0:00:00.644,0:00:03.172
When we think about prejudice and bias,

0:00:03.172,0:00:05.366
we tend to think about stupid and evil people

0:00:05.366,0:00:08.010
doing stupid and evil things.

0:00:08.010,0:00:10.079
And this idea is nicely summarized

0:00:10.079,0:00:12.318
by the British critic William Hazlitt,

0:00:12.318,0:00:15.603
who wrote, "Prejudice is the child of ignorance."

0:00:15.603,0:00:17.425
I want to try to convince you here

0:00:17.425,0:00:19.360
that this is mistaken.

0:00:19.360,0:00:20.912
I want to try to convince you

0:00:20.912,0:00:22.735
that prejudice and bias

0:00:22.735,0:00:25.783
are natural, they're often rational,

0:00:25.783,0:00:27.774
and they're often even moral,

0:00:27.774,0:00:29.866
and I think that once we understand this,

0:00:29.866,0:00:32.375
we're in a better position to make sense of them

0:00:32.375,0:00:33.522
when they go wrong,

0:00:33.522,0:00:35.041
when they have horrible consequences,

0:00:35.041,0:00:37.605
and we're in a better position to know what to do

0:00:37.605,0:00:39.417
when this happens.

0:00:39.417,0:00:42.184
So start with stereotypes. You look at me,

0:00:42.184,0:00:44.660
you know my name, you[br]know certain facts about me,

0:00:44.660,0:00:46.369
and you could make certain judgments.

0:00:46.369,0:00:49.282
You could make guesses about my ethnicity,

0:00:49.282,0:00:52.663
my political affiliation, my religious beliefs.

0:00:52.663,0:00:54.542
And the thing is, these[br]judgments tend to be accurate.

0:00:54.542,0:00:56.724
We're very good at this sort of thing.

0:00:56.724,0:00:58.367
And we're very good at this sort of thing

0:00:58.367,0:01:01.010
because our ability to stereotype people

0:01:01.010,0:01:04.195
is not some sort of arbitrary quirk of the mind,

0:01:04.195,0:01:06.511
but rather it's a specific instance

0:01:06.511,0:01:08.256
of a more general process,

0:01:08.256,0:01:09.785
which is that we have experience

0:01:09.785,0:01:11.326
with things and people in the world

0:01:11.326,0:01:12.665
that fall into categories,

0:01:12.665,0:01:15.241
and we can use our experience[br]to make generalizations

0:01:15.241,0:01:17.390
about novel instances of these categories.

0:01:17.390,0:01:19.877
So everybody here has a lot of experience

0:01:19.877,0:01:22.069
with chairs and apples and dogs,

0:01:22.069,0:01:23.646
and based on this, you could see

0:01:23.646,0:01:26.198
unfamiliar examples and you could guess,

0:01:26.198,0:01:27.314
you could sit on the chair,

0:01:27.314,0:01:30.119
you could eat the apple, the dog will bark.

0:01:30.119,0:01:31.863
Now we might be wrong.

0:01:31.863,0:01:33.843
The chair could collapse if you sit on it,

0:01:33.843,0:01:35.735
the apple might be poison, the dog might not bark,

0:01:35.735,0:01:38.885
and in fact, this is my dog Tessie, who doesn't bark.

0:01:38.885,0:01:41.494
But for the most part, we're good at this.

0:01:41.494,0:01:43.092
For the most part, we make good guesses

0:01:43.092,0:01:45.184
both in the social domain and the non-social domain,

0:01:45.184,0:01:46.973
and if we weren't able to do so,

0:01:46.973,0:01:50.189
if we weren't able to make guesses about[br]new instances that we encounter,

0:01:50.189,0:01:51.820
we wouldn't survive.

0:01:51.820,0:01:54.509
And in fact, Hazlitt later on in his wonderful essay

0:01:54.509,0:01:55.994
concedes this.

