And even where I am wrong about human nature, I am not wrong that there is such a nature to be sought. - Matt Ridley

Reproducing sexually must improve an individual’s reproductive success or else sex would not persist. It is increasingly hard to understand how human beings came to be so clever without considering sexual competition.

People are attracted to people of high reproductive and genetic potential—the healthy, the fit, and the powerful. The consequences of this fact, which goes under the name of sexual selection, are bizarre in the extreme.

Genes do indeed behave as if they have selfish goals, not consciously, but retrospectively: genes that behave in this way thrive and genes that don’t don’t.