In 2010, my two Harvard mathematician colleagues and I dismantled kin-selection theory, which was the reigning theory of the origin of altruism at the time.
You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give.
For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.
Biodiversity is the totality of all inherited variation in the life forms of Earth, of which we are one species. We study and save it to our great benefit. We ignore and degrade it to our great peril.
It was inspiring to learn of the new Bachelor of Environmental Studies Program, and I congratulate you for it. Singapore is geographically in the right central position for an influence in Asia and Australia, and NUS has the reputation and academic strength to make it effective.
I want us to save the creation-not just care about it, but to save it.
Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.
America in particular imposes an horrendous burden on the world. We have this wonderful standard of living but it comes at enormous cost.
People yearn to be in one of the best – a combat marine regiment, an elite college, the executive committee of a company, a religious sect, a fraternity, a garden club – any collectivity that can be compared favorably with other, competing groups.
Not all ants use violence to dominate their world, some use more subtle methods.
So, the ant way of life is very ancient and very successful. As far as human beings are concerned, we’ve been around for only one million years – too soon be sure.
Every kid has a bug period, I like to say, and I just got so fascinated and I had that experience, that wonderful life of being able to go out on my own without really any supervision at all. I just lucked out that way. I was trusted as a kid.
I think that’s my nature, to want to bring people together rather than to try to bombard them into agreement.
If we lose half the species, which could happen by the end of the century if we don’t do anything, that’s going to create a big difference down the line in the stability and even the economic potential in the living world. Irreversibly.
The vast majority of species that are vanishing, we haven’t even discovered yet. How can you possibly put them back in nature if the ecosystem is gone?
The living environment is the biosphere, the thin layer around the world of living organisms. We’re part of that. Our existence is dependent on it in ways that people haven’t even begun to appreciate. Our existence depends not just on its existence, but its stability and its richness.
And pigs may fly. And we may be able to terraform and send surface populations to Mars. And Jesus may come next week anyway, so it doesn’t matter one way or the other. All these crazy things run through people’s minds.
The diversity of life forms, so numerous that we have yet to identify most of them, is the greatest wonder on this planet.
Exclusion makes us suffer, inclusion makes us thrive.
Science is the global civilization of which I am a citizen. The spread of its democratic ethic and its unifying powers provides my faith in humanity. The astonishing depths of wonders in the universe, continuously revealed by science is my temple. The capacity of the informed human mind, liberated at last by the understanding that we are alone and thus the sole stewards of earth, is my religion. The potential of humanity to turn this planet into a paradise for future generations is my afterlife.
Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings.