伤心桥下春波绿，曾是惊鸿照影来

一到夜里的这个时候，心脏就开始跳得不规则，忽快忽慢的，喘不过气时，就只能猛咳嗽几声。有时，我忍不住想，会不会是那会留下的“病根”呢？

好久没敢听音乐了，当年添置的迷你音响也落了一层细细的灰尘，尤其是搁在上面的那张自己精心刻录的cd.

静静得躺在黑夜里，万家灯火在风雨飘摇的窗外次第熄灭，夜影如墨。细若游丝的音乐轻轻地叩击着鼓膜，想要和你一起在夜色里安静得聆听音乐的念想，想要让歌声替我倾诉心声的渴望，又一点点清晰鲜活起来，苦涩也一点点从心底一直泛上舌尖。

当“一切”响起，我仿佛又看见你在地铁里带着耳机泪流满面的样子，心脏，突然就停止了跳动......

Justice 听后记(5)

第十讲：The Good citizen

Aristotle believed the purpose of polities is:

• shape the character
• cultivate the virture of citizens
• inculcate civic excellence
• make possible a good way of life
  

He thought as a good citizen, you must practice in communities and politics because only during excercising you can discern paritcular features which can't be learned from reading books.

Aristotle's theory of justice is teleological, it is a matter of fit the person with their virtues and excellence to the approriate roles.

Using Casey Martin v. PGA tour case as example，Prof. Sandel helped students to understand deeply that Golf debate is not only a debate of the purpose, the teleological feature, but also the debate about allocation of the honor. If it was allowed to use golf cart in tournament, Golf is no longer viewed as a sports, a competition, instead, it would become a game of skills, an entertainment.

Further, Sandel addressed the contradiction of Aristotle's teleological theory with freedom: Be free is to be independent of any pariticular roles, traditions, conventions. Tie justice to some particular conceptions of goods restricts the freedom of individuals.

第十一讲: Obligations and Loyalties

Aristotle v.s Kant & Rawl on Freedom and Justice:

• Aristotle: We are free insofar as we have the capacity to realize our potential.
• Kant: We are free when we have the capacity to act automonously and capable of choosing our ends.
  
• Aristotle: Justice consists in giving people what they deserve, and a just society is one that enables human beings to realize their highest nature and to live the good life.
• Kant: A just society is to set up a fair framework of rights within which citizens may be free to pursue their own conceptions of the good for themselves.

The comparison between Aristotle and Kant also leads to the communitarian view of self: The self is claimed or encumbered to some extent by history, tradition, the family, the communities, the country.

There are two kinds of moral obligations defined by libertarian:

1. Universal duties that we owe to every human being;
   
2. Voluntary obligations that we acquire by consent, as when we agree to help someone or promise to be faithful to our partners and friends.
   

In additon to the above, Communitarian think people also have obligations of membership, solidarity, and loyalty which are not necessarily based on consent.

Several examples to weigh loyalty over duty are presented in the course, among discussion, most students voted for moral obligations to do more for people who are closer to them, even though it might compete with a universal duty to humanity.

第十二讲：Same Sex Marriage

In beginning, Prof. Sandel summarized: The love of humanity is noble sentiment, but most of time we live our lives by smaller solidarities. This may reflect certain limits to the bounds of moral sympathy, but more important, it reflects the fact, that we learn to love humanity, not in general, but through its particular expressions.

After hosting a heated debate about same sex marriage, after telling the story how the Massachusetts supreme judicial court changed its standpoint in the same-sex marriage case, Sandel concluded that government can't be neutral on difficult moral questions and reasoning about good, about purposes, and ends is unavoidable feature of aruging about justice. Put it another way, it has to figure out the essential point and purpose of moral issues before to reach a just conclusion. In that case, the exlucsive and permanent commitment of the partners to one another is the essential point and purpose of the marriage, therefore, the same-sex marriage is permitted.

Unavoidably, there is persisting disagreement about the good life and about the moral and religious questions in mordern pluralist society. Sandel suggested we can apply the method of moral reasoning which was proposed by Rawls——the method of reflective equlibrium. That is moving back and forth between our considered judgements about particular cases and the general principles we would articulate to make sense of these judgments. In Rawls opinion, a conception of justice is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into one coherent view.

