Some points of clarification (retyped from a bunch of my replies below): The central thesis of the video (which I said twice) is quite broad - *science can never be separated from politics.* And this is the problem with Dawkins referred to in the title - he believes the two can be separated. As to whether Dawkins should have written the book or not, that is a trickier question that is harder to answer. In light of my argument, Dawkins should have at least been more mindful of the potential political implications of his book. That doesn’t mean he’s completely to blame for Nazi’s using the book for their own purposes, but he does have some partial culpability. For one, we live in a capitalist society (at least most of us do) where Hobbesian arguments are common to justify the system we live under. “Humans are just innately selfish and therefore socialism would never work” is a *very* common argument. The Selfish Gene gives seeming solid empirical justification to that. Margaret Thatcher (‘there is no alternative’) and Mary Midgley (see in-video quote 7:49) certainly thought so. It is not beyond comprehension for Dawkins to think that the book could be misused to justify these purposes and Dawkins shouldn’t have been as naive as to think that his book and these arguments would remain completely separate. Ok fine, let’s say Dawkins admitted that kin selection theory could have poor political consequences, what then? Should he have still written the book? I’m not sure. I don't pretend to provide an answer here. But using hindsight, here are two suggestions for how the book could have been rewritten to avoid such ghastly political outcomes: 1. *Emphasise other scientific perspectives.* Dawkins’ kin selection is an extremely narrow view of life. In fact, it says nothing about what organisms are really like it’s too focussed on genes. It can’t tell you anything about the molecular details of the cell or how an embryo becomes an adult or how life ended up with genes in the first place. You need different fields of biology for that where selfish genes don’t exist anymore. So once we contextualise kin selection within the framework of other factors of evolution, it’s not this universal acid anymore of “everything is selfish!!” and the political consequences are then a lot better. 2. *Decrease the use of the selfish gene metaphor.* Yes I know thats the title of the book, but Dawkins writes that he could have easily called it “the cooperative gene”. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but he should have at least been aware of the power of such a colour metaphor. It’s very memorable as the incident with Dawkins’ publisher shows. As Philip Ball writes ( doi.org/10.1038/news.2011.115 ): "We ought to heed the warning of pioneering cyberneticists Arturo Rosenblueth and Norbert Wiener that "the price of metaphor is eternal vigilance." " Dawkins was far from vigilant in his use of the metaphor. Because once you drag the selfish gene metaphor out of its pretty narrow context (which laypeople will definitely do and indeed did) it becomes not only useless, but actively harmful to understanding life. Again, see Philip’s article above for a longer treatment of this issue. Interestingly there is a British/American divide on the interpretation of the book and whether to take the metaphor literally or not. Brits were used to seeing playful metaphors in science writing and willing to go along with the fantasy. See Chapter 3 of Arvid’s book for discussion on this ( doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198862260.001.0001 ). But Americans (and I would say much of the rest of the world) seemed to take the metaphor literally. Is that Dawkins fault? I’m not sure. To what extent are you responsible for how your readers read your work? Again, I don’t provide an answer to that here and my central thesis does not depend on an answer to it. Dawkins was certainly a lot more careful with both metaphors and highlighting alternate perspectives in his second book The Extended Phenotype (TEP). But at that point, the damage had been done and TEP was written for an academic audience not the layperson, so did not reach as high a readership. Hope that clears things up a bit. Jake
If I remember correctly it was the selfish gene where here also introduced the concept of MEMEs. So admittedly he had to be aware of what memes can and will do after introducing them to broader audience. I'm not that familiar with his works, but heard him in a recent podcast with Sean Carroll's Mindscape and it was embarrassing for me (as a molecular biologist) to realize that a physicist (younger than him) has a much broader philosophical grasping of the world than an accomplished and well known (almost epitomised) figure in biology. I got the impression that while Dawkins knows very much he is Not ABLE to see things from many perspectives. I would even consider whether he is sociologically impaired: maybe he was traumatized by some religious notions in his childhood?! His pragmatism seem to verge on bitter cynicism: mentioning domesticated animals grown for food as examples for the utility of eugenics in human societies?! Or is he using radical comparisons to draw ATTENTION to our still biased views about our very nature. That we so easily rationalize our standards toward other animal species: but after all we may not be even that "special" as most of us (more rational peoples) would like to see.
@@Littleprinceleon Yeah he is very “my way or the highway.” And just quietly, every biologist I’ve talked to (at least here in Australia) thinks he’s an arrogant prick who misrepresents what the field is really like. He wrote it in 1976, a quick google should be able to check his age. I think his lack of political awareness has changed little over the years, again as we can see in the Piers Morgan interview which was filmed only a few weeks ago.
@@SubAnima Thanks for the reply and apologies for not having read through the comments more carefully. I have to admit I'm a bit astounded that you are on the fence as to whether Dawkins should have published TSG if he had been more politically astute. Darwin almost didn't publish Origin of Species, under pressure from his wife. Indeed, he was concerned about the potential backlash. Yet the book is possibly the most important work in the last 200 years, notwithstanding the abuse of the theory. TSG as almost as important. The shift of view from egocentric to gene-centric is very instructive. When you talk to people who have had just high school level biology, they are often bewildered by why biology isn't more perfect. You can see this easily, for example, in the transgender debates, or in the anti-vaxxer campaigns. Their views are often shoehorned into their own religious beliefs. TSG undercuts all of that baloney. Dawkins himself has admitted that he probably should have used different terminology, and no doubt his own belief in the primacy of science led him to conclude that all would be OK. But I get a bit of the heebie-jeebies when people talk about the politicization of science. There is little doubt, for example, that the climatologists here in the US have agreed to scale back their warnings in part because of the concern that they would scare people into a state whereby no climate action of any kind could get done, socially or politically. That has had frankly disastrous results. What can I say? Haters gonna hate, regardless of whether you give them ammunition or not. Voter fraud, transgender issues, critical race theory - all of these are non-issues, yet seized upon by unscrupulous idiots for political gain. To me, the word "politics" contains within it the notion that, within a structure, there are ebbs and flows in public policy based on the mutual interactions of disparate groups. When one group simply decides to stuff cotton in their ears, I don't think we're doing "politics" any more.
@atd6573 What is your point? If someone writes a book on the details of how to run a society-wide eugenics operation or how best to destroy civilisation with nuclear weapons, what should we do? Stand by and do nothing because that’s a subjective “worthless value judgement”?
I have to point out a glaring issue in your argument here. It's not just that "scientific facts" influence our political views; it's a two-way street. Our political beliefs often warp our interpretation of empirical data. Take, for instance, the anarchist. Their passion for anarchism and freedom might lead them to cherry-pick instances of cooperation in nature to align with their ideology. Meanwhile, the authoritarian type, hungry for order, may manipulate data to find brutality in nature as a justification for authority and control. But let's not forget a crucial point here - nature itself is neither inherently brutal nor cooperative. These are merely man-made labels with no objective grounding in the natural world.
If the thesis of the video is "science can't be separated from politics", I don't think that "political beliefs warp our interpretation of empirical data" refutes that. I think it rather supports it.
@@SapphFirepersonally, I don't think the thesis of the video is wrong. I think what's wrong is the conclusion that scientist must somehow bare responsibility for the possible political misinterpretations their work could have. How are you supposed to do any useful science, if you're constantly worried about the possible interpretations people could get from your work? Every research that could have at least a hint of a "bad" interpretation wouldn't be followed through, delaying or potentially stopping the development of a branch of knowledge that could have taken us forward as a society.
@@lordk12 when it comes to Dawkins, we are mostly talking about his pop-science books, not his papers, aren't we? I believe that when it comes to interpretation of science communication responsibility should be taken.
