Matt Ridley: The Red Queen

Human nature = the shared peculiarities of being human. 

There are very few features of the human psyche which can be understood without reference to reproduction. 

This is because there is no way for evolution to work other than by competitive reproduction. 

Those that reproduce persist, those who do not reproduce die out. 

We are all one close family of Homo Sapiens who lived in Africa until 100,000 years ago, and we all share the nature of that beast. 

Sex causes the differences between individuals but ensures that those differences never diverge far from the golden mean for the whole species. 

Sex mixes together the genes of two people and discards half the mixture. 

Only 7% of the genetic differences between two individuals can be attributed to the fact that they are of a different race; 85% of the genetic differences are attributable to mere individual variation. 

Ex. A Hungarian farmer and his neighbor are 12x more genetically different than the average Hungarian farmer’s genotype and the average Peruvian villager’s genotype. 

The basic asymmetry of the genders creates two different natures for the genders, each suiting the role of the gender. 

Every member of the opposite sex is a potential source of genes for your children. 

We are descended from only those people who sought the best genes, and we inherited the tendency to seek such preference. 

This is why if you spot somebody with good genes, you are attracted to them—the healthy, the fit, the powerful, the symmetrical. 

The greater the degree of complexity of a behavioral pattern or psychological attitude, the more it implies a design for a function. 

This is in the same way that the complexity of the eye implies a design for a function—whether its seeing it taking in stimulus, there was function it was created for and a function it is used for now (exaptation). 

The Red Queen Problem: the faster you run, the more the world moves with you and the less you make progress. 

To History, Progress is a Sisyphean struggle to stay in the same relative place by getting even better at things. 

The Red Queen is especially hard at work among predators and their prey and males and females of the same species. 

Ex. Seals evolve to become more wary, less susceptible to stalking polar bears. Then polar bears evolve to become white, so they can sneak up on seals more effectively, and the evolutionary advantage of more wary seals has been crossed out. 

Between mates, the equilibrium is between cooperation and exploitation. 

Husband and wife want to cooperate to have the best for the other. But they want it so they can something from the other; the man wants his wife to produce children for him; the woman wants her husband to help her rear the children. 

“Successful” marriages are more cooperative, unsuccessful ones are more exploitative. 

History is a careful balance of cooperation and conflict. 

Sec is a cooperative venture between two rival sets of genes. 

Sexual selection: it is the goal of an animal not just to survive, but to breed. 

Because of this, anything that spreads reproductive success will spread at the expense of anything—even if it threatens survival. 

A corollary is that men have evolved to live dangerously, and compete, because success in battle or sports lead to more or better sexual conquests and more surviving children. 

Women who live dangerously put at risk those children which they already have. 

Female beauty correlates to female reproductive potential, as beautiful women are usually young and healthy compared to older women, and the young woman has a longer reproductive life ahead of her. 

 Sex = genetic mixing (recombination and outcrossing)

Interesting: evolution happens, it is not a purpose. 

Sometimes it makes an animal more complicated, sometimes it makes them simpler, sometimes it changes them not at all. 

The Coelacanth looks exactly like its ancestors 300 million years ago, it has not broken any laws by not evolving. 

Man’s intervention to breed dogs into Chihuahuas and St. Bernards shows the other side of the coin: evolution was not going as fast as it could. 

We use our intellects not to solve practical problems but to outwit each other. 

Our brain did not develop to catch the wooly rhinoceros, but to deceive people, and to detect deceit. 

It doesn’t matter how clever and crafty you are, just that you are cleverer and craftier than other people. 

Species do not fight species in the way that nations battle other nations. Instead, members inside the species, individuals, fight each other. 

Collective effects can flow from the actions of self-interested individuals. 

Fascinating: some things are the way they are for accidental reasons.

Muller’s ratchet:

10 water fleas in a tank, only 1 of which is entirely free of mutations. Only 5 fleas manage to breed before they are eaten by a fish, so the perfect flea has only a 50% chance of breeding. 