0:01:55.994,0:01:58.536
He writes, "Without the aid of prejudice and custom,

0:01:58.536,0:02:00.876
I should not be able to find[br]my way my across the room;

0:02:00.876,0:02:03.328
nor know how to conduct[br]myself in any circumstances,

0:02:03.328,0:02:07.531
nor what to feel in any relation of life."

0:02:07.531,0:02:09.140
Or take bias.

0:02:09.140,0:02:10.748
Now sometimes, we break the world up into

0:02:10.748,0:02:13.749
us versus them, into in group versus out group,

0:02:13.749,0:02:15.005
and sometimes when we do this,

0:02:15.005,0:02:16.467
we know we're doing something wrong,

0:02:16.467,0:02:18.076
and we're kind of ashamed of it.

0:02:18.076,0:02:19.853
But other times we're proud of it.

0:02:19.853,0:02:21.766
We openly acknowledge it.

0:02:21.766,0:02:23.388
And my favorite example of this

0:02:23.388,0:02:25.050
is a question that came from the audience

0:02:25.050,0:02:28.157
in a Republican debate prior to the last election.

0:02:28.157,0:02:30.259
(Video) Anderson Cooper: Gets to your question,

0:02:30.259,0:02:34.600
the question in the hall, on foreign aid? Yes, ma'am.

0:02:34.600,0:02:36.546
Woman: The American people are suffering

0:02:36.546,0:02:39.403
in our country right now.

0:02:39.403,0:02:42.531
Why do we continue to send foreign aid

0:02:42.531,0:02:43.937
to other countries

0:02:43.937,0:02:48.065
when we need all the help we can get for ourselves?

0:02:48.065,0:02:49.775
AC: Governor Perry, what about that?

0:02:49.775,0:02:51.372
(Applause)

0:02:51.372,0:02:53.190
Rick Perry: Absolutely, I think it's—

0:02:53.190,0:02:55.051
Paul Bloom: Each of the people onstage

0:02:55.051,0:02:57.221
agreed with the premise of her question,

0:02:57.221,0:02:59.044
which is as Americans, we should care more

0:02:59.044,0:03:01.226
about Americans than about other people.

0:03:01.226,0:03:04.091
And in fact, in general, people are often swayed

0:03:04.091,0:03:07.739
by feelings of solidarity, loyalty, pride, patriotism,

0:03:07.739,0:03:10.315
towards their country or towards their ethnic group.

0:03:10.315,0:03:13.600
Regardless of your politics, many[br]people feel proud to be American,

0:03:13.600,0:03:15.422
and they favor Americans over other countries.

0:03:15.422,0:03:18.312
Residents of other countries[br]feel the same about their nation,

0:03:18.312,0:03:20.798
and we feel the same about our ethnicities.

0:03:20.798,0:03:22.612
Now some of you may reject this.

0:03:22.612,0:03:24.443
Some of you may be so cosmopolitan

0:03:24.443,0:03:26.547
that you think that ethnicity and nationality

0:03:26.547,0:03:29.067
should have no moral sway.

0:03:29.067,0:03:31.462
But even you sophisticates accept

0:03:31.462,0:03:33.296
that there should be some pull

0:03:33.296,0:03:36.277
towards the in group in the[br]domain of friends and family,

0:03:36.277,0:03:37.908
of people you're close to,

0:03:37.908,0:03:39.629
and so even you make a distinction

0:03:39.629,0:03:41.294
between us versus them.

0:03:41.294,0:03:43.747
Now this distinction is natural enough

0:03:43.747,0:03:46.671
and often moral enough, but it can go awry,

0:03:46.671,0:03:48.021
and this was part of the research

0:03:48.021,0:03:50.969
of the great social psychologist Henri Tajfel.

0:03:50.969,0:03:53.904
Tajfel was born in Poland in 1919.

