David Smith quoted in Huffington Post column

David Livingstone Smith, Ph.D., associate professor of philosophy, was quoted at length in a column by Kenny Ausubel titled "The Sting: Social Biomimicry and The Role of Fraud in Nature" published Oct. 27, 2011 in the Green section of the Huffington Post.

Ausubel writes: "As David Livingstone Smith observed in his book Why We Lie, 'Lying is a natural phenomenon. The biosphere teems with mendacity. Deception is widespread among nonhuman species, perfectly normal and expectable.' Human beings, says Smith, evolved to be 'natural born liars.'"

The columnist goes on to quote and draw examples from Smith's Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind.

Smith is also the author of Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others and The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War. Smith recently discussed Less than Human on NPR's Talk of the Nation and on WCSH6 TV's 207 news magazine. Read more.