@@lordk12 You said something interesting - "how are you supposed to do any useful science, if you're constantly worried..." - That's the key, the *usefulness* of the science. If the main outcome of a piece of research is to, say, fuel a political movement that creates unnecessary harms in the world, you haven't done useful science. I agree that worrying about all possible outcomes would hinder science. But there's a spectrum of responsibility - no person has to worry about the infinite potential outcomes of their choices, just the ones that seem a) likely, and b) harmful. An extreme example: If I wrote a computer science paper methodically detailing how to hack into my competitors' computer systems and steal their data, it would be unreasonable to say "I've only presented empirical facts about the world, I can't worry about every possible interpretation people could get from those facts." When you voluntarily choose a career, you're also voluntarily accepting the responsibilities associated with that work.
@fallacyDetector I don't think that's been omitted, the video states that politics and science are constantly influencing each other - see the diagram at 8:14. I'm positive the creator of this video understand that human beings create their own labels and apply them to the natural world. This point doesn't undermine their argument, imo.
@@RLekhy This guy willfully quote-mined a comment and created his own motivated reasoning sentence. One might consider he could be a fundy religious person. The vid should be called the problem he has with being honest about Dick Dawky. ACTUAL WORDS We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism, something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world (215)."
The problem with scientists becoming overly concerned with political implications, is that they cease doing science, and start producing propaganda. Even if well intentioned, it can stunt the development of fields, lead to unattended consequences and generally lower the tone of what should be a culture of intellectual rigour and integrity to a shouting match between ideologues.
Not only will we lose the science in the propaganda, but it isn't even going to be effective. You can't save crazy from itself by sanitizing science. They'll find a way. It's pompous to believe you can control them like that.
An example is the handling of the climate crisis. Many scientists felt they had to do something beyond just dryly presenting their dire findings to the public. So they warned us that we had to do this and that before such and such date or else... This message could then be turned against its intention by climate deniers who could call it "alarmist" etc.
@@letMeSayThatInIrish I can understand people feeling that way. But I don't for a moment. Think that the opposition to science in the example wouldn't have hesitated a moment before calling it alarmist just the same or coming up with some other silly narrative. I think believing otherwise is just us trying to give ourselves the illusion of control.
@@ahrengroesch8774 I don't know how old you are but in a not so distant past people were much more indifferent about climate change science. They usually didn't held strong opinions about any aspects of the discution and the scients were much more free to argue. However, it is increasingly difficult to do good science the more attention, therefore pressure, your field gets because political interests aren't nescerraly align to the search of the truth.
This is the first video of yours that I am uncomfortable with. What's the take-away? Should Dawkins not have put forward his theory because of possible political implications?
Perhaps he is exposing the flaws, and perhaps irrationality, within a alleged ‘scientific’ proposition that is on the rise in the secular west, and the greater world for that matter.
This is a great question, Jared. Maybe I should have added an extra minute highlighting what the take-aways could be, but I wanted to finish with the quote. Here’s what I would have said: Dawkins obviously cant be held responsible for all of the interpretations of his book. But that doesn’t mean he gets away scot free. We live in a society implicitly familiar with the arguments of Hobbes and the idea that genes have a privileged causative power on biology. Dawkins should have known better how people would misconstrue his argument, given this societal context. He also needs to understand than whenever you write anything, whenever you do any science, it has political consequences. So what could he have done differently? 1. *Emphasise other scientific perspectives.* Dawkins’ kin selection is an extremely narrow view of life. In fact, it says nothing about what organisms are really like it’s too focussed on genes. It can’t tell you anything about the molecular details of the cell or how an embryo becomes an adult or how life ended up with genes in the first place. You need different fields of biology for that where selfish genes don’t exist anymore. So once we contextualise kin selection within the framework of other factors of evolution, it’s not this universal acid anymore of “everything is selfish!!” and the political consequences are then a lot better. 2. *Decrease the use of the selfish gene metaphor.* Yes I know thats the title, but Dawkins writes that he could have easily called it “the cooperative gene”. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but he needs to be mindful that such a powerful metaphor is very memorable. Not only that, but once you drag the selfish gene metaphor out of the kin selection context (which laypeople will definitely do and indeed did) it becomes not only useless, but actively harmful to understanding life. If the metaphor was used more sparingly, this misinterpretation might have been avoided. Here’s a great article by Philip Ball about this: doi.org/10.1038/news.2011.115 Interestingly there is a British/American divide on the interpretation of the book and whether to take the metaphor literally or not. Brits were used to seeing playful metaphors in science writing and willing to go along with the fantasy. See Chapter 3 of Arvid’s book for discussion on this (link in description). But Americans (and i would say much of the rest of the world) seemed to take the metaphor literally. Is that Dawkins fault? I’m not sure and we’re using hindsight here. But he was certainly a lot more careful in his second book The Extended Phenotype. Thanks for the question again. If enough people ask this, I might make it the pinned comment just to clear it up.
@Abc Abc This too though. I fear that many people believe that science just exists beyond politics. It’s very dangerous to think so, as the quote at the end highlighted.
@@SubAnima It seems like two different things; (1) recognizing that science has political implications and (2) asking the scientist to let those political implications inform their work. Here's three concerns. Dawkins isn't a political theorist. It's not what he was trained to do. Even were he to have embedded a political take in his book, it likely would have been weak and ill informed by work already done in the area. Second, by tying a theory to a political philosophy, it creates a mutual dependency where one depends on the other for legitimacy. If one theory fails, the other may fail with it. Is Selfish Gene so good you would want it to be the ground upon which your political philosophy is argued? Is any biological theory? Third, there's a question of whether it would lead to better science if Dawkins tried to force his theory to fit a particular point of view. But I don't think this is merely a hypothetical. Dawkins may not have considered the political implications of his book, but only because he was so focused on the religious implications. What selfish gene gets wrong is wrong precisely because he believes his reductionist approach justifies his atheism. If Dawkins were less concerned about religion, I believe his scientific views would be less dogmatic and narrow. Dawkins justifies atheism on reductionist grounds and is a worse scientist for it.
As another commenter has commented, this video is the only of yours that makes me uncomfortable. I agree with the naiveness of Dawkins to not see the link science and politics can have. But the video gives me the feeling of criticizing Dawkins for showing his research because of how some communities can interpret it. This is a very wrong take from my point of view. It is not Dawkins who should be criticized for showing it, but the people who make an awfully wrong interpretation of it. Dawkins has no responsibility how a community twists the meaning of things to impress a view of the world. (I dont mean to say you don't criticize those who wrongfully interpret the science. You obviously do, and rightfully so). You could say the same thing with natural selection: it can go close with the view of the world that only the strongest is worth it. So disabled people shouldn't be taken care of. I wouldn't criticize anyone defending natural selection because it can help this view of the world. I woudl criticize the people who use that science to tell a narrative. We should try to teach people how to use reason correctly, not criticize those whose arguments are reasoned wrongly.
Dawkins is pretty much responsible for huge chunk of that interpretation you are talking about. You are assuming he is not acting as a political agent and he does, because we all do which is the actual thesis of the video.
I think there's value in your criticism, but I also think we need to consider our audience. When writing for a lay audience, we need to be aware of how our work might be received, especially if there's a chance it might be so badly misinterpreted by those who have not read it. It's not the scientific facts in The Selfish Gene that are up for criticism here. It's the presentation, and that's something he chose. And if it's true that he could have just as easily called it The Cooperative Gene, that raises the question, "Why didn't he given the significant downside to misinterpretation of the selfish gene metaphor?"
@@frostjune6072 ??? what do you mean??? He is a evolutionary biologist, its his job. Are you implying that Dawkins wrote the selfish gene with the intention of giving nazis validation?... or what are you suggesting?
@@lobachevscki define responsible. If book X is read by person Y and person Y commits a terrorist act because of his interpretation of the book. Then i only believe that the author is resposible if that was his intent with the book. However, i feel like you (and the person in the video) would argue that its the author's responsibility to safe guard his book so that noone could ever interpret the book in such a way? "idiot-proofing" the book? I dont like using the word "responsibility" for that. If a person wants to idiot proof their book, they can, im fine with it. I would even encourage it. But i would not chastise anyone for not doing it. I dont see it as an obligation. I myself more enjoy reading things that treats me as an adult rational being that doesnt need to be hand holden for the entire journey.
