Matt Will
Matt Will
evolution ancient products
Society works not because we have consciously invented it, but because it is an ancient product of our evolved predispositions. It is literally in our nature.
ends
Futurology always ends up telling you more about your own time than about the future.
ignorance discovery bored
A true scientist is bored by knowledge; it is the assault on ignorance that motivates him - the mysteries that previous discoveries have revealed.
zero lying heart
It is not a zero sum game. The simple idea of the gains from trade lies at the heart of the modern and the ancient economy, not the power of capital. There is nothing else to it.
country thinking borders
The message from history is so blatantly obvious - that free trade causes mutual prosperity while protectionism causes poverty - that it seems incredible that anybody ever thinks otherwise. There is not a single example of a country opening its borders to trade and ending up poorer.
falling-in-love people complicated
We consciously decide whether to consider people; we fall in love despite ourselves; we entirely fail to fall in love with people who fall in love with us. It is a mightily complicated business.
sex writing differences
How much more generous it would be if, instead of writing parables about childhood wounds, psychologists were to accept that some differences between the sexes just are, that they are in the nature of the beasts, because each sex has an evolved tendency to develop that way in response to experience.
commodity uniqueness
Uniqueness is the commodity of glut.
ice growing ends
A cumulative change of less than 2°C by the end of this century will do no net harm. It will actually do net good [...] rainfall will increase slightly, growing seasons will lengthen, Greenland's ice cap will melt only very slowly, and so on.
dna four recipes
Genes are biochemical recipes written in a four-letter alphabet called DNA.
average years mexican
The average Mexican lives longer now than the average Briton did in 1955. Infant mortality is lower today in Nepal than it was in Italy in 1951. The proportion of Vietnamese living on less than $2 a day has dropped from 90 per cent to 30 per cent in twenty years. The rich have got richer, but the poor have done even better.
prosperity nostalgic stressful
Prosperity has brought complications. Our lives are busier, faster, more stressful. They're nostalgic for a simpler, slower time.
dream lying book
It is the assumption of this book that there is a typical human nature. It is the aim of this book to seek it. Just like a surgeon, a psychiatrist can make all sorts of basic assumptions when a patient lies down upon the couch. He can assume that the patient knows what it means to love, to envy, to trust, to think, to speak, to fear, to smile, to bargain, to covet, to dream, to remember, to sing, to quarrel, to lie. The 'smile' of a baboon is a threat; the smile of a man is a sign of pleasure: it is human nature, the world over.
forever genetics states
Ecology, like genetics, is not about equilibrium states. It is about change, change and change. Nothing stays the same forever.