Quotes About Evolution

So, yes, we need to reject the core evolutionary value of the specialness of self. Indeed, there's probably never been a time in human history when this rejection was more vital.

Modern environments seem more likely than some previous environments to lead to this sort of malfunctioning. They permit, for example, a degree of social isolation that was unknown to our ancestors.

In short, from natural selection's point of view, it's good for you to tell a coherent story about yourself, to depict yourself as a rational, self-aware actor. So whenever your actual motivations aren't accessible to the part of your brain that communicates with the world, it would make sense for that part of your brain to generate stories about your motivation.

One reasonable reaction to evolutionary psychology is a self-consciousness so acute, and a cynicism so deep, that ironic detachment from the whole human enterprise may provide the only relief.

Natural selection doesn't "want" us to be happy, after all; it just "wants" us to be productive, in its narrow sense of productive. And the way to make us productive is to make the anticipation of pleasure very strong but the pleasure itself not very long-lasting.

Natural selection doesn't "want" us to be happy, after all; it just "wants" us to be productive, in its narrow sense of productive.

People say, oh it's a shame, you're not nostalgic about the '60s. Well actually, it's quite good, when you think of it. Wouldn't it be sad if I was sitting here wishing it back?

If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.

But seriously Holden, what is the island called now?" "Sentosa," Holden said romantically and with a flourish of his unoccupied left hand. "Sentosa. Sounds romantic all right. So this is the progress you're talking about?

Everything that begins as comedy ends as a horror movie.

What begins as comedy ends as a triumphal march, wouldn't you say?

Todos tenemos algún antepasado imbécil. Todos, en algún momento de nuestras vidas, encontramos el rastro, las huellas vacilantes del más pelmazo de nuestros antepasados, y al mirar ese rostro huidizo nos damos cuenta, con estupor, con incredulidad, con horror, de que estamos contemplando nuestra propia cara que nos hace guiños y muecas amistosas desde el fondo de un pozo.

You have to change. You have to turn yourself around and change. You have to know how to look even if you don't know what you're looking for.

For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it's the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short.

We tend to think human knowledge as progressive; because we know more and more, our parents and grandparents are back numbers. But a contrary theory is possible - that we simply recognize different things at different times and in different ways.

Nothing grows old-fashioned so fast as modernity.

Just as adolescents transition into adults by discovering who they want to be, at midlife we find ourselves searching to become a more authentic, better version of ourselves.

All women alive today are the genetic descendants of the more cautious of female ancestors, not their more reckless contemporaries. Men, on the other hand, are genetically programmed to be urgent and single-minded about one-off sex. In past generations, men who were not urgent and persuasive were less successful reproductively than those who were. All men alive today are the genetic descendants of the more urgent of male ancestors, not their more complacent contemporaries.

Those men In Scene 34 who decided not to rape the young girl did not live to produce more children who would inherit their compassion, whereas one of the men who raped her did produce a child to inherit his lack of compassion. It is by this process of weeding the genes that do not enhance reproductive success that evolution has saddled the majority of men with the propensity to behave as rapists in the appropriate situation.

In choosing a man or men with whom to share her life, a woman has two major issues to consider. On the one hand, she needs a man who can help her raise her children. On the other, she needs genes that in combination with her own will produce attractive, fertile and successful children.

studies show that when a woman leaves one partner for another, she invariably moves up the scale to a better compromise

In some species, females are so successful as prostitutes that they never need to find food themselves.

Since the aim of masturbation is to give the male an edge over others in sperm warfare, he gains most if he masturbates but can dissuade those around him from doing so. That way, he gains competitive benefits that his rivals do not. The world-wide tendency to criticise, even victimise, other people for masturbating while continuing to masturbate oneself is thus as strategic as masturbation itself.

This conclusion does not mean, as people often assume, that a woman should therefore seek to be raped. On the contrary, it is reproductively important to the woman that her body collect genes from only the most successful of rapists. If she conceives to an inept rapist, doomed quickly to be caught and to suffer social retribution and incarceration, her male descendants would inherit unsuccessful characteristics.