Quotes by Paul Bloom - Page 3

It is clear that rituals and sacrifices can bring people together, and it may well be that a group that does such things has an advantage over one that does not. But it is not clear why a religion has to be involved. Why are gods, souls, an afterlife, miracles, divine creation of the universe, and so on brought in?
Paul Bloom / Professor
Advantage
Afterlife
Creation
Divine
Involved
Universe
Religion Together People
Brought
Group
Rituals
Miracles
Sacrifices
Souls
Such Things
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You'd expect, as good Darwinian creatures, we would evolve to be fascinated with how the world really is, and we would use language to convey real-world information, we'd be obsessed with knowing the way things are, and we would entirely reject stories that aren't true. They're useless. But that's not the way we work.
Paul Bloom / Professor
Evolve
Fascinated
Information
Useless
Work Good World
Convey
Darwinian
Entirely
Expect
Reject
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Maybe one of the most heartening findings from the psychology of pleasure is there's more to looking good than your physical appearance. If you like somebody, they look better to you. This is why spouses in happy marriages tend to think that their husband or wife looks much better than anyone else thinks that they do.
Paul Bloom / Professor
Happy
Appearance
Husband
Looking Good
Physical Appearance
Pleasure
Psychology
Good Wife Your
Looking
Somebody
Anyone
Anyone Else
Marriages
Maybe
Physical
Spouses
Tend
Thinks
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Some of the natural world is appealing, some of it is terrifying, and some of it grosses us out. Modern people don't want to be dropped naked into a swamp. We want to tour Yosemite with our water bottles and G.P.S. devices. The natural world is a source of happiness and fulfillment, but only when prescribed in the right doses.
Paul Bloom / Professor
Bottles
Devices
Fulfillment
Gross
Modern
Naked
Natural
Natural World
Water
Yosemite
Happiness World People
Appealing
Doses
Dropped
Terrifying
Prescribed
Swamp
Tour
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I want to convince you that humans are, to some extent, natural born essentialists. What I mean by this is we don't just respond to things as we see them or feel them or hear them. Rather, our response is conditioned on our beliefs, about what they really are, what they came from, what they're made of, what their hidden nature is.
Paul Bloom / Professor
Convince
Humans
Natural
Beliefs
Conditioned
Respond
Extent
Hidden
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My brother is severely autistic, so when I was a kid I spent a lot of time as a teenager in camps and programs for autistic kids. When I went to McGill as an undergraduate, I figured I'd be a therapist working with these kids. The truth is, and I knew this even back then, I'm just not good at this. I'm too empathic to do this sort of thing.
Paul Bloom / Professor
Kids
Brother
Teenager
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I think there's some evidence that when it comes to being a doctor or nurse, a police officer or therapist, that empathetic engagement leads to burn-out. Imagine if you're dealing with severely ill children, and you felt their pain all the time, and the pain of their parents - you wouldn't be able to do that job for very long. It would kill you.
Paul Bloom / Professor
Jobs
Children
Pain
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For the most part, people use "empathy" to mean everything good. For instance, many medical schools have courses in empathy. But if you look at what they mean, they just want medical students to be nicer to their patients, to listen to them, to respect them, to understand them. What's not to like? If they were really teaching empathy, then I'd say there is a world of problems there.
Paul Bloom / Professor
Mean
School
Teaching
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My book is going to be called Against Empathy, which may give you a feeling for where my argument is going to go. Whenever I talk about this, I have to begin in the most boring of all possible ways: by defining my terms. By "empathy," some people mean everything that is good - compassion, kindness, warmth, love, being a mensch, changing the world - and I'm for all of those things. I'm not a monster.
Paul Bloom / Professor
Kindness
Book
Mean
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I think we're going to care more about Americans than Africans. I don't think that's ever going to go away, and I don't think it's ever going to go away that people care more about their families than strangers, and their communities over other communities. But I think it would transform the world in such a good way if we could just acknowledge, at least intellectually, that an African life and an American life are the same.
Paul Bloom / Professor
Community
People
Thinking
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When people want to inspire you to turn against some group of people, they'll often use empathy. When Obama wanted to bomb Syria, he drew our attention to the victims of chemical warfare. And in both of the Iraq wars, politicians said, "Look at the horrific things that are happening." I'm not a pacifist. I think the suffering of innocent people can be a catalyst for moral action. But empathy puts too much weight on the scale in favor of war. Empathy can really lead to violence.
Paul Bloom / Professor
War
People
Thinking
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