Quotes About Adaptation

It is quite annoying that we have to change the sound we invented just to avoid sounding like people who simply copy us, but... it is flattering and of course challenging.

Instead of limiting your imagination by current circumstances and constraints, imagine a world in which some key constraints don't exist, and ask yourself how you or your institution might respond.

The rider evolved to serve to the elephant.

conflicts in relationships—having an annoying office mate or room-mate, or having chronic conflict with your spouse—is one of the surest ways to reduce your happiness. You never adapt to interpersonal conflict;45 it damages every day, even days when you don't see the other person but ruminate about the conflict nonetheless.

The emotion of disgust evolved initially to optimize responses to the omnivore's dilemma. Individuals who had a properly calibrated sense of disgust were able to consume more calories than their overly disgustable cousins while consuming fewer dangerous microbes than their insufficiently disgustable cousins.

Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well. —EPICTETUS

I'll show that religion is (probably) an evolutionary adaptation for binding groups together and helping them to create communities with a shared morality. It is not a virus or a parasite, as some scientists (the "New Atheists") have argued in recent years.

Each generation tends to see the one after it as weak, whiny, and lacking in resilience.

Evolution is a design process; it's just not an intelligent design process.

It's a great example of how "innate" refers to the first draft of the mind. The final edition can look quite different, so it's a mistake to look at today's hunter-gatherers and say, "See, that's what human nature really looks like!

By the standards of our great-grandparents, nearly all of us are coddled. Each generation tends to see the one after it as weak, whiny, and lacking in resilience. Those older generations may have a point, even though these generational changes reflect real and positive progress.

I find it ironic that liberals generally embrace Darwin and reject "intelligent design" as the explanation for design and adaptation in the natural world, but they don't embrace Adam Smith as the explanation for design and adaptation in the economic world. They sometimes prefer the "intelligent design" of socialist economies, which often ends in disaster from a utilitarian point of view.

Cultural change works orders of magnitude faster then genetic change. Stephen Jay Gould

We live in the tension between neophillia, or attraction to new things, and neophobia, or fear of new things.

If the hive switch is real—if it's a group-level adaptation designed by group-level selection for group binding—then it must be made out of neurons, neurotransmitters, and hormones.

It is change that contains vital information, not steady states. Human beings, however, take adaptation to cognitive extremes. We don't just habituate, we recalibrate. We create for ourselves a world of targets, and each time we hit one we replace it with another.

Me parece irónico que los liberales acepten a Darwin y rechacen el -diseño inteligente- como la explicación del diseño y la adaptación en el mundo natural, pero no aceptan a Adam Smith como la explicación del diseño y la adaptación en el mundo económico. Algunos países a veces prefieren el -diseño inteligente- de las economías socialistas, que en ocasiones suele acabar en desastre desde un punto de vista utilitarista.

I didn't want to make the classic mistake of amateur evolutionary theorists, which is to pick a trait and then ask: "Can I think of a story about how this trait might once have been adaptive?" The answer to that question is almost always yes because reasoning can take you wherever you want to go.

Nos adaptamos a nuestras nuevas y mejores circunstancias y después bajamos el listón de los niveles de incomodidad y riesgo que consideramos intolerables.

I'll show that religion is (probably) an evolutionary adaptation for binding groups together and helping them to create communities with a shared morality.

This ancient idea deserves respect, and it is certainly true that changing your mind is usually a more effective response to frustration than is changing the world.

Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well. —EPICTETUS2

Nature provides a first draft, which experience then revises. Ã¢â'¬Â¦ Ã¢â'¬Å"Built-in" does not mean unmalleable; it means "organized in advance of experience.

We are the descendants of successful tribalists, not their more individualistic cousins.