Quotes from Geoffrey Miller

for all the lip service that the social justice warriors give to 'diversity,' they don't actually care about one of the most fundamental forms of diversity – neurodiversity.

Our bodies are rich sources of evidence about sexual selection pressures because they are visible, measurable, easily comparable with those of other species, and relatively undistorted by human culture. In recent years much nonsense has been written by post-modern theorists such as Michel Foucault about the social construction of the body, as if human bodies were the incarnation of cultural norms rather than ancestral sexual preferences.

Continuous sexual receptivity and concealed ovulation gave our female ancestors an unprecedented opportunity for testing males as sexual partners, while running a lower risk per copulation of unwanted pregnancy than any other primate did. Sex during menstruation, pregnancy, and breast-feeding would also have given ample opportunity for judging potential long-term lovers by their copulatory skills.

Each trait that we consider sexually attractive already summarizes a huge amount of information about an individual's genes, body, and mind.

Consumerism turns the tables on ancestral patterns of human courtship. It makes courtship a commodity that can be bought and sold.

There is plenty of evidence from evolutionary psychology that men and women have physical, emotional and mental adaptations for short-term liaisons and adulterous affairs.

With the evolution of eyes came the possibility of visual ornaments. With the evolution of bird ears came the possibility of the bird song. And perhaps, with the evolution of language comprehension abilities in our ancestors, came the possibility of sexual selection for much more complicated thoughts and feelings expressed through language.

In the game of science though, sounding sexist is not a good reason to ban a theory. Science is the one zone of human thought where ideological preferences are not supposed to influence the assessment of ideas and evidence. Human evolution happened somehow. It may not have happened in a way that coincides with our ideological preferences.

Human penises evolved as tactile stimulators for use in copulatory courtship.

The large male penis is a product of female choice in evolution. If it were not, males would never have bothered to evolve such a large, floppy, blood-hungry organ. Ancestral females made males evolve such penises because they liked them.

Every gene in every human body has passed through thousands of penises over thousands of generations of human evolution. Equally, every gene has passed down through thousands of eggs inside female ancestors who chose to copulate with particular males. In sexually reproducing species, copulation is the genetic gateway from one generation to the next, which is what makes it so important evolutionarily, physically, and psychologically.

Many products are signals first and material objects second. Our vast social-primate brains evolved to pursue one central social goal: to look good in the eyes of others. Buying impressive products in a money-based economy is just the most recent way to fulfill that goal.

If we prove boring during the conversation after the film, our dates may say they had a lovely time, but let's just be friends. You can't buy love. You have to inspire it, partly through humor, the premier arena for advertising your creativity.

If you don't have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation. #truth.

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.

capitalism is not "materialistic," but "semiotic." It concerns mainly the psychological world of signs, symbols, images, and brands

Thus, all ads effectively have two audiences: potential product buyers, and potential product viewers who will credit the product owners with various desirable traits.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Thus the name of the game when it comes to evolution is not obtaining food or other resources: it is reproduction. Which came first, the chick or the egg? From an evolutionary perspective the egg did. A chicken is merely an egg's way of producing another egg. The chicken is just a transient reproductive superstructure that provides for the perpetuation of genes.

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

Scientists have no more status than what other scientists award them through citations, talk invitations, and tenure. "Status" makes a misleadingly concrete-sounding