What did Rob Kurzban say about the human appetite for moral condemnation?

Rob Kurzban called moral condemnation his least favourite system and compared it to hunger for fat and sugar. Joining a mob against someone once paid off, he argued, by drawing attention away from yourself, removing a competitor and putting you on the bigger side. Social media lets people indulge that appetite constantly. Kurzban described each attack as moral roulette, citing a Free Press report about a man who was doxxed and threatened after being wrongly served papers in a Cornell case.

• Chris Williamson played a clip of a protester mistaken for the journalist Andy Ngo.
• Kurzban argued the same appetite discourages research on touchy topics such as sex and race.

▸In their words

“So humans have an appetite for morally condemning other people.” Rob Kurzban · at 1:04:24 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Modern Wisdom (2026-10-29). Read the whole episode summary →

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