{"id":1732,"date":"2014-02-14T11:52:39","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T11:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/?p=1732"},"modified":"2014-02-14T11:52:39","modified_gmt":"2014-02-14T11:52:39","slug":"the-moral-molecule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/2014\/02\/14\/the-moral-molecule\/","title":{"rendered":"The moral molecule"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>My reading is a bit non-linear at the moment &#8211; I&#8217;ll eventually get back to the series on Brian Greene&#8217;s multiverse book&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>One of the stand out books for me in the last few months is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-Moral-Molecule-Source-Prosperity\/dp\/B00B9ZE6QO\">The Moral Molecule<\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paul_J._Zak\">Paul Zak<\/a>. \u00a0The central thesis of the book is that our intuitive sense of morality is largely governed by a molecule known as <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Oxytocin\">oxytocin<\/a>. \u00a0Why do we do &#8220;good&#8221; things even when we could probably get away with being mean but making more cash? \u00a0Oxytocin. \u00a0It seems that oxytocin is the answer to a bunch more interesting questions. \u00a0I thoroughly recommend the book &#8211; one of the most engaging volumes I&#8217;ve read in a while. \u00a0One day I might write a more detailed review. \u00a0But for now, here&#8217;s a TED talk given by Zak, which covers some of the themes of the book:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Paul Zak: Trust, morality - and oxytocin\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rFAdlU2ETjU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s Zak&#8217;s website: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moralmolecule.com\/\">The moral molecule<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; My reading is a bit non-linear at the moment &#8211; I&#8217;ll eventually get back to the series on Brian&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[214,162,163],"class_list":["post-1732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-morality","tag-morality","tag-paul-zak","tag-the-moral-molecule"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}