Darwin Day 2012: The Evolution of Altruism and Social Intelligence

What can the decision making skills of monkeys tell us about our own tendencies? How do chimps and human toddlers decide when and how to help others? Just how "smart" and "nice" are our closest relatives? And how did their evolution impact human development?

On the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday, join the Center for Inquiry and New York City Skeptics as we explore the origins of the human mind with prominent psychologists Laurie Santos (http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos.html), director of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory at Yale Univeristy, and Felix Warneken (http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~lds/index.html?warneken.html), Department of Psychology at Harvard Univeristy. Drs. Santos and Warneken will join Massimo Pigliucci (http://rationallyspeaking.org/), evolutionary biologist-turned-philosopher at the City Univeristy of New York, for a discussion about altruism, decision making, and the evolution of human cognition.

The event is a joint production of the Center for Inquiry-NYC (http://cfinewyork.net/) and NYC Skeptics (http://nycskeptics.org/). It will take place on Sunday, Feb. 12, 2 p.m., at the Eisner & Lubin Auditorium at New York University, located 60 Washington Sq., near the A/C/E/B/D/F/M/N/R trains. Admission is free and open to the public.