#select

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 is that the organism be left under the impression that we've helped; the impression alone is enough to bring the reciprocation. ↗

— Robert Wright

#evolution #natural-selection #reciprocity #nature

It looks as if the offspring have eyes so that they can see well (bad, teleological, backward causation), but that's an illusion. The offspring have eyes because their parents' eyes did see well (good, ordinary, forward causation). ↗

— Steven Pinker

#evolution #natural-selection #teleology #nature

I hope you find someone you can't live without.I really do. And I hope you never have to know what it's like to have to try and live without them. ↗

— Kiera Cass

#the-selection #america

America Singer, one day you will fall asleep in my arms every night. And you'll wake up to my kisses every morning. ↗

— Kiera Cass

#america

Ah yes, now you’re beginning to feel it. It’s so satisfying to see my best efforts coming to fruition. Undoubtedly one of the most gratifying rewards of my profession. It would warm my heart—if I had one. ↗

— Jaye Frances

#ebooks #fantasy #fiction #jaye-frances #kdp-select

The difficulty of looking at a system like natural selection if you have any sort of moral sense yourself, is almost what makes it beautiful. ↗

— Paul Bettany

#any #beautiful #difficulty #like #looking

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#complexity #cumulative #evolution #existence #explaining

How does a pansy, for example, select the ingredients from soil to get the right colors for the flower? Now there's a great miracle. I think there's a supreme power behind all of this. I see it in nature. ↗

— Clyde Tombaugh

#colors #does #example #flower #for example

Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection. ↗

— Vernor Vinge

#adapt #case #faster #inventions #make

What an odd time to be a fundamentalist about adaptation and natural selection - when each major subdiscipline of evolutionary biology has been discovering other mechanisms as adjuncts to selection's centrality. ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#adaptation #been #biology #centrality #discovering