 As for leadership, I am the kind who leads reluctantly and more by example than anything else. Someone had to be on the incorporation papers as president. |
| High status males had multiple wives or additional mating opportunities in the ancestral environment. |
| Evolution acts slowly. Our psychological characteristics today are those that promoted reproductive success in the ancestral environmen. |
| Genetic studies in Iceland have found that many of the women who were the founding stock of Iceland came from England and what is now France. Some were probably captured and carried off in Viking raids only 40 generations ago. |
| I much prefer the modern world. |
| Action leads to Attention. that in the short-term releases Rewarding brain chemicals and in the long term improves reproductive success. |
| Successful cult memes induce intense social interaction behaviour between cult members. This trips the attention detectors. |
| Lie detection is like language; there is a learning window. Telling whoppers to small children seems to be a family tradition in many families. |
| If anyone wonders why the airlines are not doing well it is because flying has been made such an unpleasant and degrading experience. |
| The drug or cult has major if not exclusive sources of brain rewards. |
| Could people be trained to be less gullible? Or are you as stuck with gullibility as you are with skin colour? |
| People repeat behaviour that leads to flooding their brains with pleasurable chemicals. The short-term reward loop acts over hours to years, and the long-term reproductive success loop over generations. |
| I can't think of anyone who is up on evolutionary psychology and related areas who is deluded enough to be called a utopian. |
| Attention is the way social primates measure status. It is highly rewarding because it causes the release of brain chemicals such as dopamine and endorphins. |
| Most of the suicide hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, a place not lacking in wealth. But due to rapid population growth, the wealth per capita has fallen by about half in a generation. |
| Cults, or related social movements such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, result in massive military expenses. |
| Anyone who has ever had the feeling of being higher than a kite after giving a public speech is well aware of the effects of attention. |
| People under the influence of cults is similar to that we observe in addicts. Typical behaviour for both includes draining bank accounts, neglecting children, destroying relations with family and losing interest in anything except the drug or cult. |
| The rare person is still interested in new advances when they are adults. There is possibly a correlation with intelligence. In any case, you have to be fairly bright to keep learning and changing attitudes as you get older. |
| Some people recovering from drugs or alcohol stay with the programs indefinitely, making the recovery program their family, a long-term source of attention rewards. |