Once the perfect flea is dead, the only way that combination of genes can be recreated is by an mutation in a mutated flea to revert the initial mutation. 

Since the chance of survival is only 50%, this random loss of certain lines will lead to a greater and greater number of defects, since a defective flea having 2 defects is more likely than the mutation reversing the first defect. 

It’s like a ratchet that turns one way but can’t turn back. 

The only way to prevent the ratchet from turning is to have the perfect flea have sex and pass its defect free genes to other fleas before it dies. 

Sex has a rejuvenating effect: according to Bell, it enables organisms to drop all the accumulated errors. 

The ratchet has the greatest effect in small populations (<10 billion) and in large organisms (dogs, humans). 

Therefor, being sexual was a prerequisite for being big. 

Sex segregates insidious insertions (whole chunks of DNA that jump into the middle of genes) into single individuals, who die, and get purged from the population. 

Sex also creates the very best and the very worst. Sex makes a few of your offspring exceptional and a few abysmal, whereas asex makes them all average. 

In a saturated economy, it pays to diversify. On a harsh mountaintop where the population cannot reach capacity, asexual reproduction is enough. 

In a population 50% sexual and 50% asexual, the asexual group will quickly out reproduce the sexual group. 

However, once parasites are introduced, the asexual group loses its advantage. 

The thing that kills/prevents organisms from reproducing is usually predators, parasites, or competition, not the physical environment. 

Red Queen returns:

The genes that defended you so well in the last generation may be the best of reasons to abandon these same gene combinations in the next. This is because the parasites will have surely evolved an answer to the defense that worked best in the last generation. 

The bigger the lead of one group, the harder the other tries to catch up. 

Interesting: Are parasites inevitable in every system?

Even in computer systems, viruses proliferate and process copies of themselves into new hosts. 

Wild if true: in sex allocation for creatures who take care of their young, a successful son gives you far more children than a successful granddaughter. Therefor a son is high-risk high-reward. So if a mother is in good condition, she is more likely to produce a successful offspring than a feeble one, and the likelihood of being male increases. 

Presidents and aristocrats have a higher sex ratio of males than females. 

Parents in good condition have male-biased litters and parents in poor condition have female-biased litters. 

Interesting: there is a close relationship between social status and the degree to which sons are preferred. 

Sons used to inherit the social status of the house, while women used to leave the house. 

In feudal times, lords favored their sons, but peasants favored their daughters. 

Sexism is more a feature of elites than the masses. 

A poor son is often forced to remain single, but a poor daughter can still marry rich. 

Much of human nature can be explained by sexual selection. 

Sexual selection is the idea that, even if a mediocre mate would do, you would want the best possible mate so that your offspring will receive the best possible genes. 

Since females invest more in their offspring, they are more selective in mates. They want quality. 

Men have more time to find more mates, so they are more interested in quantity. 

Females often follow one another to make up their mind. 

Females prefer a male who has been courted by a female to one who has not. Males will frequently mate several times in a row, or not at all. 

Sexual selection criteria: symmetry. 

Animal’s bodies are more symmetrical if they were in good condition growing up. They are less symmetrical if they were stressed while growing. 

When a man wants to seduce a woman, he shows, he doesn’t tell. 

He sends her roses on her birthday, he doesn’t tell her over and over how thoughtful he is. 

He does not send her his doctor’s report, but lets slip that he runs twenty miles a week and he never gets colds. 

Good gene ornaments are selected for the longest: those which reflect health (signals disease-resistant offspring)

Mankind is polygamous for the powerful, monogamous for the less so, and the least powerful are celibate. 

Wow:

Lesbians usually have fewer than ten partners in their lifetime. 

75% of gay males in SF study had more than 100 partners. 

Male homosexuals act out male tendencies completely unfettered by women.

Ridley believes that heterosexual men would have more sex with new people, like homosexual men if they could. 

Homosexual men behave like men, only more so; homosexual women behave like women, only more so. 

