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4.0 AVERAGE
4.0 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Interesting and important ideas explained in an accessable way.
I picked this book on a whim while browsing at the bookstore. It is well-written and entertaining. It is a defense of utilitarianism as understood and explained by the author, and it also contains a good discussion of emotion vs. reason in moral psychology. Some parts were a little dense, and to be honest I skipped some of the "intense" chapters, which the author suggested could be skipped, but overall it was well-worth reading.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Greene takes a subject that less nerdy folks might find somewhat dry (moral philosophy and neuroscience!) and with a conversational and funny style, makes it eminently readable. Which is great because it allows me to recommend this book to EVERYONE, regardless of level of nerdiness (So long as its at least at the level of reading non-fiction). I got this book after the cluster**** of the 2016 election, looking for ways to understand and communicate with, the other side. This absolutely helped me understand the differences in the way I think and other significant chunks of my country, and, while it doesn't directly address how to communicate across the aisle like another book I'm currently reading does, it also adds important depth of understanding to my reading of the communication-based book.
Especially for my friends involved in politics &/or activism, I highly recommend checking this out. And, if you're into audio books, the narration on this is EXCELLENT and makes for quite enjoyable listening, actually. Someone who doesn't listen to audiobooks drove somewhere with my recently, and this was my commute listening, and they were confused as to why it sounded like someone super intelligent was just conversationally chatting with us, instead of, i guess, dry boring book-reading. To me that's a good recommendation for the audiobook!
Especially for my friends involved in politics &/or activism, I highly recommend checking this out. And, if you're into audio books, the narration on this is EXCELLENT and makes for quite enjoyable listening, actually. Someone who doesn't listen to audiobooks drove somewhere with my recently, and this was my commute listening, and they were confused as to why it sounded like someone super intelligent was just conversationally chatting with us, instead of, i guess, dry boring book-reading. To me that's a good recommendation for the audiobook!
Dr. Greene has interesting ideas of utilitarianism, the how the construct gets played out in society. Though he has some interesting research on the subject, i found his writing style to be too jaggard and over-complication. I stoped about 2/3 way through. I believe if Dr. Greene collaborated with a journalist in writing, his concepts would be easier to comprehend.
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Good read on Utilitarianism, if you are unfamiliar with Peter Singer, Bentham, or Mills. The beginning was slow and basic--lots of Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology 101 examples and themes. The ending had some good practical examples that illustrated Greene's point (topic was abortion).
It was a good modern piece on utilitarianism, but not groundbreaking for me.
It was a good modern piece on utilitarianism, but not groundbreaking for me.
This is an incredibly important book and we need more of us to read it to have any chance of moving us forward as a healthy, diverse, global society. I think the ideas in this book will stick with me for a long time to come. I can already see their influence in my decision making process and the way I hear others when they are expressing the views. It helped me to become a better listener.
What I really loved about the authors writing style is it made the experience of reading this book feel like one long and very interesting conversation, interspersed with some 'presentations' about interesting social experiments.
I did however find some parts of the book a bit overly repetitive and with a bit too much summarising and re summarising, but I can see how he was using this to build the ideas.
What I really loved about the authors writing style is it made the experience of reading this book feel like one long and very interesting conversation, interspersed with some 'presentations' about interesting social experiments.
I did however find some parts of the book a bit overly repetitive and with a bit too much summarising and re summarising, but I can see how he was using this to build the ideas.
Трибализм зашит у нас в мозгах и всё что вам кажется вашими глубоко прочувствованными моральными устоями - не более чем работа древней системы свой-чужой. Утилитаризм нас всех спасёт! Бла-бла-бла. Научная часть на 5, очень познавательно. Философская - на троечку, политическая - на 2. В целом книга стоящая - как поговорить с умным человеком, полезно, даже если ты не согласен.
The book main tenets are:
Human society organizes itself in different tribes.
Our brains are wired for tribalism. We intuitively divide the world into Us and Them and favor Us over Them. People readily favor in-group members even when groups are defined arbitrarily and temporary. A neurotransmitter called oxytocin is largely responsible for the behavior.
Tribes fight each other not because they are fundamentally selfish and immoral but because they have incompatible visions of what a moral society should be. Each tribe has its own version of moral common sense. The author calls conflict the “Tragedy of Commonsense Morality”.
Morality is a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation.
The essence of morality is altruism, unselfishness, a willingness to pay a personal cost to benefit others.
Biologically speaking, humans were designed for cooperation, but only within groups. Our moral brain did not evolve for cooperation between groups (at least not all groups).
Universal cooperation is inconsistent with the principles governing evolutions by natural selection.
Cooperation evolves, not because it’s “nice” but because it confers a survival advantage.
Morality is a biological adaptation to promote cooperation within groups for the sake of competition between groups, it evolved to put Us ahead of Me and Us ahead of Them. Cooperative individuals are better able to outcompete others. The ultimate function of morality, like all other biological adaptations is to spread genetic material.
