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Smart people make morality complicated
A study on intelligence and values, a punctuation mystery, and water pulled from thin air.
Greg Sullivan
September 24, 2026 • Est. Reading Time: 3 minutes
“You are right in speaking of the moral foundations of science, but you cannot turn around and speak of the scientific foundations of morality.”
― Albert Einstein
One story asks what happens when analytical thinking collides with our moral instincts. The other involves giant nets catching water from clouds. Mark Wales and Jacalyn Wetzel have two reminders that solving a problem often starts by looking at something familiar in a completely different way.
Exploration
A U.K. study found an unexpected link between cognitive ability and the values people say matter.
Being good at logic, memory, and problem-solving sounds like an all-purpose human upgrade. But researchers studying adults in the U.K. found a wrinkle that makes the whole “smart person” thing considerably messier. Higher cognitive ability was linked with weaker endorsement of several intuitive moral foundations.
Those foundations include care, equality, loyalty, authority, purity, and proportionality. In this story by Mark Wales, the research raises a wonderfully uncomfortable question: Does thinking more analytically change which gut-level values feel important?
Before you start side-eyeing the smartest person in your group chat, intelligence and empathy are more complicated than they look. Other research has even found an “empathy perception gap” in which people badly underestimate how caring others are. So what exactly did these researchers find when brains and morality met in the lab?
Two herons in as many weeks, but how could I resist? This epic action shot comes from GOOD reader Emily Gunning in Green Cay Nature and Wetlands in Boynton Beach, Florida. “Truly a magnificent creature.” I couldn’t agree more, Emily.
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Which bit of punctuation do you abuse most in texts?Your typing habits may be revealing your generation. |
Yesterday's Results
In yesterday's issue, we shared six ways to disagree with your boss without actually saying no.
And we asked: Your boss pitches a bad idea. What’s your move? 77% of you chose ask questions until they see the problem. A diplomatic workplace survives another day.
Ask questions until they see the problem (77%)
Suggest a better alternative (16%)
Quietly comply and brace for impact (4%)
Just say no (4%)
GOOD reader Shrillnor put it delicately. “It is more tactful to lead him to see the flaws in his proposal.” I wish I had your level of self-control, Shrillnor. I’ve been known to get myself in trouble!
Generations | Courtesy of Upworthy
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Harvard linguist explains perfectly logical reason Boomers insist on using ellipses in texts | ||
If you’ve ever gotten a text from your mom or grandma full of “…” and had no idea what it meant, you’re not alone. | ||
By Jacalyn Wetzel | ||
One generation’s texting habit that baffles every generation is the Boomers‘ seemingly excessive use of ellipses. Do you have more to say, Aunt Judy, or did you just accidentally press the period key too many times? Maybe it’s for a dramatic pause or to put emphasis on a point? This is truly a mystery that leaves every generation below them confused about what is meant by the dreaded “dot dot dot.” | ||
Texting etiquette differs with every generation. Gen X and most Millennials use fairly proper grammar and punctuation throughout a text message exchange. Every new sentence starts with a capital letter, there are strategically placed Oxford commas to ensure there’s little room for misunderstandings, and sentences end with an appropriate punctuation mark. | ||
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Environment
A mesh net, a mountain, and a decade of results
The Fog Collectors of Morocco sounds like a novel that would chart on the NYT best-sellers list, but they’re real people. In the village of Aït Baamrane, women once walked four hours to haul 50-gallon drums of water home. That was the baseline. Then came the drought, the desertification, and the quiet disappearance of what little water the land had left.
As Erik Barnes reports, the women-led NGO Dar Si Hmad didn't wait for a pipeline. They built the world's largest operational fog-harvesting system: giant mesh nets strung between posts, angled into the wind, catching cloud droplets and funneling them into storage tanks. Solar-powered. UV-filtered. No pipes from the outside world required. The system now delivers more than 6,300 liters of potable water a day to five villages and over 400 people.
The technique has since spread to Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico, Spain, and Chile. MIT researchers are now chasing the same idea with salt-based hydrogels and sonic devices that "shake water out of the atmosphere." But for the women of Aït Baamrane, the future arrived a decade ago, one fog net at a time.
On September 24, 1852, French engineer Henri Giffard attached a small steam engine to a cigar-shaped hydrogen balloon and proved that people could do more than simply drift with the wind. His roughly 17-mile flight from Paris marked the first successful powered and controlled flight of an airship, an early milestone on the long road toward steerable aircraft and modern aviation.
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💬 From the group text…
Meet Florence Pannell, who was 108 when this footage was recorded 49 years ago! You know I’m a sucker for time travel, and here it is. A recollection from a person born 157 years ago, in living color.
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Until tomorrow, remember… It’s not just the boomers that love the ellipsis.