Finally, Sandel told us the aim of this course is to awaken the restlessness of reason, the purpose of the philosophy is by estranging us from the familiar, by unsettling our settled assumptions. Once the familiar turns strange, Once we start to reflect on our circumstance, it's never quite same again.

Justice 听后记(4)

第八讲：What’s a Fair and Deserved?

什么是一个公平的开始？什么才是我们应得的？

这一讲从John Rawls的"veil of ignorance" 理论开始，探讨了收入、财富、机会和资源分配的公平程度。

根据Rawl的理论，一个社会是否公正，取决于社会制度是否是在戴上“无知的面纱”以后制定的。只有在人们不知道自己的年 龄、性别、种族、宗教、智力、社会地位、家庭背景、个人优势和人生目标的情况下，他们所制定的规则才不可能倾向其自身利益，也因此，更客观公正。他的理论 包含三大原则：

1. Equal basic liberties: Everyone should have the same set of basic liberties, including the freedoms of speech and conscience, the right to hold office and to vote for elected officials, the right to hold personal property, and so on.
   
2. Fair equality of opportunity: People with the same natural talents and the same willingness to use them should have the same chances of success, no matter how rich or poor their parents, no matter their sex, or race, or any other social distinction.
3. Difference Principle: There should be no differences in income and wealth, except those social and economic inequalities will work to the benefit of the least well-off.

学生针对人类历史上存在的几种社会财富分配体系，探讨了不公平存在的地方和各种体系的优劣：

• 封建贵族体制: 没有公平的起点，出生的偶然性决定了财富的分配。
• 自由主义体制：纯粹由市场来决定。但家庭背景、成长环境等因素决定了不可能有均等的教育机会，针对146个精英学校的学生家庭经济背景所做的调查表明，仅有3%来自穷困家庭，而70%都来自富裕的家庭。
• 精英领导体制: 看似有公平的起点，面对均等的教育机会，但天赋的差异仍旧决定了不平等的存在。特别需要指出的是：这种制度下，不可否认，个人通过自身努力抵达成功，但真 正起决定性作用的，是个人对社会的贡献结果而不是个人所付出的努力多少，这其中，依旧有与生俱来的才能、优良的家庭环境、运气等各种偶然性因素存在，而这 些并不是个人所能控制并努力就可以获取的，就此而言，成就和财富也并不完全是应得的。
• 平等主义体制：在这种体制下，人们允许发挥自己的天赋并获利，但他们的财富会被再分配，以服务于社会最底层。

Rawls因此在moral desert和entiltments to legitimate expectation之间划下分界线，他的differnence principle就是针对后者而言的。

第九讲：Affirmative Action and Purpose

这一课，从Cheryl Hopwood起诉德州法学院的官司开始，针对“平权行动”展开了激烈的讨论：学校是否有权利在招生时优先考虑少数种族？

赞成和反对的，势均力敌。其中赞成派给出的论据有:

• corrective: 修正不均等的教育背景带来的不平等
• compensatory: 补偿过去的不平等政策带来的伤害和不平等后果。
  
• diversity: 从社会使命的目的出发，为教育注入多元性的元素。
  

反对派则声称个人不应该为自己不能控制的因素而被拒之门外。

接着，亚里士多德粉墨登场，有别于kant和Rawls，他关于公正的理论则是从目的论出发点，其中涉及两个主要因子：资源，以及分配得到该资源的人。亚里士多德认为关于公正的判断应该以终为始，从目的出发，目的决定了资源的分配。

延伸阅读：刘瑜的《谁有特权上大学》，对“无知之幕”、“平权行动”、“程序性正义”及“补偿性正义”均有涉及，而且论述简洁精妙。

Justice 听后记(3)

第六讲：Motives and Morality

此讲，Sandel介绍了哲学家Immanuel Kant关于自由和道德的观点。

首先，自由是与必然相对的，换言之，所谓自由，即你的行动必须是完全自主的，你必须是跟据自己的自由意志，自己设定的规则来行动，而不是被自身的本能、欲望所驱策，不是受限于独裁者的法律，不是被环境所限制的，也不能是被他人诱导的。也就是说，autonomous 和heternomous的区别，为自由确定了界限。

也因此，对kant而言，自由和道德产生了联系。他认为道德不应该取决于行为的后果，而应该取决于初始的意图和行为的动机。也就是说，行为的道德价值，取决于行为的动机是基于自主选择的责任义务所在，还是基于自身的利益计算。Kant 认为，doing the right things for the wrong reason，不属于道德的范畴.