I mean yeah, you're right in saying that people will use facts to try to back up their "oughts", but the selfish gene view has a lot of explanatory power etc and we can't just ignore the actual facts because it may lead some people to do dumb things with them. I would have hoped that you'd give an alternative way to present the idea of the selfish gene that wouldn't lead to the problems that it sometimes have. The problem is that some facts about the world can be used in attempts to justify awful ideas, so what do we do about that? We can't shape our understaning of reality after our wishes for how we want reality to be. We need more nuance, we need to understand that human society isn't just a reflection of basic biological facts etc. To be clear: I very much don't like a lot of Dawkins bigotry and nonsense.
he is trying to redefine natural phenomenon using a concept shaped through ignorance of that phenomenon. it's like saying you can never be genuinely kind to another person because in the end you're only trying to make yourself feel good by having been kind. the answer to that would be "we know dude, that's what kindness is." and similarly the answer to the "selfish gene" is "of course dude, that is exactly what we mean by altruism." ascribing loaded and antropological terms to nature is dawkins' personal choice, yet he is baffled when his stuff is used as ammunition for bigotry (a category he is fast approaching mind you)
I think the problem lies with extrapolation. The degree and direction matters. You stretch any good idea in an area that is only right on the surface and thus is bound to break eventually. It does not do justice to either the idea or the area.
You can't blame Dawkins for what the nazis do. You can't blame the maker of a knife for murder, even partially, if someone used that knife for murder. Neither can you blame Einstein for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is not a matter of blame but of responsibility for your actions. And of course Einstein can be held partly responsible for the atomic bomb (and Openheimer to a greater extent) even though they were against how they were used. It happens that many scientists are very naive and fail to see beyond their creations and their little egos.
@@psicologiapsicoactiva Blaming means putting on responsibility, this is what you and the show host are doing. You can't hold Dawkins responsible for what others do with his book to any slightest degree. The Wright brothers invented the plane. Are they also responsible for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Are they also responsible for the 9/11 attacks? They didn't see beyond their little egos? If a woman was raped, she's responsible just because she put on the wrong clothes? You can only judge Oppenheimer cuz he invented the weapon that was only intended to kill. Dawkins' book, Einstein's theory were not intended to harm let alone kill anyone and just describe reality. Do not shift the blame from the wrong doer. Nazis are responsible for their interpretation alone.
Absolutely correct. If we allowed the midwits anywhere near scientists we would still be making blood sacrifices for a good harvest and being wiped out by plague every three years. Science is always being persecuted by ideologues whether it's Galileo by the Catholic Church or Dawkins by the trans-cultists. Certain intellects don't have the expanse to understand the necessity of risk to development and progress.
Nazis were NOT individualistic. Were very collectivist. Neo nazis are a little different. Interfering in science because politics, is the opposite of science.
I think the overwhelming majority of people that read the book The Selfish Gene badly misunderstand it in its entirety. I think half of this is due to the fact that we assign negative morality to the word selfish. They fail to appreciate how the word is used in this context. Then, they make wild unjustified extrapolations based on their misunderstanding such as "if genes are selfish then everything is selfish" or "if genes are selfish, then we are all supposed to be bad people" and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The genes in our cells are a layer of our reality that is an emergent property of biology which is an emergent property of chemistry. Chemistry is an emergent property of how atoms behave, which is an emergent property of the layers below that all the way down. The same is true of a person, society, and all the way up. Just as Newtonian physics doesn't make sense at the quantum scale, individual gene selection and survival has little to say about individual moral decisions or any given society's moral climate. Genes which give us feelings which drive behavior we would label as good, moral, or altruistic, were selected for in humans because they lead to better outcomes. FULL STOP. That doesn't mean anything beyond what that is. It simply is. That being the nature of most of our moral feelings and behaviors doesn't tarnish those feelings and behaviors, nor does it mean we are "supposed to" be more selfish. That's simply how that layer of reality works. On the far end of this we have people driven by anger and hate, addicted to their own feelings of judgement, that go through life looking for things to justify their feelings and knee jerk reaction behaviors. Through many layers of abstraction, all of their own self interested creativity, they have decided that The Selfish Gene means something that it doesn't. To say that Richard Dawkins should not have written it because such people exist is absurd. Not Richard Dawkins, nor anyone who creates something, is responsible for how it is interpreted by those that twist anything to suit themselves. I mean my god, are we supposed to all tiptoe through life censoring everything we do and say because someone somewhere might misinterpret it? The book describes how genes proliferate in a magnificent easy for the layman to understand fashion. To blame the author for the existence of those that twist it's message to suite themselves, just as they do with literally everything they encounter, is ridiculous. This is science. We want to know how things actually work. Moral judgements of the ignorant be damned. You're right, you can't separate anything from politics. But to say that we should silence the voice of science, truth, and reason because "maybe the whack jobs will have less crazy fuel" is absolutely ridiculous. You have some very interesting things to say, but I think you are way off the mark on this one.
Thank you for this comment!! I was very tempted to spend time I don't have writing something detailed and thoughtful, making these exact same points. But I don't have to, because you've done it. And very well! 👏
Fully agree, and I think the point about our behaviours being an emergent property of what genes were selected for by evolution but not directly governed by the selfish genes is a crucial distinction. Our behaviour does not have to be selfish just because the evolutionary drivers for the evolution of that behaviour was 'selfish'. I feel like that is skipped over in this video by a somewhat shallow reading of The Selfish Gene.
@@ylhajee that's the thing with every criticism of the book I've heard. They sound like they missed the point of the book like they were too stuck on this preconception to actually comprehend what the author was conveying.
Fine points, but I must have missed the part where the video suggests silencing “…science, truth, and reason…” I think it merely suggests being aware of the political implications of scientific information. I frankly think Dawkins did some of that by suggesting we rise above our nature, but you’re correct, I think, in saying he can’t be responsible for what is made of his work, and shouldn’t be called to carpet for every fascistic extremist touting it. That’s not to defend him, since his work stands alone, and really isn’t properly subject to political analysis. And his errata, though limited to his astonishingly anti-scientific and uncharacteristically ignorant comments regarding transgenderism, has no informed defense.
On the broader moral thesis in the video, I agree that scientists shouldn't be recklessly throwing ideas out there without considering the political implications and potential (net) welfarist consequences. But I question how forseeable those consequences really are. Just because nazis are gonna nazi with new ideas doesn't mean the consequences of the ideas are going to be net-bad - the Selfish Gene had a lot more of an impact than just this, it constituted real scientific progress. Even just bracketting off the political, nazis are always gonna nazi about something, and I don't think that is was obviously forseeable that the net welfarist consequnces of the TSG was going to be negative; I don't think it's even fair to assume that they in fact were. Is there more injustice in the world were TSG was published compared to one where it wasn't? The world is demonstrably less bigotted than it used to be, perhaps TSG had something to do with that as well, via driving greater acceptance of naturalism/secularism. Perhaps I'm assuming a vague & overly permissive net-consequentionalism approach here, but that seems better than taking an "avoid the possibility of doing any specific harms at all" stance, which suggests that interesting ideas should never be published. So yeah, agreed, science can never be separated from politics, but the upshot of that is not clear to me. It's a tall order to expect scientists & philosophers to both do good work and have a degree of political prescience and understanding about the effects of publishing it which we still lack (imho) decades after the fact.
That’s a fair stance, thanks for the detailed comment! However I still disagree primarily because it is such a short path to take from “all life is selfish” to “selfishness is the way things have to be.” No long term political prescience is needed to see that connection being a likely possibility. See the pinned comment for more details.
