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Started reading
March 7, 2020
How much greater depends on how related you are. The benefit to your brother or sister must be at least twice the cost to you; the benefit to a grandchild at least four times the cost to you; and the benefit to a cousin at least eight times the cost to you.
Inclusive fitness can explain the evolution of some altruistic behaviors, which enhance the fitness of others at a cost to oneself.
A gene in you that forfeits you to save your neighbor can survive if it also resides in that neighbor.
This is true often enough to shape a useful heuristic: show more altruism toward those you more often see.
we can estimate kinship between strangers by looking at faces. We glean more information about kinship from the upper half of the face than from the lower.
Genes shape male perceptions of female beauty. To be clear, this fact does not justify sexism, patriarchy, or oppression of women.
our perception of beauty is an estimate of reproductive potential. This does not entail that we have sex only to procreate. Exaptation, in which a trait evolved for one function can co-opt a new function, is commonplace in nature.
our senses evolved and were shaped by natural selection, then spacetime and physical objects, like beauty, reside in the eye of the beholder. They inform us about fitness—not about truth or objective reality.