为此，Kant给出了三种对比：

• 关于reason, 你必须仔细区分categorical v.s hyperthetical imperatives: 其中，Kant也给出了两套规则加以区分categorical imperatives
• the formular of universal law
• the formular of humanity as ends
• 关于motive,你必须仔细鉴别duty v.s. inclination
• 关于freedom，你必须根据意愿、决断来界定autonomous v.s heteronomous.

有且只有一种行为，出自categorical imperative的reason, 自主选择的，基于责任而触发的，才是道德的。

听的时候，我不可避免得想起当初和你关于intention和effect的讨论，想起你曾引用的一句话：“A path to hell is paved with good intentions", 我不禁疑惑，究竟是intention更重要，还是effect更重要？我们是否可以因为good motive而不去计较或者原谅bad effect？我们是否可以因为good effect而不去计较bad motives？如果是Kant，他又会如何反驳这句话呢？

此外，有趣的是，在Sandel讲述必须尊重人类，不能以他人为手段来达成自己的目的时，我想起最近刚看到的一篇心理学报道，在该报道中，提到最新的实验结果表明：人类潜意识中有视他人为可利用的工具并加以类别化记忆的倾向。看来，越来越多的证据指向，”人之初，性本恶”哦。

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第七讲：Lying and Principles

According to Kant, white lie is not moral. However, there is moral disticntion between outright lie and carefully evasion from truth, because the latter shows a certain homage and the elemantary respect to the diginity of the law of moral.

According to John Rawls, the principle of justice are the princples that we would all agree to if we were choosing rules for our society and no one had any unfair bargaing power. Based on this, an agreement is only fair when it is made both voluntarily and against a background of equality.

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Justice 听后记(2)

从第三讲开始，Sandel教授离开了功利主义，转向了自由主义这一流派。

第三讲，Freedom to Choose

与功利主义忽视个人权利截然相反，自由主义声称个人的权利是不可侵犯的，人拥有他自己。他们反对政府的家长式作风，反对道德立法，反对财富再分配，认为财富再分配等同于劳力剥削和奴隶制。这其中的代表人物是Robert Nozick。

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第四讲，Natural Rights

这一讲，Sandel从Nozick的观点自然过渡到John Locker的。Locker不是纯粹的自由主义者，他既是自由主义某些观点的支持者，又是反对者。他的两大主张是：

Private property

• The state of nature is a condition we decide to live
• The natural right to life, liberty and property is inalienable rights, we can't give up or take away from anyone else.
• The goverment is limited by the obligation on the part of majority to respect and enforce the inalienable rights, and based on consent.

Consent:

• It is the collective consent in society.
• We are giving our "implied consent" once we decided to live in society
• As long as the rule of law is not arbitrary to take of life, liberty or property-- then it isn't a violation of the fundamental rights of individuals.
• If the majority decides a generally applicable law and if it votes duly according to fair procedures, then there is no violation.

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第五讲：Army system & Surrogacy

这一讲，Sandel触及了consent的限度。围绕美国内战的征兵系统和伊拉克战争的自愿参军方式，Sandel带领学生展开了激烈的争论，并比较了三种军队征兵方式的公正程度：

• Increase pay and benefits to attract more soliders
• Military conscription
• Hire mercenaries

紧接着，针对新泽西州1988年"Baby M"的官司，Sandel要求大家投票表决是否应该强迫这个代理母亲遵守合同，放弃孩子的抚养权。他要求大家为各自的观点辩护并陈述理由，经过激烈讨论，他最后总结，公平有时并不仅仅有双方自愿的承诺和协议即可确保，因为：

• 交易双方，有可能因为地位、经济条件的不对等和环境压力而导致隐性的强迫和不公平的存在；(bargaing power)
• 交易双方，有可能因为信息不对称、不完整，并不完全意识到协议后果而导致事先的许可失去完全的公平性。(equally information)

更进一步，Sandel说明，有些东西是不可以被交易的，因为一旦以金钱来衡量，会去人性化，会被低估本身的价值，譬如尊重、爱、感激、荣誉等等。

To summarize, something can not be bought by money. Merely because conduct purchased by money are "voluntary" and consented do not mean that it is good or beyond regulation and prohibition.

