Fiction Is Empathy Technology.

Commerce, Trade And Exchange Make Other People More Valuable Alive Than Dead, And Mean That People Try To Anticipate What The Other Guy Needs And Wants. It Engages The Mechanisms Of Reciprocal Altruism, As The Evolutionary Biologists Call It, As Opposed To Raw Dominance.

As An Experimental Psychologist, I Have Been Trained Not To Believe Anything Unless It Can Be Demonstrated In The Laboratory On Rats Or Sophomores.

All Our Behaviours Are A Result Of Neurophysiological Activity In The Brain. There Is No Reason To Believe There Is Any Magic Going On.

A Decent Government With An Effective, But Not Gratuitously Violent, Police Force And A Fair Court System Are Essential. This Deters And Incapacitates Psychopaths, Bullies And Hotheads - And If It Earns The Confidence Of The People, They Don't Have To Become Violent In Self-defence.

The Typical Imperative From Biology Is Not "thou Shalt... ," But "if ... Then ... Else.