Your brain does not exist to do what is “right”. Your brain does not exist to make the world a better place. Your brain does not exist to make your experience meaningful, or pleasant, or pain-free.

The sad reality is that your brain exists to maximise the reproductive success of your ancestors. We do not have higher ethics because of our brains, but in spite of them.

Many things which are ethically right require great willpower to achieve, because they’re the same things which were reproductively wrong for our ancestors. Jealousy, indifference to suffering, selfishness; these are all great evolutionary strategies, and yet they are terrible ethical ones.

I dream of a day when we can overcome our neurobiology and become better people.