0:03:53.904,0:03:55.873
He left to go to university in France,

0:03:55.873,0:03:58.438
because as a Jew, he couldn't[br]go to university in Poland,

0:03:58.438,0:04:00.778
and then he enlisted in the French military

0:04:00.778,0:04:02.431
in World War II.

0:04:02.431,0:04:04.074
He was captured and ended up

0:04:04.074,0:04:05.761
in a prisoner of war camp,

0:04:05.761,0:04:07.628
and it was a terrifying time for him,

0:04:07.628,0:04:09.316
because if it was discovered he was a Jew,

0:04:09.316,0:04:11.408
he could have been moved to a concentration camp,

0:04:11.408,0:04:13.400
where he most likely would not have survived.

0:04:13.400,0:04:15.987
And in fact, when the war[br]ended and he was released,

0:04:15.987,0:04:18.732
most of his friends and family were dead.

0:04:18.732,0:04:20.329
He got involved in different pursuits.

0:04:20.329,0:04:22.016
He helped out the war orphans.

0:04:22.016,0:04:23.591
But he had a long-lasting interest

0:04:23.591,0:04:25.316
in the science of prejudice,

0:04:25.316,0:04:27.506
and so when a prestigious British scholarship

0:04:27.506,0:04:29.891
on stereotypes opened up, he applied for it,

0:04:29.891,0:04:31.488
and he won it,

0:04:31.488,0:04:33.188
and then he began this amazing career.

0:04:33.188,0:04:35.937
And what started his career is an insight

0:04:35.937,0:04:37.777
that the way most people were thinking

0:04:37.777,0:04:39.893
about the Holocaust was wrong.

0:04:39.893,0:04:42.299
Many people, most people at the time,

0:04:42.299,0:04:44.200
viewed the Holocaust as sort of representing

0:04:44.200,0:04:47.204
some tragic flaw on the part of the Germans,

0:04:47.204,0:04:51.208
some genetic taint, some authoritarian personality.

0:04:51.208,0:04:53.256
And Tajfel rejected this.

0:04:53.256,0:04:55.739
Tajfel said what we see in the Holocaust

0:04:55.739,0:04:57.740
is just an exaggeration

0:04:57.740,0:04:59.888
of normal psychological processes

0:04:59.888,0:05:01.699
that exist in every one of us.

0:05:01.699,0:05:04.174
And to explore this, he did a series of classic studies

0:05:04.174,0:05:05.918
with British adolescents.

0:05:05.918,0:05:07.797
And in one of his studies, what he did was he asked

0:05:07.797,0:05:09.709
the British adolescents all sorts of questions,

0:05:09.709,0:05:11.903
and then based on their answers, he said,

0:05:11.903,0:05:14.096
"I've looked at your answers,[br]and based on the answers,

0:05:14.096,0:05:16.357
I have determined that you are either"

0:05:16.357,0:05:17.943
— he told half of them —

0:05:17.943,0:05:20.320
"a Kandinsky lover, you love the work of Kandinsky,

0:05:20.320,0:05:23.478
or a Klee lover, you love the work of Klee."

0:05:23.478,0:05:25.244
It was entirely bogus.

0:05:25.244,0:05:27.404
Their answers had nothing[br]to do with Kandinsky or Klee.

0:05:27.404,0:05:30.132
They probably hadn't heard of the artists.

0:05:30.132,0:05:32.872
He just arbitrarily divided them up.

0:05:32.872,0:05:36.143
But what he found was, these categories mattered,

0:05:36.143,0:05:38.654
so when he later gave the subjects money,

0:05:38.654,0:05:40.330
they would prefer to give the money

0:05:40.330,0:05:42.130
to members of their own group

0:05:42.130,0:05:43.963
than members of the other group.

0:05:43.963,0:05:46.530
Worse, they were actually most interested

0:05:46.530,0:05:48.296
in establishing a difference

0:05:48.296,0:05:50.862
between their group and other groups,

0:05:50.862,0:05:53.033
so they would give up money for their own group

0:05:53.033,0:05:58.318
if by doing so they could give[br]the other group even less.