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Justice 听后记(1)

对公平、公正的追求，一直左右着我的人生选择，也为我带来不少困惑。感谢互联网，今日，我有缘能在academic earth上聆听哈佛教授Michael Sandel的“Justice, What's the right thing to do？"讲座，What a Serendipty!

Justice一课，是哈佛史上影响深远也是最受欢迎的课程之一。讲课过程中，Sandel常常先抛出颇具道德争议的案例来拷问学生 的良知，既有假设性的，又有真实发生的，一旦学生给出观点，他会继续追问他们的判断依据和推理过程，然后再改变事件发生的情境和条件，进一步挑战他们的道德底 线。学生往往在不知不觉中被引导入左右为难的困境，难以为继之下，Sandel开始概况、总结与之相关的哲学各流派的观点，引经据典，旁征博引，带领学生重新审视曾经习以为常、不假思索的选 择与道德判断。

在第一讲里，他首先用一个假设性问题——”如果你可以选择，会不会牺牲1个人的生命来挽救另外的5个人？”抛出主题 -The Morality of Mude。其中，发人深省的是，为什么能产生同样后果的不同行为，在不同的情境下会导致不同的选择？是什么道德准则在支配他们做出这样的选择？在师生互动 和脑力激荡后，Sandel水到渠成的说明了这之中其实隐含了两种道德判断(Moral Reasoning)标准:

• Consequentialist: 他们的道德判断是基于行为所带来的后果。 功利主义者属于这一类。
• Categorical: 这一类的道德判断是不管行为所带来的后果优劣，都必须受到一定的权利和责任的限制。一旦某种行为属于这一类别，哪怕它能带来再好的后果，也是不道德的。

紧 接着，他讲述了一个发生在19世纪的真实案例——“海难船员合谋杀死同伴，食其肉饮其血最终生还。” 模拟的学生陪审团中，就存在基于这两种评判标准而做出的不同的虚拟审判。最后，Sandel为大家介绍了功利主义的鼻祖边沁，和他们所宣扬的行事原则：最 大化群体的幸福指数，最小化痛苦总额。

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第二讲伊始，Sandel用福特公司通过比较改善其中一款汽车安全隐患的收益开支后，基于功利主义 的原则做出不作为决定这一事例，进一步提出问题：生命是否有价？如果有价，又该如何计量？是否存在一种通用的统一的衡量价值的手段？该如何衡量群体的快乐 指数？为了大多数群体的利益，是否就可以牺牲少数族群的权利？这些问题其实也间接指出功利主义的三个软肋：

• 将幸福与高兴简单得等同起来。能力、成就、友谊和爱，只有在它们能给人们带来快乐的时候才意味着幸福，否则就不做计量。
• 只要是快乐，不分类别都具备一样的权重。痛苦亦然。
• 允许为多数人而牺牲少数人的利益。

自 边沁以降，反对功利主义的自然不在少数。于是，Sandel又为大家引见了另一位哲学家——J.S.Mil. 身为边沁的朋友和功利主义的忠实追随者，J.S. Mill一直试图修正并完善其中的一些论断，譬如快乐的确有高等和低级之分，譬如如何界定什么是更高层次的幸福等等等等。有趣的是，在试验Mill的界定 标准时，大部分学生都认可哈姆雷特是更高层次的精神享受，但又更愿选择能带来笑声的Simphson影片。这也侧面推翻了Mill关于快乐层次的高下之分 的定义。