@@SubAnimaFor you, maybe. Who's to say how long that path was for Dawkins? The first statement is purely biological and refers to evolutionary fitness. The second is a sociopolitical claim. Especially for a biologist, I imagine that leap isn't a particularly obvious one.
@@GlacialScion isn't that a great argument for encouraging scientists to think about and discuss these sorts of things? And for the record, I don't think it's necessarily that far for a biologist or any other scientist to go. I know biologists who are aware of these things, and we did some work on thinking about the ethical implications of our work when I studied engineering. I'd love to see more, but it's a start.
@allanjmcpherson Sure, it seems like a good idea. But you can't just say someone was retroactively being irresponsible because they didn't look at a thing they said in the past with the same perspective as you look at it now.
@@SubAnima Real Nazis are not a threat (not simply MAGA or other things people call "nazis"), and just a bunch of screaming losers. Giving them legitimacy actually makes me suspect of your political motives.
If philosophers misunderstand or misuse science, it is the fault of the philosophers, not the scientists. It is the job of scientists to seek truth, regardless of implications. Don't blame Dawkins.
Are genes selfish? Do they knowingly function only to replicate themselves? Do they consider every situation the organism gets into and then force behaviors that will be best for replication? That was Dawkin's famous metaphor - but that was not "truth", it was a powerful metaphor based on human behavior, not what genes actually do. Genes are not self-aware, they don't make decisions, and they're not independent of the environment the organism lives in. Dawkins was promoting his own interpretation of how genes work - not "truth". His current anti-Trans opinions are, he claims, based on human genetics - but he ignores the entire new field of whole-genome polygenic inheritance, which has shown that every human trait studied so far has had a strong genetic component - including traits like gender and religiousity and curiosity and empathy. Why is pretending that body of research doesn't exist? He's a geneticist, he can't claim that he doesn't know anything about this new subfield.
@@nycbearff "Are genes selfish?" The effect of their functionality serves to promote themselves. "Do they knowingly function only to replicate themselves?" No. Genes are no concsious. "Do they consider every situation the organism gets into" No. Genes cannot consider anything. " That was Dawkin's famous metaphor" Yes. It was a metaphor. Do you know what a metaphor is? Look it up, please. His current anti-Trans opinions are, he claims, based on human genetics" What has Dawkins said that is anti-trans?
Exactly. Hitler or his regime invented the VW and the autobahn. Just because we may think those were good ideas, does not make us Nazis. Hitler twisted Darwinism to justify his beliefs. Although we may disagree with Dawkin's ideas, it is completely unfair to equate Dawkins ideas to Hitler's.
I always thought the selfish gene was a lesson. That this is why we tend toward selfishness and dividing and that because of this we have to actively created more accepting communities to help promote all our strengths.
Same! It is good to look at theories as opportunities for exploration and not as limitations. This type of critical thinking is needed in every field, and helps us have respectable discussions full of curiosity rather than fear.
Actually, the main thesis of the book is that evolution selects the individuals with the most suitable alleles for their current environment and the process is not benign as a whole. So the appearance of selfishness (which of course is a human trait) is on display. Dawkins was careful to point out that this does not mean that human society should be structured that way. The last point has been missed or ignored by many people posting here.
The "selfish" gene was the title of the book NOT a description of the moral outlook of the gene. The point of the book is that organisms have evolved through natural selection. There is no teleology in genes.
'How does he justify the implications of his book?' He doesn't have to. It's a scientists job to discover the true nature of reality and not worry about the implicationa of their discoveries. You should not let political bias cooud your judgement as this channel clearly does. As for the selfish gene and it's implications. Why would we take our morality cues from our genetics. Anyone who follows that principle is inherently no better than an animal who might practice cannibalism or infant mortality. Anyone who thinks about the topic for more than 5 minutes can realise we shouldnt derive morality from evolutionary sound behaviors.
As a sociologist who has spent decades trying to explain to students why they should critique sociobiologists--who make proclamations about human behavior based on Dawkinsesque evolutionary biological beliefs that they deny are beliefs, and who ignore all the work done social scientists who actually study human interactions and behavior--I want to say thank you for this excellent video!
You belong to a discipline that conducts research based on what the sociological implications of that research might be. Dawkins belongs to a discipline which creates models of reality. I'll take Dawkins, thank you.
@@cygnusustusso you take Dawkins's word over social phenomena even when he lacks the expertise for it because you like him more? Sorry, but that is a dumb take
One thing that I think is still misunderstood by the video is what is meant by the statement at 5:39, "our commitment to the science of evolution says nothing about our moral outlook." The quote says that *this specific* area of research says nothing about *their* moral outlook. To me, it doesn't seem to claim that "our" means "all of humanity", but instead, I think they mean just the authors. The moral statement that would be needed to bridge from "genes evolve to favor selfishness" to "we should act selfishly" is the claim "we should act in a way that our actions mirror the processes of nature". In other words, you would be committing the naturalistic fallacy, because said bridging statement is one that people would not grant this easily. A different bridging statement would be "evolutionary advantage is the best way to ensure our survival, and we should strive for survival". But this is even secretly begging the question, as "our" survival could mean anything from the survival of a small group, to the survival of whatever they define as a race of people, to the survival of humanity as a whole. The only way for the bridging statement to lead you to the conclusion "the selfish gene implies that we, as a race, should act selfishly" is that you assume that "we" means "my race", so you've already used racism as a premise. So in short: I'm still convinced that regardless of whether you accept the "selfish gene" metaphor, you would need to add fallacious premises in order to be able to make broad moral conclusions. What the authors did was say that they themselves made no such conclusions.
3:50 I strongly disagree. You should always work towards truth, whether you like it or not. People will anyway abuse any work that happens to support their world view. Scientific facts and ethical considerations are two separated things. If your views are against facts, then you should change the views, facts cannot be changed. Only lied.
5:42. I can't find the highlighted part in my epub version (2006, 30th anniversary edt). Selfish Genes was first published in 1976. Dawkins must have realized his faux pas and removed it later, probably in the 1989 second edition. If so, good for him. Which edition are you quoting from, @SubAnima ?
Third year undergrad bio student from Croatia here. I love your channel, it gives me great joy to see that not all in our field distance themselves from more philosophical topics of our work.
I like the expansion of this channel from mostly (philosophy of) biology into broader important philosophy of science ideas / connections with politics with this video! Great job as always:)
It is evident that he scews towards far leftist ideology. Especially with the media he presents to cover a women's rights activist with the epitaph of anti trans... He should be conscious of his bias as well.
I thought your channel was good. I was just starting a marathon of watching all your videos. I felt something strange, but sensationalism, clickbait titles and thumbs, political proselytism and virtue signalling are pretty common in UA-cam these days, even among my favorite content creators. However, what you are doing is much worse. You are perverting the scientific method and the limits of human knowledge and justifying it with a heavy moral realist basis but leaving your viewers none-the-wiser about your own ideology (making it feel like this critique of Darwin is overwhelming, almost a consensus), trying to pass moral realism as the only absolute truth there is and giving no counter-arguments to your own. You are trying to prove your moral realist stance is the absolute truth, using science to back it when it isn't even near to anything like a consensus or majority among philosophers. You are no different than the inquisitors who sent Giordano Bruno to the stake or Galileo to prison, because, for you, people should only be able to understand reality if it morally and politically servers your agenda. This is highly unprofessional, pseudoscientific and dishonest behavior (considering your own moral stance, I suppose...)@@SubAnima
@@detectordegados5292 something else that's strangely common on UA-cam is people who feel the need to repeatedly post the same comment as if that somehow strengthens their position, or the chances they'll be listened to, when it's actually just annoying. Glad there's no one like that here.
