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Michael Mills's avatar

I once got a Facebook friend request from Trivers out of the blue. I was gobsmacked. Why? I never met him or had any correspondence. I quickly accepted the invitation by arguably the 3rd most important theorist in evolutionary psychology, after Darwin and Hamilton.

You described well the roller coaster ride of being his graduate student. I would have liked to have met him in person, but only if he had been in a pleasant mood...

Cynthia Aronoff's avatar

A beautiful tribute to a perfectly imperfect man.

Robert lynch's avatar

Yep. We are all broken. Bob was too. But he was a giant too.

Robert lynch's avatar

Thanks for reading it Ray. Turns out there was more to Bob than a couple of stupid emails to Epstein.

Raymond Hames's avatar

Right, he was a complicated man. Perhaps his problem was that he was a candid human.

Dan's avatar

Thank you for this tribute.

Len Layton's avatar

Yes Trivers was a brilliant man. I enjoyed “The Folly of Fools” very much even though he beat around the bush on self-deception’s role in sexual And it’s a pity that he spent so much time with Epstein.

Robert lynch's avatar

I don't think he spent that much time with Epstein. He was never great at writing grants and had trouble getting funding for his research and Epstein was interested in evolutionary theory so he paid for some of Bob's research (not much -- maybe 40k). But regardless of thar relationship what's really a shame is that our culture is more focused on some dumb emails than his extraordinary insights into human behavior. Curious what you mean by him 'beating around the bush' regarding self-deceptions role in sexual selection