We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones.

Perhaps the most legitimately dispiriting thing about reciprocal altruism is that it is a misnomer. Whereas with kin selection the “goal” of our genes is to actually help another organism, with reciprocal altruism the goal...

Your brain may give birth to any technology, but other brains will decide whether the technology thrives. The number of possible technologies is infinite, and only a few pass this test of affinity with human...

If two people stare at each other for more than a few seconds, it means they are about to either make love or fight. Something similar might be said about human societies. If two nearby...

Being a person’s true friend means endorsing the untruths he holds dearest.

..various people had long had the feeling that gain through pain was nature’s way

Once you the forces that govern behavior,it’s harder to blame the behaver

Nature has gone to great lengths to hide our subconscious from ourselves. Why?

Whereas modern cynicism brought despair about the ability of the human species to realize laudable ideals, postmodern cynicism doesn’t — not because it’s optimistic, but because it can’t take ideals seriously in the first place....

Here the contention is not just that the new Darwinian paradigm can help us realize whichever moral values we happen to choose. The claim is that the new paradigm can actually influence — legitimately —...

[L]asting love is something a person has to decide to experience. Lifelong monogamous devotion is just not natural—not for women even, and emphatically not for men. It requires what, for lack of a better term,...