Page 89:
"In describing the different forms of morality available to us, Haidt (a scientist and skeptic) offers a choice between "contractual" and "beehive" approaches; the first is said to be the province of liberals, who care mainly about harm and fairness; the second represents the conservative (generally religious) social order, which incorporates further concerns about group loyalty, respect for authority, and religious purity."
Page 90:
"There is also a question of whether conservatism contains an extra measure of cognitive bias----or outright hypocrisy----as the moral convictions of social conservatives are so regularly belied by their louche behavior. The most conservative regions of the U.S. tend to have the highest rates of divorce and teenage pregnancy, as well as the greatest appetite for pornography. Of course, it could be argued that social conservatism is the consequence of so much ambient sinning. But this seems an unlikely explanation----especially in those cases where a high level of conservative moralism and a predilection for sin can be found in a single person. If one wants examples of such hypocrisy, Evangelical ministers and conservative politicians seem to rarely disappoint."
Page 123:
"There are some things that we are just naturally bad at. And the mistakes people tend to make across a wide range of reasoning tasks are not mere errors: they are systematic errors that are strongly associated both within and across tasks. As one might expect, many of these errors decrease as cognitive ability increases. We also know that training, using both examples and formal rules, mitigates many of these problems and can improve a person's thinking."
"Reasoning errors aside, we know that people often acquire their beliefs about the world for reasons that are more emotional and social than strictly cognitive. Wishful thinking, self-serving bias, in-group loyalties, and frank self-deception can lead to monstrous departures from the norms of rationality. Most beliefs are evaluated against a backdrop of other beliefs and often in the context of an ideology that a person shares with others. Consequently, people are rarely as open to revising their views as reason would seem to dictate."
"On this front, the internet has simultaneously enabled two opposing influences on belief: On the one hand, it has reduced intellectual isolation by making it more difficult for people to remain ignorant of the diversity of opinion on any given subject. But it has also allowed bad ideas to flourish---as anyone with a computer and too much time on his hands can broadcast his point of view and, often enough, find an audience. So while knowledge is increasingly open-source, ignorance is, too."
"It is also true that the less competent a person is in a given domain, the more he will tend to overestimate his abilities. This often produces an ugly marriage of confidence and ignorance that is very difficult to correct for. Conversely, those who are more knowledgeable about a subject tend to be acutely aware of the greater expertise of others."
All above text was taken from Sam Harris', "The Moral Landscape".