0:05:58.318,0:06:00.436
This bias seems to show up very early.

0:06:00.436,0:06:02.686
So my colleague and wife Karen Wynn at Yale

0:06:02.686,0:06:04.497
has done a series of studies with babies

0:06:04.497,0:06:07.129
where she exposes babies to puppets,

0:06:07.129,0:06:09.244
and the puppets have certain food preferences.

0:06:09.244,0:06:11.426
So one of the puppets might like green beans.

0:06:11.426,0:06:13.641
The other puppet might like graham crackers.

0:06:13.641,0:06:16.037
They test the babies own food preferences,

0:06:16.037,0:06:19.051
and babies typically prefer the graham crackers.

0:06:19.051,0:06:21.672
But the question is, does this matter to babies

0:06:21.672,0:06:24.788
in how they treat the puppets? And it matters a lot.

0:06:24.788,0:06:26.307
They tend to prefer the puppet

0:06:26.307,0:06:29.786
who has the same food tastes that they have,

0:06:29.786,0:06:32.342
and worse, they actually prefer puppets

0:06:32.342,0:06:35.327
who punish the puppet with the different food taste.

0:06:35.327,0:06:37.884
(Laughter)

0:06:37.884,0:06:41.356
We see the sort of in group out[br]group psychology all the time.

0:06:41.356,0:06:43.044
We see it in political clashes

0:06:43.044,0:06:45.294
within groups with different ideologies.

0:06:45.294,0:06:49.074
We see it in its extreme in cases of war,

0:06:49.074,0:06:51.987
where the out group isn't merely given less,

0:06:51.987,0:06:54.015
but dehumanized,

0:06:54.015,0:06:56.225
as in the Nazi perspective of Jews

0:06:56.225,0:06:58.036
as vermin or lice,

0:06:58.036,0:07:02.446
or the American perspective of Japanese as rats.

0:07:02.446,0:07:04.750
Stereotypes can also go awry.

0:07:04.750,0:07:06.901
So often they're rational and useful,

0:07:06.901,0:07:08.465
but sometimes they're irrational,

0:07:08.465,0:07:09.691
they give the wrong answers,

0:07:09.691,0:07:10.838
and other times

0:07:10.838,0:07:13.133
they lead to plainly immoral consequences.

0:07:13.133,0:07:15.781
And the case that's been most studied

0:07:15.781,0:07:17.588
is the case of race.

0:07:17.588,0:07:19.185
There was a fascinating study

0:07:19.185,0:07:20.929
prior to the 2008 election

0:07:20.929,0:07:24.315
where social psychologists looked at the extent

0:07:24.315,0:07:27.487
to which the candidates were[br]associated with America,

0:07:27.487,0:07:30.682
as in an unconscious association[br]with the American flag.

0:07:30.682,0:07:32.358
And in one of their studies they compared

0:07:32.358,0:07:34.372
Obama and McCain, and they found McCain

0:07:34.372,0:07:37.926
is more thought of as more American than Obama,

0:07:37.926,0:07:39.659
and to some extent, people aren't that surprised

0:07:39.659,0:07:41.177
by hearing that.

0:07:41.177,0:07:42.797
McCain is a celebrated war hero,

0:07:42.797,0:07:44.406
and many people would explicitly say

0:07:44.406,0:07:47.156
he has more of an American story than Obama.

0:07:47.156,0:07:48.793
But they also compared Obama

0:07:48.793,0:07:51.349
to British Prime Minister Tony Blair,

0:07:51.349,0:07:53.330
and they found that Blair was also thought of

0:07:53.330,0:07:56.077
as more American than Obama,

0:07:56.077,0:07:58.035
even though subjects explicitly understood

0:07:58.035,0:08:01.030
that he's not American at all.

