Advantage Quote by Randolph M. Nesse

“I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure that people gain a selective advantage from believing in things they can't prove.”

Randolph M. Nesse

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Advantage Belief Believe Gains I can People Prove Prove it Science Selective

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“[Mood allocates] investments of time, effort, resources, and risk taking to maximize Darwinian fitness in situations of varying propitiousness. High and low moods adjust…

Randolph M. Nesse

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“The current danger for most of us is not the deprivation suffered by our ancestors but an excess of nutrition.”

Randolph M. Nesse

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“The current danger for most of us is not the deprivation suffered bu our ancestors but an excess of nutrition.”

Randolph M. Nesse

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“People are not controlled by some internal calculator that crudely motivates them to maximize their reproductive success. Instead, people form deep, lifelong emotional attachments and experience loves and hates that shape their lives. They have religious beliefs that guide their behavior, and they have idiosyncratic goals and ambitions. They have networks of friends and relatives.”

Randolph M. Nesse

“Darwinism gives no moral guidelines about how we should live or how doctors should practice medicine. A Darwinian perspective on medicine can, however, help…

Randolph M. Nesse

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“Therapists have long known that many depressions go away only after a person finally gives up some long-sought goal and turns his or her…

Randolph M. Nesse

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“Paradoxically, it now is much easier to treat many mental disorders than it is to understand them.”

Randolph M. Nesse

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“Long before there were effective treatments, physicians dispensed prognoses, hope, and, above all, meaning. When something terrible happens-and serious disease is always terrible-people want to know why. In a pantheistic world, the explanation was simple-one god had caused the problem, another could cure it. In the time since people have been trying to get along with only one God, explaining…

Randolph M. Nesse

“Thanks to subsequent years of conversations with evolutionists, especially Williams, and with medical school residents and faculty, he has found that an evolutionary perspective…

Randolph M. Nesse

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“Emotional capacities are shaped by situations that occurred repeatedly in the course of evolution and that were important to fitness. Attacks by predators, threats of exclusion from the group, and opportunities for mating were frequent and important enough to have shaped special patterns of preparedness, such as panic, social fear, and sexual arousal. Situations that are best avoided shape aversive…

Randolph M. Nesse

“Every textbook description of a disease should have, in our opinion, a section devoted to its evolutionary aspects. This section should address the following questions: 1. Which aspects of the syndrome are direct manifestations of the disease, and which are actually defenses? 2. If the disease has a genetic component, why do the responsible genes persist? 3. Do novel environmental…

Randolph M. Nesse

Natural selection involves no plan, no goal, and no direction — just genes increasing and decreasing in frequency depending on whether individuals with those…

Randolph M. Nesse

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Explore all 24 Randolph M. Nesse quotes

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Dogmatists have one advantage: they are poor listeners.

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Next came the Patent laws. These began in England in 1624; and, in this country, with the adoption of our constitution. Before then [these?], any man might instantly use what another had invented; so that the inventor had no special advantage from his own invention. The patent system changed this; secured to the inventor, for a limited time, the exclusive…

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Talented people can predict with great accuracy what's about to happen just a tiny bit ahead of their competitors. It might be two seconds…

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All I ever wanted was an unfair advantage

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Part of the advantage, and part of the result of trying to be a producer and director, are the practical things, you find. It's…

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I was born with a silver microphone in my mouth, and that was an advantage. My father wrote books and was also a great…

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Like funny men, skilled diners are apparently perceived to have an evolutionary advantage.

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For some reason when I decide to pursue something, I never have any fear that it won't happen. I think it's just ingrained in…

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My influences are jazz, blues, European classical music; they are rock music and pop music. So many kinds of music. World music from different…

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Baseball needs to put the steroids era behind it by having and enforcing tough rules against all kinds of artificial advantages, so that spring…

Marvin Olasky

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Daily contact with some teachers is itself all-sided ethical education for the child without a spoken precept. Here, too, the real advantage of male over female teachers,especially for boys, is seen in their superior physical strength,which often, if highly estimated, gives real dignity and commands real respect, and especially in the unquestionably greater uniformity of their moods and their discipline.

G. Stanley Hall