#biology #book [[Biology/Evolution/Red Queen]] <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16176.The_Red_Queen" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1432490063l/16176._SX98_.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16176.The_Red_Queen">The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3151.Matt_Ridley">Matt Ridley</a><br/> My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3445971248">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br /> Understanding biology is an ultimate helper for day-to-day survival, whether at low, micro-level or at higher levels, macro-levels such as behaviours related to sex.<br /><br />According to nature, the purpose of life is to have sex, making the study of sex quite interesting.<br /><br />It's an illusion that sex are equals, men learnt to hunt while women learnt to raise children, doesn't mean one is better than the other and there is no such thing as "better" anyway.<br />"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"<br /><br />Nature has learnt that specialization is the optimal way to process data: end-to-end RNA -> DNA for storage, protein for computation.<br />Humans technical revolutions have been happening thanks to work specialization.<br /><br />"Every creature on earth is in a Red Queen chess tournament with its parasites (or hosts), its predators (or prey), and, above all, with its mate"<br /><br />Nature has learnt that distributed, resilient, autonomous systems are the most optimal to host and evolve genes.<br /><br />Monoculture is unnatural, dangerous for the human, opposite of ecosystems.<br /><br />"To summarize the argument so far, evolution is more about reproduction of the fittest than survival of the fittest"<br /><br />"By I.6 million years ago, when Homo erectus was living in Africa, he was without question the most carnivorous monkey or ape the world had ever known".<br />Yet in modern day, eating meat is evil, can we human be healthy without meat ?<br /><br />"Marriage is a child-rearing institution"<br /><br />"men are more likely to be tempted by an opportunity for casual sex than women"<br /><br />Monogamy is a decent heuristic to make sure your genes will flow through generations. Assuring the female will rear the children, assuring the male will help.<br /><br />The more you understand biology, the more you understand that we are deterministic machines.<br /><br />Matt Ridley write amazing simple and popularized biology and sex is a very important topic. <br/><br/> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/103091881-louis-beaumont">View all my reviews</a>