0:08:01.030,0:08:02.534
But they were responding, of course,

0:08:02.534,0:08:05.655
to the color of his skin.

0:08:05.655,0:08:07.706
These stereotypes and biases

0:08:07.706,0:08:09.366
have real-world consequences,

0:08:09.366,0:08:11.828
both subtle and very important.

0:08:11.828,0:08:14.650
In one recent study, researchers

0:08:14.650,0:08:17.719
put ads on eBay for the sale of baseball cards.

0:08:17.719,0:08:20.143
Some of them were held by white hands,

0:08:20.143,0:08:21.751
others by black hands.

0:08:21.751,0:08:23.360
They were the same baseball cards.

0:08:23.360,0:08:24.744
The ones held by black hands

0:08:24.744,0:08:26.521
got substantially smaller bids

0:08:26.521,0:08:29.345
than the ones held by white hands.

0:08:29.345,0:08:31.677
In research done at Stanford,

0:08:31.677,0:08:35.597
psychologists explored the case of people

0:08:35.597,0:08:39.346
sentenced for the murder of a white person.

0:08:39.346,0:08:42.009
It turns out, holding everything else constant,

0:08:42.009,0:08:44.720
you are considerably more likely to be executed

0:08:44.720,0:08:46.317
if you look like the man on the right

0:08:46.317,0:08:48.073
than the man on the left,

0:08:48.073,0:08:50.119
and this is in large part because

0:08:50.119,0:08:52.943
the man on the right looks more prototypically black,

0:08:52.943,0:08:55.283
more prototypically African-American,

0:08:55.283,0:08:57.332
and this apparently influences people's decisions

0:08:57.332,0:08:59.423
over what to do about him.

0:08:59.423,0:09:01.076
So now that we know about this,

0:09:01.076,0:09:02.707
how do we combat it?

0:09:02.707,0:09:04.429
And there are different avenues.

0:09:04.429,0:09:05.943
One avenue is to appeal

0:09:05.943,0:09:07.749
to people's emotional responses,

0:09:07.749,0:09:09.542
to appeal to people's empathy,

0:09:09.542,0:09:11.905
and we often do that through stories.

0:09:11.905,0:09:13.980
So if you are a liberal parent

0:09:13.980,0:09:16.112
and you want to encourage your children

0:09:16.112,0:09:18.226
to believe in the merits of non-traditional families,

0:09:18.226,0:09:20.499
you might give them a book like this.

0:09:20.499,0:09:22.355
If you are conservative and have a different attitude,

0:09:22.355,0:09:24.506
you might give them a book like this.

0:09:24.506,0:09:26.205
(Laughter)

0:09:26.205,0:09:29.501
But in general, stories can turn

0:09:29.501,0:09:31.773
anonymous strangers into people who matter,

0:09:31.773,0:09:34.318
and the idea that we care about people

0:09:34.318,0:09:36.016
when we focus on them as individuals

0:09:36.016,0:09:38.459
is an idea which has shown up across history.

0:09:38.459,0:09:40.752
So Stalin apocryphally said,

0:09:40.752,0:09:42.339
"A single death is a tragedy,

0:09:42.339,0:09:44.599
a million deaths is a statistic,"

0:09:44.599,0:09:46.028
and Mother Theresa said,

0:09:46.028,0:09:47.581
"If I look at the mass, I will never act.

0:09:47.581,0:09:49.876
If I look at the one, I will."

0:09:49.876,0:09:51.766
Psychologists have explored this.

0:09:51.766,0:09:53.487
For instance, in one study,

0:09:53.487,0:09:56.018
people were given a list of facts about a crisis,

0:09:56.018,0:10:00.386
and it was seen how much they would donate

0:10:00.386,0:10:02.026
to solve this crisis,

0:10:02.026,0:10:03.837
and another group was given no facts at all

0:10:03.837,0:10:05.625
but they were told of an individual

0:10:05.625,0:10:08.495
and given a name and given a face,

0:10:08.495,0:10:11.734
and it turns out that they gave far more.