"In the evolution wars and sociobiology debates, Gould and Lewontin had a scientific agenda that they wanted to air publicly - that adaptationist, gene-centered arguments in evolutionary theory can be carried too far, and that much in the history of life can be explained by non-adaptive processes and a multi-leveled analysis of genes, individuals and groups. What better way to do it than to use Wilson as their foil? But who in the general public knows or cares about adaptations, spandrels, contingencies, and other esoterica of evolutionary biology? What the public does understand quite well are Nazis, eugenics, race purification programs, and other abuses of biology of the past century. Thus, sociobiology's critics reasoned, the best strategy is to begin with it's ideological implications - particularly the racist overtones in genetic determinism - to capture an audience, then segue into the scientific arguments about the problem with hyperadaptionism." - Michael Shermer (The Science of Good and Evil, 204.) Page 180 - "The Selfish Gene." - This chapter, and the next in which we discuss conflict between mates, could seem horribly cynical, and might even be distressing to human parents, devoted as they are to their children, and to each other. Once again I must emphasize that I am not talking about conscious motives. Nobody is suggesting that children deliberately and consciously deceive their parents because of the selfish genes within them. And I must repeat that when I say something like 'A child should lose no opportunity of cheating... lying, deceiving, exploiting...' I am using the word 'should' in a special way. I am not advocating this kind of behavior as moral or desirable. I am simply saying that natural selection will tend to favor children who do act in this way, and that therefore when we look at wild populations we may expect to see cheating and selfishness within families. The phrase 'the child should cheat' means that genes that tend to make children cheat have an advantage in the gene pool. If there is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature." - Richard Dawkins.
I think that some clarification is needed. Are you saying that Dawkins should have never written the selfish gene due to its potential political implications? Or, are you saying that what Dawkins' book was lacking is some discussion of the political implications and making the audience aware of other issues, such as the naturalistic fallacy? A very naive interpretation of your video would interpret your message as the former rather than the latter. Incidentally, I think that it would have been good for you to talk about the naturalistic fallacy as a different angle on how science and politics should interact. This is another way of viewing the separation of "is" and "ought to be". And maybe scientists have to do a better job of explaining this to the public.
To clarify, I think my central thesis of the video was clear (given that I said it twice): science can never separated from politics. Ok great, but how then should we view Dawkins writing of The Selfish Gene? That I wanted to leave more open-ended because it would seem impossible to prescribe how to deal with potential political implications of any scientific theory. At a minimum, Dawkins should have been aware of the way in which his book could be interpreted. It's not too hard to see how a 200 page treatment saying "nature is selfish" could have negative political consequences. If he had been aware of that and still wanted to write a book on kin selection then he would have had to do both of the following (copied from a comment somewhere below): 1. *Emphasise other scientific perspectives.* Dawkins’ kin selection is an extremely narrow view of life. In fact, it says nothing about what organisms are really like it’s too focussed on genes. It can’t tell you anything about the molecular details of the cell or how an embryo becomes an adult or how life ended up with genes in the first place. You need different fields of biology for that where selfish genes don’t exist anymore. So once we contextualise kin selection within the framework of other factors of evolution, it’s not this universal acid anymore of “everything is selfish!!” and the political consequences are then a lot better. 2. *Decrease the use of the selfish gene metaphor.* Yes I know thats the title, but Dawkins writes that he could have easily called it “the cooperative gene”. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but he needs to be mindful that such a powerful metaphor is very memorable. Not only that, but once you drag the selfish gene metaphor out of the kin selection context (which laypeople will definitely do and indeed did) it becomes not only useless, but actively harmful to understanding life. If the metaphor was used more sparingly, this misinterpretation might have been avoided. Here’s a great article by Philip Ball about this: doi.org/10.1038/news.2011.115 Interestingly there is a British/American divide on the interpretation of the book and whether to take the metaphor literally or not. Brits were used to seeing playful metaphors in science writing and willing to go along with the fantasy. See Chapter 3 of Arvid’s book for discussion on this (link in description). But Americans (and i would say much of the rest of the world) seemed to take the metaphor literally. Is that Dawkins fault? I’m not sure and we’re using hindsight here. But he was certainly a lot more careful in his second book The Extended Phenotype. I think I will retype this up and make it the pinned comment as there seems to be a little confusion on my intentions with the video. Thanks for the discussion as always Alex.
@@SubAnima I guess he could have de-emphasized the metaphor, but if he did, we may not be talking about his book, not because he would have dodged some philosophical bullet, but because he would not have advanced a bold new way of looking at the world (which for the record I think he over-interprets). In the end it is important that scientists advance new ideas, especially those that challenge orthodoxy and widely held assumptions. Yes, science will end up informing public policy, so it is inherently political, but the error here is not that he failed to water down his message, but to that he could have done more to correct the naturalistic fallacy. If there are truths out there in the world that will make it harder for some to achieve their political goals, the answer is not to bury our head in the sand, but to better understand the obstacles. It would seem to me that the political critics of Dawkins, whom you discuss in your video, are also committing the naturalistic fallacy (as far as I understand it), and thus they stand on shaky ground.
@@SubAnima this is why you’re utterly clueless. Science and politics have nothing to do with each other. Fact, and truth is all that matters, and science is a tool for finding truth. What people might do through misinterpretations of that evidence is separate. It is an entirely separate discussion from the objective truth of the scientific discovery.
7:40 - Could/should. That's an old issue. There certainly are things you can argue that we "could do but shouldn't." We face those simple questions living life every day - there are any number of bad things I go out and do, but I shouldn't and don't want to so I won't. Some of those things might bring me direct benefits. But it gets complicated at the whole-culture level. We became capable of developing nuclear weapons, and we did develop them. Should we have? is a tough question. The bottom line is that someone was going to - would we rather it have been the Nazis? I don't think so. In that sense it "had to be done." Furthermore, even if you could wave a wand and move us into a timeline in which no one had developed nuclear weapons, that's not necessarily a better timeline. Who knows how many conventional wars might have occurred in such a timeline? Mutually Assured Destruction as a policy is easy to poke at, but on the other hand we've managed to never have a nuclear war. We cannot say that we aren't living in the best timeline possible on that front. There's just no way to know. Technology advances, and if a technology is dangerous in some way that's all the more reason nefarious players will want to "go there." The best strategy is to move as quickly as possible on the development of such things, while also being the best "moral players" we can be.
It wants, or it doesnt want, its selfish or just a mechanistic tendency. Who cares ? We should be flexible in our thinking. I dont know how it can be so hard.
I’m here because of a deep respect and admiration of Professor Noble. I only look at numbers. All the surprises look to me like people stretch their brains too much and why should all of these things be tied up to the hard problems
Condemning a scientific theory based on political impact is similar to what the inquisiton did against Galilei, is a destructive thought process.The selfish gene theory does not give a base to racism, all human have very close relations, almost all genes common, even with carrots we have 60% common gene base.
The point is not that the theory is wrong, the point is that the way you CHOOSE to explain it and the things you CHOOSE to omit or stress, are inherently political and should be judged as such. His statements about sex is a clear example: "The biological sexes are two. That's It". Yes, that's true. That's obvious. No one is doubting that. But answering that to a question like "what do you think about all this talking about sex and genders?" is an obvious and political statement. He is subtly saying "i don't support this gender thing, and science says i'm right", which Is... wrong, and stupid, because It doesn't say anything about the relationship beetween sex and gender and the ethics of it. Objective science exists. But, often, some scientists (expecially the popular ones) use those magic words ("objective science") to make opinions look like facts, or, inversely, to shut the doors to opinions and interpretations that could legitimaly arise from real facts.
@@antares894 I think he criticizes political/social movements on a scientific basis, which is the opposite. A personal attack on a debate is also not a sign of intelligence.
@@antares894 The most case you have xx or xy chromosome, which determine your sex, or in unmodified language gender.The problematic cases( the social movement almost never on this basic), XXY etc, your traits depends on Y chromosome, if you have Y you get male traits, if not you get the default female. All cosmetic changes not change it, you can not change Sex/GENDER, the attack on these basic objective facts is financed to aim depopulation, with all other modern time craziness.
dawkins' meme theory was challenged by bret weinstein (of darkhorse podcast) a few months ago, but dawkins was not willing to entertain the rebuttal, or perhaps even understand the criticism...
