The Illusion of Moral Decline

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Juan et al showed that rates of cooperation in the prisoners dilemma game have increased significantly between 1956 and 2017. It's just 10% greater increase, 10% increase in prisoners lemma in the lab. This is a sociological question and an ethical question and a philosophical question. And the idea that you're going to get there and just throw some numbers around shows like when I get really frustrated about the state of social psychology.

David and Tamler dive into the Coen brothers’ bleak and beautiful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel "No Country for Old Men." What’s the underlying philosophy that animates Anton Chigurh? Does he have a code of any kind, or is he just a ghostly symbol of human brutality and a pitiless indifferent universe? Does he represent a new kind of evil or is Sheriff Bell just getting old? What elements, if any, in the film are more dream than reality?

And speaking of moral decline, a new Nature study claims that we have the illusory belief that people are getting worse - but can they really establish that it’s an illusion?

Mastroianni, A. M., & Gilbert, D. T. (2023). The illusion of moral decline. Nature, 1-8.

Mastroianni blog post about the illusion of moral decline

No Country for Old Men (movie) [wikipedia.org]