0:10:11.734,0:10:13.365
None of this I think is a secret

0:10:13.365,0:10:15.716
to the people who are engaged in charity work.

0:10:15.716,0:10:18.154
People don't tend to deluge people

0:10:18.154,0:10:19.687
with facts and statistics.

0:10:19.687,0:10:21.329
Rather, you show them faces,

0:10:21.329,0:10:22.825
you show them people.

0:10:22.825,0:10:25.212
It's possible that by extending our sympathies

0:10:25.212,0:10:27.393
to an individual, they can spread

0:10:27.393,0:10:30.431
to the group the individual belongs to.

0:10:30.431,0:10:33.107
This is Harriet Beecher Stowe.

0:10:33.107,0:10:35.076
The story, perhaps apocryphal,

0:10:35.076,0:10:37.214
is that President Lincoln invited her

0:10:37.214,0:10:39.382
to the White House in the middle of the Civil War

0:10:39.382,0:10:41.036
and said to her,

0:10:41.036,0:10:43.690
"So you're the little lady who started this great war."

0:10:43.690,0:10:45.495
And he was talking about "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

0:10:45.495,0:10:47.706
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" is not[br]a great book of philosophy

0:10:47.706,0:10:51.025
or of theology or perhaps not even literature,

0:10:51.025,0:10:53.365
but it does a great job

0:10:53.365,0:10:56.293
of getting people to put themselves in the shoes

0:10:56.293,0:10:58.196
of people they wouldn't otherwise be in the shoes of,

0:10:58.196,0:11:00.798
put themselves in the shoes of slaves.

0:11:00.798,0:11:02.709
And that could well have been a catalyst

0:11:02.709,0:11:04.383
for great social change.

0:11:04.383,0:11:06.475
More recently, looking at America

0:11:06.475,0:11:09.984
in the last several decades,

0:11:09.984,0:11:12.563
there's some who reasonably say[br]that shows like "The Cosby Show"

0:11:12.563,0:11:15.581
radically changed American attitudes[br]towards African-Americans,

0:11:15.581,0:11:18.234
while shows like "Will & Grace" and "Modern Family"

0:11:18.234,0:11:19.887
changed American attitudes

0:11:19.887,0:11:21.597
towards gay men and women.

0:11:21.597,0:11:23.352
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say

0:11:23.352,0:11:26.293
that the major catalyst in America for moral change

0:11:26.293,0:11:29.116
has been a situation comedy.

0:11:29.116,0:11:30.322
But it's not all emotions,

0:11:30.322,0:11:31.738
and I want to end by appealing

0:11:31.738,0:11:34.203
to the power of reason.

0:11:34.203,0:11:35.989
At some point in his wonderful book

0:11:35.989,0:11:37.382
"The Better Angels Of Our Nature,"

0:11:37.382,0:11:39.228
Steven Pinker says, you know,

0:11:39.228,0:11:42.007
the Old Testament says love thy neighbor,

0:11:42.007,0:11:44.752
and the New Testament says love thy enemy,

0:11:44.752,0:11:47.358
but I don't love either one of them, not really,

0:11:47.358,0:11:49.195
but I don't want to kill them.

0:11:49.195,0:11:50.961
I know I have obligations to them,

0:11:50.961,0:11:54.221
but my moral feelings to them, my moral beliefs

0:11:54.221,0:11:55.934
about how I should behave towards them,

0:11:55.934,0:11:57.981
aren't grounded in love.

0:11:57.981,0:12:00.085
What they're grounded in is the[br]understanding of human rights,

0:12:00.085,0:12:02.353
a belief that their life is as valuable to them

0:12:02.353,0:12:04.719
as my life is to me,

0:12:04.719,0:12:06.431
and to support this, he tells a story

0:12:06.431,0:12:08.719
by the great philosopher Adam Smith,

0:12:08.719,0:12:10.345
and I want to tell this story too,

0:12:10.345,0:12:11.941
though I'm going to modify it a little bit

0:12:11.941,0:12:13.449
for modern times.

