If deceit, he wrote, "is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray-by the subtle signs of self-knowledge-the deception being practiced." Thus, the idea that the brain evolved to produce "ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naive view of mental evolution." We've evolved, in other words, to delude ourselves so as better to fool others-all in the service of the great game of propagating our genes.Via aldaily. Will Wilkinson mentions him, too.
Wednesday, March 30
Delusional
The evolutionary revolutionary by Drake Bennett includes a passage from Robert Trivers' introduction to Richard Dawkins's "The Selfish Gene."
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