People From Wellington

"[T]he same sex differences in occupational preferences have been found in every society where psychologists have looked for them. In one large study (N ≈ 200,000), Lippa found the differences in 53 out of 53 nations: a level of cross-cultural unanimity almost unheard of within psychology."

"Members of both sexes can be found at every point on the things vs. people continuum; however, more men than women exhibit a stronger interest in things, whereas more women than men exhibit a stronger interest in people... To get an intuitive sense of the magnitude of the difference, if one were to pick pairs of people at random, one man and one woman, the man would be more things-oriented than the woman around 75% of the time."

"Whether a trait is natural or unnatural is irrelevant to the question of whether it’s good. Moral worth should be judged not in terms of the naturalness of a trait, but rather in terms of how that trait impacts the wellbeing of everyone affected by it. Thus, violence is natural but bad, medicine unnatural but good."

"First, the claim is not that men perform better than women in every cognitive domain. On the contrary, men perform better in some domains whereas women perform better in others. The best-known examples are that men score higher than women on most tests of spatial ability, whereas women score higher than men on most tests of language ability, including verbal comprehension, reading, and writing... Second, even in areas where men do perform better, the claim is not that all men – or even most – perform better than all or most women. As with occupational preferences, members of both sexes vary enormously in every cognitive aptitude, and the distribution for men overlaps almost entirely with that for women. However, for some aptitudes, the distribution for one sex is shifted somewhat to the right of that for the other, such that the average score for the former is somewhat higher. In saying this, it’s worth stressing that the average score does not describe all members of the group, or even the typical member, but merely represents the central tendency within a broad array of scores. Most people fall above or below the average. Third, the claim is not that these cognitive sex differences are especially large. On the contrary, at the centre of the distribution, they tend to be quite small. The only reason they matter at all is that even small differences at the mean are associated with progressively larger differences the further from the mean one looks... Fourth, the claim is not that women lack the cognitive talents to make it in STEM. Most people lack the cognitive talents, and of those who do possess them, some are men and some are women."

"Contrary to stubborn anthropological myth, people everywhere fall in love... the idea that romantic love is an invention of Western culture is itself an invention of Western culture."

"As a result of cumulative culture, we have ideas in our heads that are orders of magnitude smarter than we are."

"As far as we know, no woman in the history of the species has ever given birth and thought: “Wait a minute! How do I know that this baby is mine and not some other woman’s?” In contrast, if a baby comes out of the body of a woman you slept with nine months ago, that’s not nearly as reliable a clue. As an old saying has it, maternity is a matter of fact, paternity a matter of opinion."

"By clamping down on male aggression, culture may make the sex difference in aggression smaller than it would otherwise have been."

"[W]e should strive to eliminate bias and barriers of every kind... What we would argue, though, is that even if this were achieved, STEM gender gaps would be unlikely to disappear given persistent sex differences in interests and other STEM-relevant traits – differences plausibly due in part to biological causes. The question, then, is: Would this necessarily be a problem? In our view, as long as unjust impediments are removed, and everyone is invited, it would not be. On the contrary, it would be unfortunate if, for all the talk of celebrating differences and diversity, we ultimately came to insist that justice requires sameness."

"What accounts for psychologists’ kin-blindness – a blindness so profound it would lead to the vaporization of lazy aliens? Part of the answer is that many psychologists, as I’ve already mentioned, have an empty space in their brains where their knowledge of evolution should be. They know little about other animals and little about the nature of the evolutionary process. This impairs their understanding of their own species."

"Think about some of the highest status men in modern societies: sports stars, rock stars, politicians. At first glance, it might seem that these individuals provide further proof of men’s polygynous nature: They are often notorious for their sexual antics and infidelities (the famous scandal with Tiger Woods is a case in point)... However, the picture is not so simple. Many of these men are in the position where they have essentially an unlimited supply of potential sexual partners. Do all of them or even most of them eschew long-term relationships and opt instead for as many one-night stands and brief love affairs as possible? Sometimes, perhaps, but often they do not. These men — the most eligible bachelors, the highest status males in our species — often do what male chimpanzees never do: They fall in love and form long-term pair bonds."

"The idea that women are the choosier sex is one of the best-known claims associated with EP [evolutionary psychology]. Ironically, another of the best-known claims associated with EP is an exception to this rule: On average, men are choosier than women when it comes to the physical attractiveness of a prospective mate. Even if we put this counterexample aside, though, the statement “females are choosier than males,” although true of many species, does not apply easily to our own. It is true that men may sometimes be more willing than women to lower their standards for a casual sexual partner. However, when it comes to the most important mating decisions of a man’s life — who he will marry, who he will have children with — the difference in choosiness is much smaller and maybe nonexistent. This fact of human life is even implicit in everyday folk psychology; the stereotype is that men will “sleep with anything that moves,” not that they will marry or have children with anything that moves. In long-term, committed relationships, men are about as choosy as women."

