"These quirks aren’t accidental, ad hoc, or unsystematic; they’re the products of brain structures whose main purpose isn’t economic rationality, but survival.  Our neuro-anatomy has been shaped by the long process of evolution, changing only slowly over millions of generations.  

"Our behaviors are shaped by our brains.  Some of our behaviors are evolutionarily old and very powerful. The raw forces of natural selection, reproductive success or failure— in other words, life or death— have engraved those behaviors into our very DNA.

"For example, our fear response, controlled by the amygdala, is hundreds of millions of years old.  Our primitive animal ancestors who didn’t respond to danger quickly enough through “the gift of fear” passed fewer of their genes on average to their descendants.

"On the other hand, some of our ancestors, whose fear response was more finely tuned to their circumstances, passed more of their genes to their descendants."

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