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91344ff
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Men write more books. Men give more lectures. Men ask more questions after lectures. Men post more e-mail to Internet discussion groups. To say this is due to patriarchy is to beg the question of the behavior's origin. If men control society, why don't they just shut up and enjoy their supposed prerogatives? The answer is obvious when you consider sexual competition: men can't be quiet because that would give other men a chance to show off ..
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feminism
psychology
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Geoffrey Miller |
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c1fbcf7
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Existing political philosophies all developed before evolutionary game theory, so they do not take equilibrium selection into account. Socialism pretends that individuals are not selfish sexual competitors, so it ignores equilibria altogether. Conservatism pretends that there is only one possible equilibrium--a nostalgic version of the status quo--that society could play. Libertarianism ignores the possibility of equilibrium selection at th..
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politics
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Geoffrey Miller |
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d54ba7a
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Scientific theories never dictate human values, but they can often cast new light on ethical issues. From a sexual selection viewpoint, moral philosophy and political theory have mostly been attempts to shift male human sexual competitiveness from physical violence to the peaceful accumulation of wealth and status. The rights to life, liberty, and property are cultural inventions that function, in part, to keep males from killing and steali..
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evolution
sex
politics
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Geoffrey Miller |
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ed073a1
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You may think that tax policy sounds like the most boring topic in the world. That is precisely what most governments, corporations, and special interests would like you to think, because tax policy is where much of society and the economy gets shaped. It is also where well-informed citizens can achieve socioeconomic revolutions with astonishing speed and effectiveness--but only if they realize how much power they might wield in this domain..
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Geoffrey Miller |
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abdae94
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The ad does not say "Buy this!"; it says, "Be assured that if you buy and display this product, others are being well trained to feel ugly and inferior in your presence, just as you feel ugly and inferior compared with this goddess."
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Geoffrey Miller |
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5de8e63
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Thus, all ads effectively have two audiences: potential product buyers, and potential product viewers who will credit the product owners with various desirable traits.
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Geoffrey Miller |
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4b79127
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The rich covet the new iPod not for the sounds it can make in their heads, but for the impressions it can make in the heads of others.
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Geoffrey Miller |
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8cf71d9
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Ecologists have long understood that the typical interaction between any two individuals or species is neither competition nor cooperation, but neutralism. Neutralism means apathy: the animals just ignore each other. If their paths threaten to cross, they get out of each other's way. Anything else usually takes too much energy. Being nasty has costs, and being nice has costs, and animals evolve to avoid costs whenever possible. [...] If we ..
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Geoffrey Miller |
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dd2104e
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capitalism is not "materialistic," but "semiotic." It concerns mainly the psychological world of signs, symbols, images, and brands,"
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Geoffrey Miller |
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7bdff23
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Many thinkers have tried to "naturalize" consumerism in that way, including most social Darwinists, Austrian School economists (Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard), Chicago School economists (George Stigler, Milton Friedman, Gary Becker), Darwinian libertarians, globalization advocates, management gurus, and marketers. Their model (which I call the Wrong Conservative Model, because I think it's wrong, and because it's usuall..
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Geoffrey Miller |
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bc6ae5e
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Our responsibility is not to speculate endlessly about the possible futures of our daughter species, but to become, with as much panache as we can afford, their ancestors.
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Geoffrey Miller |
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267cbc9
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David Buss has amassed a lot of evidence that human females across many cultures tend to prefer males who have high social status, good income, ambition, intelligence, and energy--contrary to the views of some cultural anthropologists, who assume that people vary capriciously in their sexual preferences across different cultures. He interpreted this as evidence that women evolved to prefer good providers who could support their families by ..
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sexual-selection
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Geoffrey Miller |
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21b0d32
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The healthy brain theory proposes that our minds are clusters of fitness indicators: persuasive salesmen like art, music, and humor, that do their best work in courtship, where the most important deals are made. We
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Geoffrey Miller |
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70df0c2
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Dismissing the idea that female choice could influence the direction of evolution began to look both sexist and unscientific. By drawing attention to the evolution of social and sexual behavior in animals, the sociobiology of the 1970s did for the study of animal sexuality what feminism did for the study of human sexuality. It empowered thinkers to ask "Why does sex work like this, instead of some other way?"
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Geoffrey Miller |
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c411b94
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You could be the fittest person imaginable in terms of strength, intelligence, disease resistance and vitality, but if you fail to reproduce your contribution to the future of the human gene pool is zero. For anything to evolve it has to affect the probability of passing on your genes.
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Geoffrey Miller |
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4dc4855
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Thus, consumption taxes tend to reduce conspicuous consumption and promote longer-term retirement security, family wealth, social welfare, technical progress, and economic growth. In essence, income taxes penalize people for what they contribute to society (labor and capital), whereas consumption taxes penalize people for what they take out of society (new retail purchases). So, to tax experts, it is no surprise that U.S. and U.K. citizens ..
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Geoffrey Miller |
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b56a34c
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At the other extreme, the consumption tax rate should be very, very high for any products that impose massive negative externalities. Consider handgun ammunition. Currently, one can buy five hundred rounds of 9 mm ammunition for about $110 from online U.S. retailers--about twenty-two cents each. But each round of ammunition has a slight chance of falling into the wrong hands and killing someone. How slight? About 10 billion rounds are sold ..
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Geoffrey Miller |
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b459c6a
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The human mind and the peacock's tail may serve similar biological functions. The peacock's tail is the classic example of sexual selection through mate choice. It evolved because peahens (female peacock) preferred larger, more colorful tails. Peacocks would survive better with shorter, lighter, drabber tails. But the sexual choices of peahens have made peacocks evolve big, bright plumage that takes energy to grow and time to preen, and mak..
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female-sexuality
mating-mind
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Geoffrey Miller |
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abf380d
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Scientists have no more status than what other scientists award them through citations, talk invitations, and tenure. "Status" makes a misleadingly concrete-sounding"
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Geoffrey Miller |
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c4bb259
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our social needs for intimacy, belonging, and acceptance. Mate preferences for status can explain our esteem needs for recognition, fame, and glory. Mate preferences for intelligence, knowledge, skills, and moral virtues can explain our cognitive needs to learn, discover, and create, and our self-actualization needs to fulfill our potential (for example, to display the highest possible mate value given our genetic quality).
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Geoffrey Miller |
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4c0d3ac
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By intelligently choosing their sexual partners for their mental abilities, our ancestors became the intelligent force behind the human mind's evolution.
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Geoffrey Miller |
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7ed3db1
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One problem with most current governments is that they prioritize economic growth (as mismeasured by GDP per capita) over citizens' happiness, quality of life, efficiency of trait display, and breadth and depth of social networks. The latter outcomes are not actually any harder to measure than GDP per capita. For example, the UN Human Development Index (HDI) measures overall quality of life fairly well by taking into account life expectancy..
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Geoffrey Miller |