"To the extent that we accept this view, we effectively mistake ourselves for highly dimorphic animals such as peacocks or deer."

"Most male gorillas either have a harem or do not have a mate; in contrast, most men who have more than zero mates have only one. This means that, whereas only harem-holding male gorillas contribute to the gene pool of the next generation, most human males who contribute to the gene pool do so in the context of a pair bond. Consequently, our evolved sexual nature has been shaped more by pair bonding than by harem polygyny."

"However, the absence of perfect concealment does not imply the presence of active advertisement, and if fertility were advertised in humans, we would presumably not need to employ sophisticated experimental methods to demonstrate its detectability."

"If men in our evolutionary past did not invest in offspring, they would not have evolved strict mate preferences and thus women would be as drab as peahens. The fact that women are not as drab as peahens suggests a long history of male mate choice, which in turn suggests a long history of pair bonding and high male parental investment."

"Language, intelligence, and humor, along with art, generosity, and musical ability, are often described as human equivalents of the peacock’s tail. However, peacocks afford a poor analogy for the role of courtship displays in humans. Other animal models offer a better fit. In a number of nonhuman species — species as diverse as sea dragons and grebes — males and females engage in a mutual courtship “dance,” in which the two partners mirror one another’s movements. In Clark’s grebes and Western grebes, for instance, the pair bond ritual culminates in the famous courtship rush: The male and female swim side by side along the top of the water, with their wings back and their heads and necks in a stereotyped posture. If we want a nonhuman analogue for the role of creative intelligence or humor in human courtship, we should think not of ornamented peacocks displaying while drab females evaluate them. We should think instead of grebes engaged in their mating rush or sea dragons engaged in their synchronized mirror dance. Once we have one of these alternative images fixed in our minds, we can then add the proviso that there is a slight skew such that, in the early stages of courtship, men tend to display more vigorously and women tend to be choosier. However, this should be seen as a qualification to the primary message that intelligence, humor, and other forms of sexual display are part of the mutual courtship process in our species."

"Psychology has made a lot less progress than it could have because too many psychologists know too little about other animals."

"Our claim is not that pair bonding is humanity’s singular mating pattern. Our claim instead is simply that the pair bond is the most common setting for sex and reproduction in our species, that it has been for a long time, and that this has left a deep imprint on our evolved nature."

"The Nurture Only theory asks us to believe not only that selection eliminated the [sex] differences for reasons unknown, but that learning and culture then coincidentally reproduced exactly the same differences in every culture on record. This is not a compelling thesis."

"Human beings are, by nature, the kind of animal that falls in love. The cross-cultural record also suggests that humans are also the kind of animal that commonly provides biparental care for its young. In 95% to 97% of mammalian species, only the females care for the young. We would no more expect males in these species to invest in their offspring than we would expect them to get pregnant or lactate. Humans are not like that."

"It is therefore a curious fact that our dominant mating system is more like the typical mating system of birds than that of most mammals, including our nearest relatives, the Great Apes."

"Thus, a curious fact about natural selection is that, even though it’s a completely mindless process – a process without foresight or understanding – it has given rise to creatures that have minds, that have foresight, and that even have some basic understanding of the universe of which they’re a part."

"Seen through a Darwinian lens, men’s stronger interest in a partner’s looks is initially quite mysterious. In most species, it’s the females that care more about looks. Among peacocks, for instance, peahens will only mate with the males with the sexiest tails; males, in contrast, are less shallow and will mate with any female who’ll have them. If peacocks had pornography, it would be the females, not the males, that would spend their time staring at images of the other sex, and the males that would complain about being treated as sex objects. And what’s true of peacocks is true as well of most animals. In our species, however, it’s the other way around. Why?"

"Most effects in psychology are relatively unimportant. That is, most variables, considered in isolation, have relatively little impact on behavior. This doesn't mean... that we should all abandon psychology and become plumbers instead. The small magnitude of most effects in psychology is itself a discovery of psychology. One might argue, in fact, that it is one of the great metadiscoveries of the field. Most variables have little impact, and thus most of the phenomena studied by psychologists are products of a multiplicity of variables."

"Human beings are an exception to many general rules in biology. In many species, female mate choice alone is important; in our species, male mate choice is important as well. In many species, males alone are showy and ornamented; in our species, females are as well. In many species, males alone compete for mates; in our species, females compete as well. In many species, males invest nothing other than sperm in their offspring; in our species, men typically invest a great deal. Not only are human beings exceptional in these ways, but they all tie together into a cohesive story."

"Does female orgasm have an evolutionary function? Ironically, scientists have yet to come to a satisfying conclusion about this matter."

"The idea that humans form pair bonds, and that males often invest in their young, has a long history in biological anthropology. Early incarnations of the idea were criticized for painting an overly simplistic picture, according to which “Man the Hunter” provisioned his dependent wife and children with meat in a stable nuclear family, suspiciously reminiscent of a 1950s-style Western family. However, with appropriate amendments and qualifications, the idea that pair bonding and biparental care are a central part of our evolutionary endowment appears to be viable."

