial Eve, the common ancestor of every human alive today. Here’s everything you need to know about why the mother of humanity is so important.”

Prejudice In The Brain: Can You Break Your Biased Habits?

” One of the biggest problems with prejudice in modern society is that we often perceive people as being threatening even if they pose no real danger. So something that evolved as a protective mechanism in tribal society—when we didn’t often encounter “outsiders”—has become highly maladaptive. And left unchecked, it can fuel discrimination, fear, and downright hatred and violence.”

Dutch Cannibalism: Broadcaster BNN To Air Men Eating Each Other's Human Flesh

“A Dutch broadcaster – renowned for testing the limits of good taste and the law – says it will air a segment in which two presenters engage in cannibalism by eating a small chunk of one another’s fried flesh.”

The Case for Enhancing People

“Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey argues for using biotech, nanotech, and infotech to enhance human physical, intellectual, and emotional capabilities”

It Does Take a Village

“Hrdy’s gracefully written, expert account of human behavior focuses on the positive, and its most important contribution is to give cooperation its rightful place in child care. Through a lifetime of pathbreaking work, she has repeatedly undermined our complacent, solipsistic, masculine notions of what women were meant “by nature” to be. Here as elsewhere she urges caution and compassion toward women whose maternal role must be constantly rethought and readjusted to meet the demands of a changing world. Women have done this successfully for millions of years, and their success will not stop now. But neither Hrdy nor I nor anyone else can know whether the strong human tendency to help mothers care for children can produce the species-wide level of cooperation that we now need to survive.”

Death becomes us

“The impulse to invest significance in the bodies of the dead has usually been a religious one. Yet even my atheist father cared about the treatment of his remains, says Sarah Murray”

Is mental time travel what makes us human?

“Pushing against this tide of animal awe is a competing cultural trope, the relentless seeking of human superiority. It’s from this second camp that Michael C. Corballis, a professor emeritus of psychology from New Zealand, has written The Recursive Mind: The origins of human language, thought, and civilization. Mental time travel and theory of mind, Corballis believes, are two uniquely human ways of thinking that propelled our species to heights above all others, thanks to what is called recursion.”

Orangutan populations develop different cultures just like humans

“Since the underlying mechanisms of cultural learning appear to be the same in both humans and orangutans, that suggests we all evolved this capacity at the same time - or, more to the point, our common ancestor did. Orangutans are more distantly to us than are chimps or gorillas, and we likely diverged from them thirteen million years ago. That means the basic building blocks of culture have been around for a long, long time.”

Is Transhumanism Coercive?

“Forcing humanity to remain relatively stupid and sick doesn’t make us freer”

Aubrey de Grey's Plan to Stop Aging

” Gerontologist Aubrey de Grey has a plan to end the “disease” of aging.”

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