“Railing against social media for manipulating our zombie minds is like cursing the wind for blowing down a house we’ve allowed to go to rack and ruin,” manvir singh writes, about what we get wrong in the fight against misinformation. nyer.cm/bWBvEY5

For this week's The New Yorker, I wrote about how psychiatric diagnoses create social identities and offer frameworks for self-understanding, establishing personal stakes in flawed systems like the DSM: newyorker.com/magazine/2024/…

Just as personality tests (see, I’m an introvert!), astrological signs (I’m a Libra!), and generational monikers (I’m Gen Z!) are used to aid self-understanding, so are psychiatric diagnoses, manvir singh writes. nyer.cm/8pqIv5y

Came across this video of a baboon with alopecia while preparing my lecture slides. Fascinating for thinking about how similar yet different human bodies are from those of other primates, particularly monkeys (from the safari guide and photographer Rodger Bowren)

Terms like “slacktivism” and “virtue signalling” betray a distaste for moral posturing, but this behavior may in fact be the hallmark of moral action, Manvir Singh writes. nyer.cm/9nkdQAl

For this week's The New Yorker, I wrote about how evolutionary insights are recasting much of moral behavior as a strategic performance for getting people to like you—and how, realizing this, I've struggled to build a moral framework that doesn't feel like self-interest in disguise.