Principle #1: Avoid Dangerous People And Dangerous

Everything We Do Is For The Purpose Of Altering Consciousness. We Form Friendships So That We Can Feel Certain Emotions, Like Love, And Avoid Others, Like Loneliness. We Eat Specific Foods To Enjoy Their Fleeting Presence On Our Tongues. We Read For The Pleasure Of Thinking Another Person's Thoughts.

The Moral Landscape Is The Framework I Use For Thinking About Questions Of Morality And Human Values In Universal Terms.

A Person Who Believes That Elvis Is Still Alive Is Very Unlikely To Get Promoted To A Position Of Great Power And Responsibility In Our Society. Neither Will A Person Who Believes That The Holocaust Was A Hoax. But People Who Believe Equally Irrational Things About God And The Bible Are Now Running Our Country. This Is Genuinely Terrifying.

To Say That I Would Have Done Otherwise Had I Wanted To Is Simply To Say That I Would Have Lived In A Different Universe Had I Been In A Different Universe.

The Problem With Religion, Because It's Been Sheltered From Criticism, Is That It Allows People To Believe En Masse What Only Idiots Or Lunatics Could Believe In Isolation.