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心智探奇

总算是啃完了Steven Pinker的鸿篇巨作——《How The Mind Works》。见识过白云变苍狗，经历过沧海成桑田，困惑过人的言行，在他的引领下一窥人类心智的奥秘，明白人脑是如何工作的，了解行为背后隐藏的动机， 就不失为一种答疑解惑的选择。不过，因为自身的知识储备不足之故，因为是英文原著之故，这次的探索之旅尤显艰难而漫长，却也不虚此行。
　　
认知科学是一门新近发展起来的学科，Steven Pinker是其中的佼佼者，也是备受赞誉的科普作家。读的时候，我折服于他的博学、睿智，就像一个武林高手，在心理学、生物学、语言学、神经科学、人类 学和人工智能各领域之间纵横捭阖、来去自如，观点独到精辟，立论严谨周密，论证独到犀利，例证丰富新鲜，行文汪洋恣肆；浅学陋识的我不得不放慢脚步，常常 需要回过头再读一遍，细细地咀嚼，慢慢地消化。他善用譬喻，能以我们所了解熟悉的，说明我们所不了解的陌生理论，清晰明了。此外，很多看起来似是而非的理 论，到了他的手里，三两下间就被拆解得原形毕露。
　　
Steven从人类心智的标准设备入手，以心智计算理论和物竞天择理论为纲领，条分缕析，说明心智是如何让我们能辨识影像、思考问题的，进 而，他揭示了人类的情绪谜团，详加审视了人类社会关系网络的各个节点，最后，他剖析了人类追求艺术的动机以及思索生命的意义等，通过对无数个“为什么”的 寻根究底，帮助我们理解“基因的自私”并不必然代表生物个体的自私，达尔文提出的复制、变异和淘汰三种机制又是如何决定了人类行为的每一个细节，演变出大 千世界生命现象的林林总总，并最终促进了我们对人类自身的理解。
　　
读的时候，我偶尔也会被Steven“惊世骇俗”的观点吓到，但正如他一再声明的：进化心理学的任务，不是评估人类的本性，而是以最少的心理 学假设，结合生物进化的理论，解释尽可能多的客观事实，将我们所了解的人类本性与我们所掌握的世界是如何运作的知识融会贯通起来，用科学的手段为人类提供 令人满意的洞察力和认知。此书，无关道德判断，仅仅是专注于科学假设、推断、观察和分析。

Notes on 《How the Mind Works》Ch.8 —— The Meaning of Life

In this final chapter, Steven discusses mankind's higher callings: art, music, literature, humor, religion, and philosophy.

Arts:

• Art are fascinating but biologically functionless activities, they are nonadaptive by-products based on the critieria for biological adaptation.
• People pursue the arts because that art is the proof of status.
• People evolved pleasure-circuts that gave them trickles of enjoyment from the art.

Music: As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless. Then why music is pusued? Steven suspect that music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of at least six of our mental faculties.

• Language: Music has been called "heightened speech," and it can literally grade into speech.
• Auditory scene analysis:When we hear harmonically related tones, our auditory system is satisfied that it has successfully carved the auditory world into parts that belong to important objects in the world, namely, resonating soundmakers like people, animals, and hollow objects.
• Emotional calls: melodies evoke strong emotions because their skeletons resemble digitized templates of our species' emotional calls.
• Habitat selection: some of the stripped-down figures and rhythms at the heart of a melody are simplified templates of evocative environmental sounds.
• Motor control: Repetitive actions have an optimal rhythm which is the universal component of music. We get moderate pleasure from being able to stick to constant rhythmic pattern, Music recreates the motivational and emotional components of movement.

Movie/Literature:

• provide delight
• simulate a triumph over tragedy.
• give obvious strategic advantages in the games of life: gossip is a favorite pastime in all human societies because knowledge is power.
• supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them.

Humor:

• Laughter is a form of communication: it is noisy not because it releases pent-up psychic energy but so that others may hear it.
• Laughter is involuntary for the same reason that other emotional displays are involuntary: The brain broadcasts an honest, unfakable, expensive advertisement of a mental state to convince an audience that an internal state is heartfelt rather than a sham.
• Laughter is a signal of mock aggression
• Humor is often a kind of aggression.
• Humor is also a prized tactic of rhetoric and intellectual argument.
• Humor begins with a train of thought in one frame of reference that bumps up against an anomaly: an event or statement that makes no sense in the context of what has come before. The anomaly can be resolved by shifting to a different frame of reference, one in which the event does makes sense. And within that frame, someone's dignity has been downgraded.
• What is humor for:
• Humor can be an anti-dominance weapon.
• Dominance is impotent before a mob who are united by humor.
• Humor is an effective weapon that forces people, at least for a moment, to agree to things they would otherwise deny.
• Kidding is a precision instrument for assessing the kind of relationship one has with a person.