0:12:13.449,0:12:15.080
So Adam Smith starts by asking you to imagine

0:12:15.080,0:12:17.131
the death of thousands of people,

0:12:17.131,0:12:18.781
and imagine that the thousands of people

0:12:18.781,0:12:21.031
are in a country you are not familiar with.

0:12:21.031,0:12:24.574
It could be China or India or a country in Africa.

0:12:24.574,0:12:26.858
And Smith says, how would you respond?

0:12:26.858,0:12:28.985
And you would say, well that's too bad,

0:12:28.985,0:12:31.371
and you'd go on to the rest of your life.

0:12:31.371,0:12:33.620
If you were to open up The New[br]York Times online or something,

0:12:33.620,0:12:36.420
and discover this, and in fact[br]this happens to us all the time,

0:12:36.420,0:12:38.211
we go about our lives.

0:12:38.211,0:12:40.135
But imagine instead, Smith says,

0:12:40.135,0:12:41.549
you were to learn that tomorrow

0:12:41.549,0:12:44.338
you were to have your little finger chopped off.

0:12:44.338,0:12:46.277
Smith says, that would matter a lot.

0:12:46.277,0:12:47.908
You would not sleep that night

0:12:47.908,0:12:49.291
wondering about that.

0:12:49.291,0:12:51.012
So this raises the question:

0:12:51.012,0:12:53.626
would you sacrifice thousands of lives

0:12:53.626,0:12:55.315
to save your little finger?

0:12:55.315,0:12:57.633
Now answer this in the privacy of your own head,

0:12:57.633,0:13:00.552
but Smith says, absolutely not,

0:13:00.552,0:13:02.374
what a horrid thought.

0:13:02.374,0:13:04.275
And so this raises the question,

0:13:04.275,0:13:05.649
and so, as Smith puts it,

0:13:05.649,0:13:07.867
"When our passive feelings are almost always

0:13:07.867,0:13:09.315
so sordid and so selfish,

0:13:09.315,0:13:11.001
how comes it that our active principles

0:13:11.001,0:13:13.553
should often be so generous and so noble?"

0:13:13.553,0:13:15.363
And Smith's answer is, "It is reason,

0:13:15.363,0:13:17.138
principle, conscience.

0:13:17.138,0:13:18.829
[This] calls to us,

0:13:18.829,0:13:22.104
with a voice capable of astonishing[br]the most presumptuous of our passions,

0:13:22.104,0:13:23.981
that we are but one of the multitude,

0:13:23.981,0:13:26.502
in no respect better than any other in it."

0:13:26.502,0:13:28.437
And this last part is what is often described

0:13:28.437,0:13:31.795
as the principle of impartiality.

0:13:31.795,0:13:34.134
And this principle of impartiality manifests itself

0:13:34.134,0:13:36.231
in all of the world's religions,

0:13:36.231,0:13:38.459
in all of the different versions of the golden rule,

0:13:38.459,0:13:40.663
and in all of the world's moral philosophies,

0:13:40.663,0:13:42.038
which differ in many ways

0:13:42.038,0:13:45.124
but share the presupposition[br]that we should judge morality

0:13:45.124,0:13:48.139
from sort of an impartial point of view.

0:13:48.139,0:13:50.101
The best articulation of this view

0:13:50.101,0:13:52.856
is actually, for me, it's not from[br]a theologian or from a philosopher,

0:13:52.856,0:13:54.433
but from Humphrey Bogart

0:13:54.433,0:13:56.064
at the end of "Casablanca."

