Robert Wright
Our deepest emotions, from romantic love to moral outrage, are not signs of higher truth but strategic illusions designed by natural selection to propagate our genes.
Men and women evolved divergent reproductive strategies based on differing biological investments, with males generally seeking mating quantity and females prioritizing partners offering resources and commitment.
Altruism toward family members is a calculated genetic strategy known as kin selection, driving us to make sacrifices strictly proportional to the amount of DNA we share.
Friendships and social alliances operate on a system of reciprocal altruism, where feelings of pity and gratitude function as unconscious accounting mechanisms to ensure profitable exchanges.