Religion:

• Religion is a desperate measure that people resort to when the stakes are high and they have exhausted the usual techniques for the causation of success—medicines, strategies, courtship, and, in the case of the weather, nothing.
• Religious concepts are human concepts with a few emendations that make them wondrous and a longer list of standard traits that make them sensible to our ordinary ways of knowing.
• Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

Philosophy:

• Some philosophical enigmas baffled human for millennia like:
• consciousness in the sense of sentience or subjective experience
• the self
• Free will
• meaning
• Knowledge
• morality
• Our thoroughgoing perplexity about these enigmas may come from a mismatch between the very nature of these problems and the computational apparatus that natural selection has fitted us with.
• Our bafflement at the mysteries of the ages may have been the price we paid for a combinatorial mind that opened up a world of words and sentences, of theories and equations, of poems and melodies, of jokes and stories, the very things that make a mind worth having.
• Philosophers try to clairfy these problems, chip off chunks that can be solved, and solve them or hand them over to science to solve.
• The computational aspect of consciousness (what information is available to which processes), the neurological aspect (what in the brain correlates with consciousness), and the evolutionary aspect (when and why did the neurocomputational aspects emerge) are perfectly tractable, thus can help us make progress and eventually reach a complete understanding.

白发如新——《认得几个字》

认字有盲点吗？
　　
张大春的答案是：有。他用89个俯拾即是的例子告诉我们：穷尽我们之一生，未必能有机会完完整整地将听过，说过，读过，写过几千万次的某个字 认识透彻。常常地，我们以为我们已经认识的人，了解的字，明白的意义会忽然以陌生人的姿态出现，吓我们一跳。而之所以误读，误写，误以为是，是我们对于认 字这件事想得太简单，用字遣词或不知不解得人云亦云，或不求甚解得望文生义，或一知半解得浅尝辄止；这其中，固然有文字在长期演化变迁中的意义流失，面目 全非之外因，更有我们自己的诸多内因之故：有懒惰懈怠造成的轻率遗漏，有随波逐流引起的积重难返，有缺乏好奇心导致的囫囵吞枣，不知为知之。
　　
读此书前，我知道自己因生性一向疏懒之故，读书不愿多翻字典，满足于浅表之见，识字肯定不算多；读完此书，背上一片微凉，从此以后，不敢妄称 识得几个字。所幸，闻道虽迟，知耻而后补之永远不嫌太迟，自今起，不妨学做有心人，上书山，下辞海，追根朔源，探究曾经习以为常的字词背后的文化故实，即 便不能与字词倾盖如故，也断断不能白发如新。
　　
此外，捧读之际，张大春膝下一双垂髫小童，惫赖模样，跃然纸上，稚言趣答，让人忍俊不禁；他的舔犊之情深，教育之用心良苦，流转于字里行间，让人心有所动；他父亲的”遗士“风范，他的孺慕之情，父与子的吟唱作答，父爱的浸润传承，让人心有所感。
　　
此书，的确如阿城之言，是有体温的。

Notes on 《How the Mind Works》Ch.7 —— Family Values

This chapter is about the psychology of social relations. It explores the distinct kinds of thoughts and feelings about kin and non-kin, and about parents, children, siblings, dates, spouses, acquaintances, friends, rivals, allies, and enemies. Meanwhile, several controversial opinions and ideas are discussed and presented, which should be cautiously seperated from the morality's standpoint. When you finish this chapter, you will know, in short, people's social motives are strategies that are tailored to the tournaments they play in.

The characteristics of Kinship:

1. Kinship is digital: you are either kith of somebody or not, can't be in between.
   
2. kinship is a relation.
3. kinship is topological: Everyone is a node in a web whose links are defined by parenthood, generation, and gender.
4. kinship is self-contained.