What Dawkins attempts to do while invoking the is-ought distinction isn't that our morals (ought) cannot be influenced by facts (is). That contradicts Dawkins' position against religion: you ought not to believe religion because it is fiction, or because it is harmful. And I don't think he's contradicting himself. What he's saying is that the facts, and our conviction of their truth, should not be influenced by moral values (so the other way around). He doesn't want to reject the gene's eye view of evolution because some Nazi nutjobs are claiming it. And I think there's a serious argument on how that might lead us to a slippery slope of deceitfully molding science and our understanding of the world into whatever dominant ideology is prescribing. So yeah, I agree that politics should definitely be informed by science, and scientists should be responsible with that. But the opposite, science guided by politics, can go wrong in infinitely many ways.
This video comes across as apologetics for the moralistic fallacy. That Dawkins should carefully control what facts and theories he presents in service to morals is just anti-science. Surely putting extra political and social pressure on scientists to make and present their theories in a way that is compatible with moral worldviews won't lead to something like Lysenkoism. Surely the fact that science can't be separated from politics and morals entirely doesn't provide justification for increasing the influence of politics and morals on science through the shaming of scientists for their work or worse...
It's also important to note that Dawkins book "The Selfish Gene" is not 'The Selfishness Gene' or 'The Gene of Selfishness' or 'The Selfish Organism' , so the interpretation of the books title as saying that organisms are inherently selfish is a non-sequitur. Critics of Dawkins 'individual genes eye view' frequently make non-sequiturs in their attempts to criticize the perspective by presenting evidence that many genes need to exist even during abiogenesis and so from the very beginning you have cooperation between genes in systems of mutual dependency in which some RNA for a hypothetical example, produce effects they 'do not benefit' from, while leaving out that they still benefit indirectly by supporting a system that does in-fact help them to reproduce, which is exactly what would happen according to the selfish gene metaphor. The indirectness of the benefit to the gene is not evidence that an altruistic metaphor would be better, or even viable, unless somehow self interested behaviour couldn't lead to instrumental cooperation, which actually is an idea that Dawkins critics try to push, due to finding self interest "icky" for political and moral reasons. Reasons which usually have to do with pushing the narrative that voluntary instrumental relations are never or rarely win-win such that exploitation is and will continue to be inherently everywhere unless we radically transform society according to some utopian vision. I'm certain that when Dawkins writes that he could have easily called it “the cooperative gene” he's referring to instrumental cooperation which is something that is much more easily understood from the selfish gene metaphor because the cooperative gene metaphor smuggles in the possibility that genes could survive long-term by benefitting other genes without also benefitting themselves indirectly. It also leaves out that some genes like 'killer meiotic drivers' that are harmful to an organism can persist in a population due to making themselves overrepresented in sex cells and effectively holding reproduction hostage but it's complicated so...
Read the Introduction where Dawkins makes a disclaimer that the Publisher chose the title. In actuality selfish has no meaning. Sociobiologist E O Wilson the antman who supported the selfish concept asserts in 2000 in a volte face that all beings are altruistic.
It's ironic that Dawkins not only chooses morally and politically charged language, like "selfish", to write about his ideas, and then he complains he's me misunderstood; but also, that his usage of the word "selfish" is asinine. In what way is a gene selfish? The problem is not that the genes do not have desires, so they do not desire to privilege themselves over other. It's that genes in a group of biological beings do not try to privilege their own "self", they just tend to favour the replication and maintenance of other complex molecules that have the same formal structure as themselves. If anything, the effort to preserve what is only abstractly identical to myself is some weird, absolutistic collectivism.
Comments disappear all the time for me, even ones I'd really like to reply to and engage with. Oh well, hope to see you around in future videos anyway haha :))
Let's assume for the sake of argument that Dawkins' view of genetics is correct. What exactly would you have him do to avoid the political use/abuse of the conclusions? Not publish The Selfish Gene? Add a 5-page disclaimer at the beginning? Take another example. Robert Sapolsky concludes that there is no biological foundation for the idea that we have free will. Should he not be allowed to say that because it undermines virtually the entire basis of criminal law?
You raise valid points. I think this video is rich in criticism without offering any solution. Scientists care about what is true. If you don't like that, you should stop funding science.
I don't agree with this argument. You seem to be starting from an 'ought' ideological orientation (left-wing, broadly anti-Dawkins), and then attempting to support that position by changing what is in the 'is' realm of facts. I have no problem with substantive critiques of Dawkins' assumptions or methodologies. I do have problems with the assumption that not only is your personal ideological orientation 'correct', but it is so correct that it should act of some sort of totalising meta-narrative which should delineate where and how science operates. Shouldn't, as scientists, we be burdened with accepting the possibility that everything we believe could be falsified? If you encountered a scenario where Dawkins and his social Darwinist disciples were empirically proven right, would you accept this unless falsified? Or try to undo the new 'is' by coercion on normative grounds?
Hi sorry can you rephrase your comment into a clear question, I don’t know what you’re asking. Jake EDIT: See the pinned comment too to see if it clarifies anything or not.
Slight disagreement. We are told we live in a capitalist society. It would be more accurate to say we are currently dominated by economic fascism, not free-market capitalism.
Amazing to see how much debate this video is generating. This is not a thesis against science and a call to censor scientific content ! This is a call to make science while taking into account its inevitable political implications. Dawkins may have been right as far as a close window on biological phenomenons is concerned but : 1) It concerns indeed only a narrow perspective on biology, and it is necessary not to focus only on this narrow perspective to understand biology as a whole ; 2) If you only focus on this narrow perspective, you can develop easily a narrow perspective on what is life and social life ; so 3) The idea is to take into account those consequences to write smarter scientific content. The problem with Dawkins is that he does the opposite, and thus it is necessary to point this fact. That's all. This is not a call to censor Dawkins and science !
Dawkins has clearly stated that because evolution works the way he described it (correctly in my view) that is not the way humans should live. Why do people refuse to acknowledge this?
@@paulspence7600 Probably because Dawkins didn't and doesn't insist on this point ? Probably because he doesn't adress and tell much about this problem ?
@@paulspence7600 The video is about the need to be more aware about the implication of scientific statements on political views. When Dawkins wrote the Selfish gene, he probably didn't think enough about this issue.
Hi! I really love your channel. Please let me critique this video in particular. You, as Dawkin's critiques, are missing how Morality works altogether. Your point goes as follows: > mistreating other races is wrong > there is a biological advantage to mistreating other races > point 2 makes racism look good > Thus we should lie to ourselves and our audience so we don't risk changing our moral opinions And that's as wrong as it gets. My argument is this: > Racism is wrong > Racism has a biological advantage > Material advantage is unrelated to moral value > Thus treating people of different races with justice is an even more admirable act than I thought (before knowing that fact) as there is a natural tendency to do the wrong thing Dawkin's anti-religious rants are insufferable but he is absolutely right about fact/value distinction.
Dawkins is what I like to refer to as being "anally one-dimensional." He seems like that person who looks at the two fields of academia -(math/science) and (language arts/philosophy) and says that the (language arts/philosophy) route is completely pointless as it is completely diametrically opposed to the (math/science) route.
I agree with you that these things are inseparable. Nonetheless, the selfish gene idea is either right or it is wrong. Scientists need to be able to discuss it at that level. Our moral view of the world doesn't affect that one bit. Obviously those of us who want to discuss morals and ethics are going to seize on science as a source of ammunition. But the mechanical operation of the world doesn't care about that. Scientists need to do their work with a sensitivity to our values, but those values don't necessarily enter into the actual scientific details of their work.
