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David Livingstone Smith
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BIOGRAPHY

Professor, Department of History and Philosophy, University of New England; Director, The Human Nature Project.

Author of Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War, and Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind.

Primary Contributions (1)
Lying, any communicative act that aims to cause receivers of the communication to adopt, or persist in, a false belief. However, because of its generality, this definition invites questions about its key terms. There is no universally accepted definition of lying. Rather, there exists a spectrum of…
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Publications (3)
Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others
Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others (February 2012)
By David Livingstone Smith
Winner of the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for NonfictionA revelatory look at why we dehumanize each other, with stunning examples from world history as well as today's headlines"Brute." "Cockroach." "Lice." "Vermin." People often regard members of their own kind as less than human, and use terms like these for those whom they wish to harm, enslave, or exterminate. Dehumanization has made atrocities like the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda, and the slave trade possible. But...
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The Most Dangerous Animal
The Most Dangerous Animal (February 2009)
By David Smith
Almost 200 million human beings, mostly civilians, have died in wars over the last century, and there is no end of slaughter in sight.The Most Dangerous Animal asks what it is about human nature that makes it possible for human beings to regularly slaughter their own kind. It tells the story of why all human beings have the potential to be hideously cruel and destructive to one another. Why are we our own worst enemy? The book shows us that war has been with us---in one form or another---since...
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Why We Lie
Why We Lie (August 2007)
By David Livingstone Smith
Deceit, lying, and falsehoods lie at the very heart of our cultural heritage. Even the founding myth of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the story of Adam and Eve, revolves around a lie. Our seemingly insatiable appetite for stories of deception spans the extremes of culture from King Lear to Little Red Riding Hood, retaining a grip on our imaginations despite endless repetition. These tales of deception are so enthralling because they speak to something fundamental in the human condition. The ever-present...
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