A dog’s core motivations are hardwired into it by its software. The software is the real animal trainer, using a variety of chemical treats and chemical electroshocks to steer the animal to its genes’ liking.

But today, I want to argue for the rationality of taking the leap.

Spirituality has often been neglected by both the non-religious—because they group it, unfairly, into the “not for me” pile as part of their rejection of religion—and by the religious—because they rely on their religion for spiritual growth, and religions aren’t typically focused on the types of spirituality we’ve been discussing.

Ideas are the software that run on the hardware of our minds, and reflection is the only tool we have to reliably maintain and update it.

There are classic “Us > Them” traits, like our respect for loyalty—the feeling that being loyal is a critical virtue and nothing is worse than being a traitor.

Moochie never comes when the Johnsons call him, and whenever they open the front door, Moochie jumps out the door and runs away.

That steep descent to zero is what I call The Nothingness of Money. It’s when the pointlessness of money is no longer theoretical; it’s truly understood . This delineation is important.It is only when the finiteness of life is glaringly obvious that things change.

And that's why smart people's lives are worst between, say, the ages of eleven and seventeen. Life at that age revolves far more around popularity than before or after.

Well, if you take those same thousand people making the smartphone above and direct their attention to building a nuclear weapon instead, the story shifts quite dramatically.