"A Ku Klux Klan member would be mortified to learn that he was actually a Black man. Many people’s reaction to learning that they are actually animals, or actually apes, is the same."

"It is not clear that people have fully taken on board the idea that humans are animals. If they had, then perhaps academic disciplines such as sociology and anthropology would be viewed as specialist branches of zoology; medical doctors would be viewed as a subtype of veterinarians (one that specializes in tending to the health needs of just one species); human rights would be viewed as a subset of animal rights; and the socialization of children would be viewed as one example of the training or domestication of animals (making parents and teachers a subtype of animal trainers)."

"From a comparative perspective, we are a relatively monomorphic mammal, with relatively monomorphic minds."

"In some domains, women are more sexually selected than men; one could say in these cases that women have the larger “peacock’s tail.” An example can be found in the domain of physical attractiveness. Women are typically rated as better looking than men, by both men and women. The difference is plausibly a consequence of the fact that, although both sexes care about good looks in a mate, on average, men care somewhat more. This means that, since this sex difference first evolved, there has been a somewhat stronger selection pressure on women than men for physical attractiveness — the opposite of what we find in peacocks."

"People who object to the by-product hypothesis [for female orgasm] are doing something strange: They're saying that it's hugely important to them that female orgasm turns out to be an adaptation, like vomiting, cobra venom, and the scorpion's stinger, rather than a "mere" cultural invention, like science, medicine, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

"Humans are as dependent on culture as we are on oxygen; without it, we’re as naked and vulnerable as a crab without a shell."

"As a result of high levels of male parental investment, humans evolved into a somewhat “androgynous” species - a species in which human females exhibit traits generally found only in males (e.g., competition for mates) and human males exhibit traits generally found only in females (e.g., the provision of parental care; choosiness about mates)."

"We’re clusters of chemical reactions that contemplate deep truths about the nature of reality."

"To a hypothetical alien with a vastly superior intellect to our own, human minds would be classed as intermediate forms between the mindless and the fully minded."

"It seems that the evolutionist must conclude, along with the writer Vladimir Nabokov, that ‘our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness’. Brains that think otherwise – brains that deny they are brains and believe instead that they are eternal souls - are brains that hold false beliefs about themselves."

"We are a species in which both sexes have their equivalents of the peacock’s tail. Indeed, when it comes to physical beauty, the usual sex difference has arguably been reversed: Females are the “showier” sex."

"Bertrand Russell once pointed out that ‘People are more unwilling to give up the word “God” than to give up the idea for which the word has hitherto stood’. Evolutionary theory may not persuade everyone to give up the word. However, to the extent that it encourages people to alter its meaning beyond recognition, it could be argued that God has nonetheless been a casualty of Darwin’s theory."

"When you contemplate the universe, part of the universe becomes conscious of itself."

"Around 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, and almost four billion years since life first evolved, something strange began to happen: Tiny parts of the universe became conscious, and came to know something about themselves and the universe of which they are a part... Eventually, some of these tiny parts of the universe - the parts we call ‘scientists’ and ‘scientifically-informed laypeople’ - came to understand the Big Bang and the evolutionary process through which they had come to exist. After an eternity of unconsciousness, the universe now had some glimmering awareness that it existed and some understanding of where it had come from."

"It may be the fate of the universe to spend an eternity in darkness, save one brief flash of self-awareness in the middle of nowhere."

"Certainly, the human-animal distinction is still workable; after all, we rarely make errors in assigning entities to one category or the other. But after Darwin, the distinction suddenly seems arbitrary – as arbitrary as the equally workable distinction between, say, turtles and non-turtles."

"People kill nonhuman animals for food, for their skins, and sometimes just for fun. We enslave animals and force them to work for us. We experiment on them and justify their suffering in terms of our advantage. Because most of us want to be able to view ourselves as good people (and, perhaps more importantly, because we want others to view us as good people), we may be motivated to view nonhumans in such a way that these activities are rendered morally unproblematic. One way to do this is to view other animals as utterly different from us."

"Of course, nothing can be said to argue that people are morally obliged to accept this ethic, for to do so would be inconsistent with the ideas that inspired it in the first place. It is an ethic that will be adopted – if at all – by those who find a certain stark beauty in kindness without reward, joy without purpose, and progress without lasting achievement."

"Some people worry that to say we are nothing but matter is to deny that we think or feel. It’s not. The strange fact is that, when suitably arranged, matter thinks and feels."

"Changes in the inhabitants of the earth do not reflect a constant process of improvement in the design of organisms, any more than changes in fashion over the years reflect a constant process of improvement in the quality of clothing."

"One could even argue that our creative endeavours and achievements and small acts of kindness are all the more impressive against the backdrop of a purposeless universe."

"The starting point for evolutionary psychology is the idea that human beings are animals, and that like all animals, we’re products of natural selection. This is true of our bodies, but it’s also true of our minds."