So, I watched the video, read your replies to several comments, read the pinned comments, so I think I've been well informed to understand your position at this point. The selfish Gene was written in 1976, so we can safely say, many of the political issues we have now were not relevant back then. Maybe I'm wrong but you are assuming here that Dawkins character never changed in almost 4 decades. That he is as involved in politics as he is now. I lived for 3 decades now and I shifted my point of view several times in 10 years. And your reproach to his work is that he should have predicted the consequences of his book. With all due respect, isn't it vastly exaggerated if not unfair? You are visiting his work while looking backwards so it's easy to connect the dots. A luxury he didn't have because the book didn't even exist. Second, you are reproachinf him for not knowing exactly all you know with philosophies and all at that time, and said, "he should have known this". Third, you are saying that, since he is insufferable right now, his work 4 decades ago must be politically motivated since, how couldn't he see that coming. I mean, dude, just look at Christianity, a religion that teaches to turn the other cheek, to love thy enemy and to pray for them. People devoted to the religion and read the texts literally went on a killing spree of witch hunt on many places. What I'm saying that whatever you write, it can be a fuel for other people to push their agendas (*whisper* including Nazis). I usually find a common ground on videos I disagree but I find it very hard on this one and it's so weird that I'm actually on the side of Richard Dawkins, a personality that I very much dislike, here.
At first I found some things in the video a bit difficult to follow, but after reading your clarifications in the comments I agree with the points you make. Thank you for making these videos. I think they are very interesting.
I thought your channel was good. I was just starting a marathon of watching all your videos. I felt something strange, but sensationalism, clickbait titles and thumbs, political proselytism and virtue signalling are pretty common in UA-cam these days, even among my favorite content creators. However, what you are doing is much worse. You are perverting the scientific method and the limits of human knowledge and justifying it with a heavy moral realist basis but leaving your viewers none-the-wiser about your own ideology (making it feel like this critique of Darwin is overwhelming, almost a consensus), trying to pass moral realism as the only absolute truth there is and giving no counter-arguments to your own. You are trying to prove your moral realist stance is the absolute truth, using science to back it when it isn't even near to anything like a consensus or majority among philosophers. You are no different than the inquisitors who sent Giordano Bruno to the stake or Galileo to prison, because, for you, people should only be able to understand reality if it morally and politically servers your agenda. This is highly unprofessional, pseudoscientific and dishonest behavior (considering your own moral stance, I suppose...)
8:50 "That these two philosophers came to diametrically opposed conclusions based on different purported facts about nature, goes to show how just how much the is's can affect the oughts." Did Hobbes have different is's than Kropotkin? Was Hobbes unaware of the cooperation of bees in nature? Was Kropotkin unaware of how brutal nature can be? I think not. On the contrary, it seems clear to me that is's have no effect on the oughts based off this example. Two well educated philosophers have access to the same facts (is's) yet come to diametrically opposed positions.
I quite like Dupre and O'Malley's article "Varieties of Living Things". It argues that selfishness can only be projected onto certain units of selection but for instance if we change scales, organism can only "selfishly" transmit its genes if all the single cell organisms are cooperating and collaborating. "The boundaries of a plant and animal are precisely the sites where complex interactions occur between entities generally considered distinct, but these interactions are so closely coupled that we are strongly tempted to see them as parts of the same system. "
I know it's late, but just got around to properly reading this paper (has been sitting in my to read folder for quite a while!). Wow what an amazing thesis they develop there. I've come to many similar conclusions myself from reading elsewhere. Once you take a process view of the world, the hard boundaries we're used to disappear and there's no clear cut line where 'organism' turns into 'environment.' Plus the case of a mammalian cell in a petri dish not being a "true living entity" was great. Similar to what I've thought before where a human in the middle of the desert is a very different individual to a human in the middle of a city which is markedly different again to a human in a hunter-gatherer tribe. So was the example of a virus doing nothing versus a virus actively replicating/developing - think i mentioned that in one of my other videos. Thanks for the recommend!
I feel your arguments could be used to justify censorship and even persecution. Did the catholic church use similar arguments to justify silencing Galileo, as his views were felt at the time to be politically dangerous? Any historians out there?
Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake just over 400 years ago for suggesting there were other galaxies which the Catholic Church deemed as heretical because they thought it suggested the existence of more than one Christ.
3:40 - 3:52 That is just plain wrong-headed. Imagine i was a neo-nazi (im not by the way) and I said, "man i really love the work by SubAnima." Well, my friend youve just been endorsed by neo-nazis. You should really reconsider the work you're doing. Obviously, that would be entirely unfair as your work (as far as i can tell, ibe watched 3 videos so far) has nothing to do with advancing any neo nazi talking points.
Being a student of Anthropology, I see Richard Dawkins as delusional person. There is no single determinant but every thing is conditioned by many factors. If Gene was a single determinant of life, how evolution happened? Evolution means changing. Change breaks the law of determination. If Gene was single determinant we were still be a Unicellular organism.
The thing is that anyone can interpret any truth in a way that is flattering to their previously held beliefs, the truth is the truth, science is not moral, science may show things that make us uncomfortable. That doesn't mean that science should stop or that people should be censored.
He failed as a Shakespearean actor ,so became an angry atheist.( Sorry, I was being a Troll. )I have his book GOD DELUSION. Hes a great , entertaining writer! Although im a pentecostal.
I think you need to see this issue more in terms of not science, but the scientific process - and how then the fruits of that process are handled socially.
Science can certainly be separated from politics. Dawkins does it all the time. You're basically saying people "shouldn't" separate the two, and the implied bridge statement is "separating science and politics leaves a gap for nazis to fill, which is bad". But I disagree with that bridge statement, because I don't think you can judge the morality of one person's actions (Dawkins) based on the actions of others (the nazis)
The selfish gene concept is still very much relevant as of today. I read a recent book on Myrmecology, the study of ants, that explained how behaviors within the colony, notably who the ants support more, can be strongly correlated to their genetics similarities: for example, the males are haploid and the females (workers+queen) diploid, meaning that worker sisters have an average 75% genetic likeness, but only share at best a 50% likeness to males, making males the least prioritized members of the colony, often being cannibalized upon if ressources are rare
There are evolutionary benefits to altruism outside of the protection of individuals with similar genes. Cooperation is just a good survival strategy, long term, even on an individual level.
Politicians are the masters of putting a spin on anything that serves their agenda. As a scientist, it doesn't hurt to use nomenclature that makes that somewhat less likely, but ultimately it will happen if you're popular enough and work in the right field. It's not fair IMO to set the bar so high that your work should be impossible to misinterpret or be taken out of context.
@@SubAnimaI have a question. Around 9:41 you say, ”If you want to just do the science and ignore the politics, people will come and join it together…” What was the purpose of this statement? Are we to withhold facts & information from people just because some will use it to form bad opinions?
@@tberry79 Your question somehow sent my thoughts to the old priests of Old Egypt, Mesopotamia, Aztec, Maya & Inca Empires, Persia, Middle Ages, etc, who "withhold facts & information from people just because some will use it to form bad opinions" or rebel against them.
Sounds like the problem is "people". I have no problem with the idea of "I study/educate myself on a subject and I don't need its implications to change how I conduct myself or view the world". Maybe that's not the concensus of the human species, but I have to think that no matter what some component of my behavior can be broken down into, it doesn't change the nature of how we evolved to experience empathy or express altruism. I still care about people, I can still cry if I hear certain music or see a beautiful sunset. The feeling of love hasn't changed from when I was a young religious person to now as a secular adult. My biggest problem is, if we can't separate science from politics, science illiterate people shouldn't be making political decisions.