0:13:56.064,0:13:59.616
So, spoiler alert, he's telling his lover

0:13:59.616,0:14:01.166
that they have separate

0:14:01.166,0:14:02.809
for the more general good,

0:14:02.809,0:14:04.383
and he says to her, and I won't do the accent,

0:14:04.383,0:14:06.105
but he says to her, "It doesn't take much to see

0:14:06.105,0:14:07.634
that the problems of three little people

0:14:07.634,0:14:10.905
don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

0:14:10.905,0:14:13.945
Our reason could cause us to override our passions.

0:14:13.945,0:14:15.441
Our reason could motivate us

0:14:15.441,0:14:16.982
to extend our empathy,

0:14:16.982,0:14:18.929
could motivate us to write a[br]book like "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"

0:14:18.929,0:14:20.932
or read a book like "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"

0:14:20.932,0:14:23.156
and our reason can motivate us to create

0:14:23.156,0:14:25.308
customs and taboos and laws

0:14:25.308,0:14:27.118
that will constrain us

0:14:27.118,0:14:28.964
from acting upon our impulses

0:14:28.964,0:14:30.493
when, as rational beings, we feel

0:14:30.493,0:14:32.158
we should be constrained.

0:14:32.158,0:14:33.991
This is what a constitution is.

0:14:33.991,0:14:36.712
A constitution is something[br]which was set up in the past

0:14:36.712,0:14:38.289
that applies now in the present,

0:14:38.289,0:14:39.514
and what it says is,

0:14:39.514,0:14:41.231
no matter how much we might to reelect

0:14:41.231,0:14:43.324
a popular president for a third term,

0:14:43.324,0:14:45.929
no matter how much white Americans might choose

0:14:45.929,0:14:49.997
to feel that they want to reinstate[br]the institution of slavery, we can't.

0:14:49.997,0:14:51.673
We have bound ourselves.

0:14:51.673,0:14:54.092
And we bind ourselves in other ways as well.

0:14:54.092,0:14:56.848
We know that when it comes to choosing somebody

0:14:56.848,0:14:59.739
for a job, for an award,

0:14:59.739,0:15:02.417
we are strongly biased by their race,

0:15:02.417,0:15:04.633
we are biased by their gender,

0:15:04.633,0:15:07.638
we are biased by how attractive they are,

0:15:07.638,0:15:09.919
and sometimes we might say,[br]"Well fine, that's the way it should be."

0:15:09.919,0:15:12.226
But other times we might say, "This is wrong."

0:15:12.226,0:15:14.115
And so to combat this,

0:15:14.115,0:15:16.366
we don't just try harder,

0:15:16.366,0:15:19.527
but rather what we do is we set up situations

0:15:19.527,0:15:22.406
where these other sources[br]of information can't bias us,

0:15:22.406,0:15:24.521
which is why many orchestras

0:15:24.521,0:15:26.366
audition musicians behind screens,

0:15:26.366,0:15:28.065
so the only information they have

0:15:28.065,0:15:30.593
is the information they believe should matter.

0:15:30.593,0:15:32.376
I think prejudice and bias

0:15:32.376,0:15:36.090
illustrate a fundamental duality of human nature.

0:15:36.090,0:15:39.836
We have gut feelings, instincts, emotions,

0:15:39.836,0:15:41.837
and they affect our judgments and our actions

0:15:41.837,0:15:44.268
for good and for evil,

0:15:44.268,0:15:47.880
but we are also capable of rational deliberation

0:15:47.880,0:15:49.565
and intelligent planning,

0:15:49.565,0:15:51.862
and we can use these to in some cases

0:15:51.862,0:15:54.155
accelerate and nourish our emotions,

0:15:54.155,0:15:56.813
and in other cases staunch them.

0:15:56.813,0:15:58.497
And it's in this way

0:15:58.497,0:16:00.974
that reason helps us create a better world.

0:16:00.974,0:16:02.918
Thank you.

0:16:02.918,0:16:06.623
(Applause)