1 million years ago, people inhabited grasslands, hunted animals for food, and foraged fruits and seeds. They were highly social within each tribe and hostile towards others. This is the “environment of evolutionary adaptedness”

Key takeaways:

1. We are intelligent due to the need to outwit and dupe and cooperate and teach each other. 
2. We are designed to be adaptable. 

Wealth, cunning, political skill, and experience lead to power among men. 

Interesting: war could be about scarce resources or territory, but it is usually about sex. 

The pair member who bears the offspring seeks to monopolize the pair for the duration of rearing or their life, to gain assistance in rearing the offspring. 

Adultery may have played a big part in shaping human society because there have often been advantages to both sexes from within a monogamous marriage in seeking alternative sexual partners. 

A female swallow needs a husband who will help her look after her young, but by the time she arrives at the breeding site, she might find all the best husbands taken. 

Then she will mate with a mediocre husband and have an affair with a genetically superior neighbor. 

Females have affairs with more dominant, older, or more attractive men who are other women’s husbands, they do not have affairs with bachelors (presumably rejects). Ideally a handsome lover and a wealthy husband. 

Sexual jealousy seems to be an unavoidable part if being a human. 

Fascinating: love and jealousy are two sides of the same coin. 

If they are not jealous when I pay attention to someone else, they signal that they no longer care if our relationship survives. 

Psychologists have found that couples who lack moments of jealousy are less likely to stay together, even if jealousy is correlated with low self esteem and emotional neediness. 

Men and women have different bodies: the differences are a direct result of evolution: women’s bodies evolved to suit the demands of bearing and rearing children and of gathering plant food. Men’s bodies evolved to suit the demands of rising in a male hierarchy, fighting over women, and providing meat to a family. 

There are three men before you. All have slightly different traits. One is more aggressive, one is passive, and one seeks to compromise. Depending on the conditions, one will mate with you. Say we have 3 kids. Each kid will have half of my genes and half of your genes. Those genes will get passed on. The process repeats thousands of times. Certain genes will be selected for and certain genes will be selected against. This is pure Darwinism. What are the repercussions?

There are two. First is physical; second is cognitive. First, men are selected to be taller, better at hunting, better at fighting off other male competitors. Women evolved to have wider hips, gather food, empathize with their young. Second, heuristics emerge. Most are the same between genders. These are things like substituting a more easy to answer question when you need an answer quickly to a difficult question. However some differences remain, like spatial reasoning, because men had to hunt and bring back meat, while women would usually stay with the children and only leave to forage nearby. Men evolve to have more violent natures and women to have more nurturing natures. Mental differences are caused by genes that respond to testosterone. The normal brain is female. If male, it is altered. 

Baldwin Effect - people specialize in what they are good at and so create conditions that suit their genes. 

Men who preferred to marry younger had more children and less step children. Therefore, men pay attention to health and youth and attractiveness. Women pay attention to wealth, power, and attractiveness. Both sexes value intelligence in a long-term mate, but less so in a fling. 

Interesting: the romance novel and pornography represent the respective utopian fantasies of the two sexes. 

Pornography is marketed mostly to men (sexual variety, appearance, sounds); romance novels mostly to women (love, commitment, nurturing, the emotional reaction to tactile things during sex, the man’s character). Both place emphasis on the story of meeting and the emotional charge from the context of the relationship.

Fascinating: before birthdays age could have been inferred through beauty - guessed by signs which decay with age—firmness of breasts, color of hair, narrowness of waist. Good male judges of beauty left more descendants than bad?

Women find self-assurance, optimism, decisiveness, intelligence, and ambition attractive. These are the traits that cause men to rise to the top of their profession. They are clues to future status. 

Good female judges of character left more descendants than bad?

Ornaments signal status: armani tie, mercedes benz. Seniority, ability to engage in conspicuous consumption. 

Interesting: women care more about clothes and men care less, but instead of influencing the opposite sex with their concerns, they influence their own. 

Each gender uses its own preferences to guide its behavior. 

Men care about physique because it signals health; they tend to overestimate how much women care about physique and work out more. Women think men care about status cues more than they actually do. 

We measure our own relative desirability from other’s reactions to us.