For each cooperative strategy, our moral brain has a corresponding set of emotional dispositions that execute the strategy:
• Concern for others
• Direct reciprocity
• Commitments to threats and promises
• Reputation
• Assortment (group members can reliably identify each other)
• Indirect reciprocity (punishing non cooperators despite having nothing to gain)
Partisan support completely obliterated al effects of policy content. Liberals like extreme conservative policies in liberal clotting better than they like extreme liberal policies in conservative clotting.
One’s views on any topic, for example climate change or abortion, have more to do with one’s cultural outlook, one’s tribal allegiances, that with one’s scientific literacy. People who are more scientifically literate will simply be more adept at defending their tribes’ position whatever it happens to be.
The human brain is like a dual mode camera with both automatic settings (fast) optimized for typical situations and a manual mode (slow). The automatic settings are highly efficient, but not very flexible, and the reverse is true of the manual mode.
Emotions are devices for achieving behavioral efficiency. They produce behavior that is generally adaptative, and without the need for conscious thought about what to do.
To avoid the tragedy of the commonsense morality we have to find a meta-morality, a higher-level moral system that adjudicates among competing tribal moralities based on the “manual mode”. The author clams that the Utilitarian philosophy of maximizing collective happiness is the best solution.
In the end, there may be no argument that can stop tribal loyalist from heeding their tribal calls. At most, we can urge moderation, reminding tribal loyalist that they are not acting on “common sense”, but rather imposing their tribe’s account of moral truth onto others who do not hear what they hear or see what they see.
There’s no objective way of resolving the conflict of competing moral values, so we must seek our common currency by identifying our shared values.
Moral abstractions such as “family” can provide an illusion of shared values and the same goes for values such as “freedom”, equality, “life”, “justice”, “fairness”, “human rights” and so on but this illusion is conterproductive and will do more harm than good. The author claims that the values behind utilitarianism are our true common ground.
Our moral brains evolved to help us spread our genes, not to maximize our collective happiness. Thus, we should expect our moral intuitions to be on the whole, more selfish and more tribalistic than utilitarianism prescribes.
Human society organizes itself in different tribes.
Our brains are wired for tribalism. We intuitively divide the world into Us and Them and favor Us over Them. People readily favor in-group members even when groups are defined arbitrarily and temporary. A neurotransmitter called oxytocin is largely responsible for the behavior.
Tribes fight each other not because they are fundamentally selfish and immoral but because they have incompatible visions of what a moral society should be. Each tribe has its own version of moral common sense. The author calls conflict the “Tragedy of Commonsense Morality”.
Morality is a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation.
The essence of morality is altruism, unselfishness, a willingness to pay a personal cost to benefit others.
Biologically speaking, humans were designed for cooperation, but only within groups. Our moral brain did not evolve for cooperation between groups (at least not all groups).
Universal cooperation is inconsistent with the principles governing evolutions by natural selection.
Cooperation evolves, not because it’s “nice” but because it confers a survival advantage.
Morality is a biological adaptation to promote cooperation within groups for the sake of competition between groups, it evolved to put Us ahead of Me and Us ahead of Them. Cooperative individuals are better able to outcompete others. The ultimate function of morality, like all other biological adaptations is to spread genetic material.
For each cooperative strategy, our moral brain has a corresponding set of emotional dispositions that execute the strategy:
• Concern for others
• Direct reciprocity
• Commitments to threats and promises
• Reputation
• Assortment (group members can reliably identify each other)
• Indirect reciprocity (punishing non cooperators despite having nothing to gain)
Partisan support completely obliterated al effects of policy content. Liberals like extreme conservative policies in liberal clotting better than they like extreme liberal policies in conservative clotting.
One’s views on any topic, for example climate change or abortion, have more to do with one’s cultural outlook, one’s tribal allegiances, that with one’s scientific literacy. People who are more scientifically literate will simply be more adept at defending their tribes’ position whatever it happens to be.
The human brain is like a dual mode camera with both automatic settings (fast) optimized for typical situations and a manual mode (slow). The automatic settings are highly efficient, but not very flexible, and the reverse is true of the manual mode.
Emotions are devices for achieving behavioral efficiency. They produce behavior that is generally adaptative, and without the need for conscious thought about what to do.
To avoid the tragedy of the commonsense morality we have to find a meta-morality, a higher-level moral system that adjudicates among competing tribal moralities based on the “manual mode”. The author clams that the Utilitarian philosophy of maximizing collective happiness is the best solution.
In the end, there may be no argument that can stop tribal loyalist from heeding their tribal calls. At most, we can urge moderation, reminding tribal loyalist that they are not acting on “common sense”, but rather imposing their tribe’s account of moral truth onto others who do not hear what they hear or see what they see.
There’s no objective way of resolving the conflict of competing moral values, so we must seek our common currency by identifying our shared values.
Moral abstractions such as “family” can provide an illusion of shared values and the same goes for values such as “freedom”, equality, “life”, “justice”, “fairness”, “human rights” and so on but this illusion is conterproductive and will do more harm than good. The author claims that the values behind utilitarianism are our true common ground.
Our moral brains evolved to help us spread our genes, not to maximize our collective happiness. Thus, we should expect our moral intuitions to be on the whole, more selfish and more tribalistic than utilitarianism prescribes.