The theory of parent-offspring conflict：

• In essence it is sibling rivalry: siblings compete among themselves for their parents' investment, whereas the parents would be happiest if each accepted a share proportional to his or her needs. Put into another way: children want to take more than what their parents want to give.
• It offers a straightforward explanation to Opedial complex & Electra complex: Delay the day of their baby brother or sister coming by competing with fathers for their mothers' attentions.
• It also subverts the biology-culture distinction theory: Personality is not a product of socialization by parents, actually, it is proved that about 50% of the variation in personality has genetic causes.

Why is there sex to begin with?
The best theory is that sex is a defense against parasites and pathogens: Sexual reproduction is a way of giving its offspring a head start in the race against the germs.

The cause of sex differences --the theory of parental investment: The greater-investing sex chooses, the lesser-investing sex competes.

1. Male competition for access to females
2. Female choice in males: men vary in their ability and willingness to invest in their children

Why people developed marriage?

1. Men and women live together in large groups, men need to compete for sexual access to women
2. Men invest in their offspring, women need to compete for men's ability and willingness to invest
3. In marriage a man and woman form a reproductive alliance that is meant to limit demands from third parties for sexual access and parental investment.

From reproductive success point of view:

• A part of the male mind should want a variety of sexual partners to increase reproduction.
• Another part of the male sexual mind is an ability to be easily aroused by the faintest hint of a possible sex partner.

Polygyny v.s Monogamy:

• Inequality has allowed a kind of polygyny to flourish.
• Under polygyny, men vie for extraordinary Darwinian stakes—many wives versus none.
• Marriage arrangements are usually described from the man's point of view, not because the desires of women are irrelevant but because powerful men have usually gotten their way.
• Polyandry is vanishingly rare. It only happens in very harsh environments, but the arrangement collapses when conditions improve.
  
• In a freer society polygyny is not necessarily bad for women, on financial and ultimately on evolutionary grounds, a woman may prefer to share a wealthy husband than to have the undivided attention of a pauper, and may even prefer it on emotional grounds.
• Legal monogamy historically has been an agreement between more and less powerful men, not between men and women.
• Laws enforcing monogamy would work to women's disadvantage.
• Rootcause: a single difference between the sexes--men's greater desire for multiple partners.

The sex difference in adultery/jealous:

• A woman has an affair because she feels that the man is in some way superior or complementary to her husband.
• A man has an affair because the woman is not his wife.
• Women should squirm at the thought of their husbands or boyfriends giving time, resources, attention, and affection to another woman.
• Men should squirm at the thought of their wives or girlfriends having sex with another man.
• Women's jealousy appears to be under the control of more sophisticated software, and they can appraise their circumstances and determine whether the man's behavior poses a threat to their ultimate interests.
  
• Men's jealousy is cruder and more easily triggered.
• men may be upset about affection because it could lead to sex;
  
• women may be upset about sex because it could lead to affection.

Status:

• Status is the public knowledge that you possess assets that would allow you to help others if you wished to.
• The psychology of status was driven by four "pecuniary canons of taste":

1. Conspicuous leisure
2. Conspicuous consumption
   
• It is counterintuitive because squandering wealth can only reduce it, bringing the squanderer down to the level of his or her rivals. But it works when other people's esteem is useful enough to pay for and when not all the wealth or earning power is sacrificed.
• It works when only the richest can afford luxuries.
• People at the top of social ladder try to look different from the people below them.
• People try to mimic and look like the people above them.
• The style trickles downward from upper classes to lower leads to the fashion.
3. Conspicuous waste
4. Conspicuous outrage.

Friendship:

• Cooperativeness can evolve when the parties interact repeatedly, remember each other's behavior, and reciprocate it.
• The point of friendship, in evolutionary terms, is to save you in hard times when it's not worth anyone else's trouble.

War:

• War is a game that benefits men (natural selection favors traits that increase fitness on average) more than women.
• The coalition acting together can gain a benefit that its members acting alone cannot, and that spoils are distributed according to the risks undertaken.
• Men are willing to fight collectively only if they are confident of victory and none of them knows in advance who will be injured or killed.
• People's mind is equipped to volunteer for a risk of death in a coalition but only if we do not know when death will come.