A biography for Keith Hensonhasn’t been written yet.
“High status males had multiple wives or additional mating opportunities in the ancestral environment.”
“I much prefer the modern world.”
“Primates will continue to play social games without the least insight into what is killing them.”
“Brigham Young had 47 children, and over 50 women as wives.”
“If anyone wonders why the airlines are not doing well it is because flying has been made such an unpleasant and degrading experience.”
“Successful cult memes induce intense social interaction behaviour between cult members. This trips the attention detectors.”
“Even small cults are a serious cost on the world economy, to victims, their families, employers, friends, and credit-card companies.”
“Lie detection is like language; there is a learning window. Telling whoppers to small children seems to be a family tradition in many families.”
“I can't think of anyone who is up on evolutionary psychology and related areas who is deluded enough to be called a utopian.”
“Some people recovering from drugs or alcohol stay with the programs indefinitely, making the recovery program their family, a long-term source of attention rewards.”
“People repeat behaviour that leads to flooding their brains with pleasurable chemicals. The short-term reward loop acts over hours to years, and the long-term reproductive success loop over generations.”
“Most of the suicide hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, a place not lacking in wealth. But due to rapid population growth, the wealth per capita has fallen by about half in a generation.”
“Anyone who has ever had the feeling of being higher than a kite after giving a public speech is well aware of the effects of attention.”
“Cults, or related social movements such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, result in massive military expenses.”
“People can undergo a sudden change of thinking and loyalties under threat of death or intense social pressure and isolation from friends and family.”
“The rare person is still interested in new advances when they are adults. There is possibly a correlation with intelligence. In any case, you have to be fairly bright to keep learning and changing attitudes as you get older.”
“I suspect that a substantial fraction of human problems in the world today, not just cults, result from the mismatch between the current environment and the environment in which we evolved.”
“As for leadership, I am the kind who leads reluctantly and more by example than anything else. Someone had to be on the incorporation papers as president.”
“Could people be trained to be less gullible? Or are you as stuck with gullibility as you are with skin colour?”
“Fighting hard to protect yourself and your relatives is good for your genes, but when captured and escape is not possible, giving up short of dying and making the best you can of the new situation is also good for your genes.”