A...reason We Are So-so Scientists Is That

Democracy Is An Imperfect Way Of Steering Between The Violence Of Anarchy And The Violence Of Tyranny, With The Least Violence You Can Get Away With.

Knowledge Is A Continuous Fabric, In Which Ideas Are Connected To Other Ideas. Reason-free Zones, In Which People Can Assert Arbitrary Beliefs Safe From Ordinary Standards Of Evaluation, Can Only Corrupt This Fabric, Just As A Contradiction Can Corrupt A System Of Logic, Allowing Falsehoods To Proliferate Through It.

Academics Lack Perspective. In A Debate On Whether The World Is Round, They Would Argue, 'no,' Because It's An Oblate Spheroid. They Suffer From 'the Curse Of Knowledge': The Inability To Imagine What It's Like Not To Know Something That They Know.

There Has To Be Innate Circuitry That Does The Learning, That Creates The Culture, That Acquires The Culture, And That Responds To Socialization.

Consciousness Surely Does Not Depend On Language. Babies, Many Animals, And Patients Robbed Of Speech By Brain Damage Are Not Insensate Robots; They Have Reactions Like Ours That Indicate That Someone's Home.