Catherine Page Harden

So is risk-taking always a bad thing?

Is lack of conformity to society's norms always a bad thing?

Absolutely not.

I think America is a real Wild West right now in terms of lack of regulation, but also just lack of democratic participation and debate about how do we want to use this technology and how do we not want to use this technology.

And I don't think it should be one person or one company's vision for how this technology is deployed.

I was having this conversation with a friend of mine, and she said, well, wouldn't everyone, if they had the chance, select their child to be, you know, the least likely to be addicted to drugs, the least likely to have ADHD?

And I said to her, didn't you have a child with a fighter pilot?

Like, you—

mated with someone whose entire job depends on taking risks and the ability to manage those sensations, even at the real negative physical consequences of crashing this plane into the ocean.

So I think we have this idea that less risk-taking is always good, but our behaviors often belie that statement.

There's no evolution without mutation, and there's no dynamism in a society without deviation from those norms.

I mean, I've loved being in London this week, in part because you walk down the street and you see such variety, and variety really is necessary to human flourishing.

I think the evidence shows that our intuitions are wildly all over the place, depending on the person, depending on the person that's being judged and depending on the crime.

So sometimes genes tend to have a humanizing effect or a mitigating effect.

And that happens when...

There's this idea that there's a person, and then the genes are constraining that person's agency in some way.

My genes made me do it.

I couldn't have done otherwise.

That's a more determinist story about genes.

But it's very easy to slip into a more essentialist framing of genes, which really sees the genes as a reflection of who a person really is.