Michael Shermer with Dr. David P. Barash — Human Nature Through a Glass Brightly (SCIENCE SALON #44)

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Humans have long seen ourselves as the center of the universe, the apple of God’s eye, specially-created creatures who are somehow above and beyond the natural world. This viewpoint — a persistent paradigm of our own unique self-importance — is as dangerous as it is false. In this conversation with Michael Shermer based on his new book Through a Glass Brightly, noted biologist and evolutionary psychologist David Barash explores the process by which science has, throughout time, cut humanity “down to size,” and how humanity has responded. Shermer and Barash also explore how evolutionary psychology became politicized, with the Right embracing it and the Left looking askance at it, based on a deeper commitment to human nature as grounded deeply in our biology and genetics vs. human nature as malleable and shaped primarily by culture. A lifelong liberal and social activist, Dr. Barash nevertheless accepts the science wherever it leads, regardless of ideology. From there Barash and Shermer discuss human aggression and violence, whether or not war is part of our nature, game theory and nuclear deterrence and why Barash thinks MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) is a dangerous and fraudulent game to play with extinction on the line, how we can get to Nuclear Zero, and whether we should be optimistic or pessimistic for our species’ future.

Dr. David P. Barash is Professor of Psychology emeritus at the University of Washington and the author of Out of Eden, Buddhist Biology, Homo Mysterious, The Survival Game, Revolutionary Biology, and others, and co-author with his wife Judith Eve Lipton of Payback, Strange Bedfellows, How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories, Making Sense of Sex and The Myth of Monogamy.

This interview was recorded on October 19, 2018 as part of the Science Salon series of dialogues hosted by Michael Shermer and presented by The Skeptics Society, in California.

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