Stephen Dubner

Yeah, I mean, I have four if you need one.

Older sisters are great.

Anyway, wantedness is good.

Unwantedness is bad.

The odds are if a baby is born into a home where that baby is not wanted, there is a higher chance that that kid will have a bad outcome in life.

When I say bad outcome, meaning lower education, higher crime, lower income, etc.

This is...

inarguable.

So the argument from Steve Levin, John Donahue was that the legalization of abortion provided a way to reduce unwantedness.

And if therefore you reduce unwantedness, what is one of the many other effects you might have down the road?

Maybe fewer people committing crimes because they're growing up in a better circumstance.

Your example is so good because also we've all been herded into and almost what's the cattle prod, you know, electric shock.

Like our brains are just getting prodded every day to be more binary in our thinking.

Hate, love, yes, no, black, white, et cetera.

Whereas one of the great strengths of the human mind is that we're not binary thinkers.

We are extremely variegated in time and dimensions.

I am astonished still.

I love talking to people.

I love hearing how there are just these little synapses happening in your muscle, just like mine, but they come to something totally different.

Do you also then discover in the course of a conversation, what is the Venn diagram between you and that person and the types of synapses that are firing?