Stencilled graffiti in Oxford, England, as photographed by Spork in 2004.
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Stencilled graffiti in Oxford, England, as photographed by Spork in 2004.
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Nicholas Kristof (NY Times): When Our Brains Short-Circuit
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[W]e respond to threats that we deem disgusting or immoral — characteristics more associated with sex, betrayal or spoiled food than with atmospheric chemistry.
“That’s why people are incensed about flag burning, or about what kind of sex people have in private, even though that doesn’t really affect the rest of us,” Professor Gilbert said. “Yet where we have a real threat to our well-being, like global warming, it doesn’t ring alarm bells.”
” —Nicholas Kristof attributes irrational political judgments to the way evolution shaped the human brain. Spork enjoys reading about research in decision making but she is less inclined to forgive people for their bad judgments on the grounds that their brains are designed to solve yesterday’s problems. If that were the case, no one would care about climate change and other slow, long-term dangers, whereas in fact the people who don’t worry about such things are those old enough, rich enough, and geographically well-placed enough that they will do fine even if three quarters of the world is melted, drowned, or starved.
Of course, selfishness is also a built-in trait of all species evolved through natural selection… This is why Spork dislikes evolutionary explanations; it is possible to find a plausible evolutionary justification for any observable fact about human nature. This is because if we have a particular trait, it must (by definition) have been favored by natural selection, or at least not have been eliminated by it (in the case of random mutations). Thus such explanations are tautological and basically empty.
The three photos used to make Spork’s postcard, along with rude graffiti (four feet high) which was adjacent to the sign about collars. It was so dark when Spork took the sign and graffiti picture that Spork did not realize that the graffiti depicts a body part until she saw the photo at home.