The fact that science can never be separated from politics doesn't, and can't, in itself mean that we shouldn't try. (Whatever that should mean exactly is another difficult question.) This should/could be an important follow-up of the "central thesis" of the video, i.e. examining how to at least approach the question whether we should or shouldn't try to keep the act (profession) of answering questions (science) from the act (profession) of deciding what questions to ask (politics). And, if the answer is yes, with the avid knowledge that it cannot be done perfectly in real life, we should be prepared to deal with the social/political implications, and indeed strive for shielding science from its ever present -- and also ever changing -- social/political environment. BTW "changing": when Dawkins wrote the book half a century ago, it was an entirely different world. So, pondering today whether he should have written the book (as has been done in the comments) is almost certainly moot, if not downright meaningless. A better question could be: who's that "we", above, that should "deal with the social/political implications", who should work on interfacing science with politics? I'd say it's definitely _not_ the scientists themselves. Or the politicians. It's never good if skilled/talented professionals are forced to spend their limited & valuable resources on chores they are way less effective at than a) they are at their real area of expertise, and b) also less effective than others that _are_ the experts of those other specific areas (in this case e.g. social psychology, diplomacy, whatever). That profession may not exist yet, but probably should. _(Or it does? Like "science communicator"? But it's not established/powerful enough -- yet? Now that looks like a job for (a different kind of) politicians to change, so science can finally get promoted as the real brain of the social system.)_ Anyway, scientists should do science, politicians should do politics, and the idea that they should kinda do both, feels naive and silly to me, and I sure couldn't cite a single convincing case from history to show that it's still a working model. This all is not so simple though, of course, and has far-reaching implications, but the point is kinda exactly that: it's far from a simple, done deal.
Ok, you're right. Science and politics cannot be separated. But politics often misuses science by drawing wrong conclusions in the same way that statistics and religion are misused. Dawkins is probably a bit naive if he believes his statements would not attract political attention.
This was not a critique of Dawkin’s arguments in the Selfish Gene slightest. Moreso it was a critique of those who utilize that science for immoral ends. Whether or not facts influence people’s ethical conclusions, those facts are still facts. The Selfish Gene and its conclusions are still correct, regardless of any social consequences.
Hi Subanima! 1st time viewer. Would you please describe your expertise in the various posts? Those that you are criticizing most likely could explain the problems you may be attempting to describe. Why must he defend himself from how others use his findings?
I feel like this video comes off as entirely too concerned with what other people think. Like I don't agree with Dawkins on a lot of things but he can do science and concern himself with what he believes is true without it impacting me or what I do, it is up to the individual. I think the real issue is people thinking politics and science must be linked together so when you talk about what you think you are judged as if you are trying to have an impact on society rather than just have a conversation in order to exchange information.
"In 2006, he supported the scientific validity of eugenics asking, "If you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability?" He also asked, "I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler's death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons."
Dawkins may not be 100% accountable for when people he probably doesn't have any moral relations with use his research, and reframe it as fuel for their toxic and hateful rhetoric. But he is a pretty odd guy ngl
If you want to understand just how dark a turn science and politics can take just look at what happened between 2019 and 2022 and then imagine how this could be abused even further "for the greater good"
Yeah, it's problematic when the politics of Free-dumb Convoys over-rides the sensible application of sound science...because "freedom" is considered "the greater good". 😉
I prefer the term 'the self-promoting gene' in that regard; it's explains Richard Dawkins politics and behavior, UA-cam, and why things are the way they are in general(hint: there can never be full equality).
10:52 "Of course the speed of light is the same under socialism and capitalism" but there are belief systems where this is not true, and where there is no such thing the speed of light; and where Evolution is not true, and where the Earth is flat, or the universe goes round the Earth, etc. In relation to the whole statement at the end: I get a bit suspicious when people possibly want me join in with a "We believe...".
Hume's is-ought problem is a double-edged sword. Proceeding from a factual statement to a moral judgement takes more than just one initial assumption, because that initial assumption must also be explained. To make a moral judgement, you have to make a moral assumption, and to make a moral assumption, you must make a moral judgement. But indeed, both moralizing and empirical description share the common element of setting expectations, and the violation or enforcement of expectations is the greater part of human indignation. We expect things to do what we expect them to do: Our conceptions sneakily become our moral assumption. So while the observations may be correct, characterizations like "selfish" offer a blinkered view. How can a gene be selfish? It doesn't know anything, it just replicates itself. Overall, sweet video! I've come to really appreciate your work.
The survival of an organism depends on its ability to fulfil the requirements or preconditions of its own existence. That's it. Any other selection theory is just fanciful reification. Genes don't survive. Species don't survive. Only individuals do. Fundamentally, the matter of life and death is only one pertaining to individuals. Nothing ontologically exists except individuals, just as a matter of definition. Species are collections of individuals. Genes are parts of individuals. Organisms only pursue altruistic strategies if it's mutually beneficial. Read Harry Binswanger.
6:29 You should be aware that Stanford did a study, published in July 2023, that proved Chat GPT 3.5 and 4, when asked in March and then June as to whether 17077 is a prime number, only got it right 8% and 98% of the time respectively in March and then got it right 86% and 2% of the time respectively in June (yup, you've got that right, it went DOWN from 98% to 2%). Apparently Chat GPT has a ways to go.
Not really something I agree with about Dawkins responsibility as of dec 14 2024 but it does leave a interesting discussion, I suggest you change the title
Some points of clarification (retyped from a bunch of my replies below):
The central thesis of the video (which I said twice) is quite broad - *science can never be separated from politics.* And this is the problem with Dawkins referred to in the title - he believes the two can be separated.
As to whether Dawkins should have written the book or not, that is a trickier question that is harder to answer.
In light of my argument, Dawkins should have at least been more mindful of the potential political implications of his book. That doesn’t mean he’s completely to blame for Nazi’s using the book for their own purposes, but he does have some partial culpability. For one, we live in a capitalist society (at least most of us do) where Hobbesian arguments are common to justify the system we live under. “Humans are just innately selfish and therefore socialism would never work” is a *very* common argument.
The Selfish Gene gives seeming solid empirical justification to that. Margaret Thatcher (‘there is no alternative’) and Mary Midgley (see in-video quote 7:49) certainly thought so.
It is not beyond comprehension for Dawkins to think that the book could be misused to justify these purposes and Dawkins shouldn’t have been as naive as to think that his book and these arguments would remain completely separate.
Ok fine, let’s say Dawkins admitted that kin selection theory could have poor political consequences, what then? Should he have still written the book? I’m not sure. I don't pretend to provide an answer here. But using hindsight, here are two suggestions for how the book could have been rewritten to avoid such ghastly political outcomes:
1. *Emphasise other scientific perspectives.* Dawkins’ kin selection is an extremely narrow view of life. In fact, it says nothing about what organisms are really like it’s too focussed on genes.
It can’t tell you anything about the molecular details of the cell or how an embryo becomes an adult or how life ended up with genes in the first place. You need different fields of biology for that where selfish genes don’t exist anymore.
So once we contextualise kin selection within the framework of other factors of evolution, it’s not this universal acid anymore of “everything is selfish!!” and the political consequences are then a lot better.
2. *Decrease the use of the selfish gene metaphor.* Yes I know thats the title of the book, but Dawkins writes that he could have easily called it “the cooperative gene”. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but he should have at least been aware of the power of such a colour metaphor. It’s very memorable as the incident with Dawkins’ publisher shows. As Philip Ball writes ( doi.org/10.1038/news.2011.115 ): "We ought to heed the warning of pioneering cyberneticists Arturo Rosenblueth and Norbert Wiener that "the price of metaphor is eternal vigilance." "
Dawkins was far from vigilant in his use of the metaphor. Because once you drag the selfish gene metaphor out of its pretty narrow context (which laypeople will definitely do and indeed did) it becomes not only useless, but actively harmful to understanding life. Again, see Philip’s article above for a longer treatment of this issue.
Interestingly there is a British/American divide on the interpretation of the book and whether to take the metaphor literally or not. Brits were used to seeing playful metaphors in science writing and willing to go along with the fantasy. See Chapter 3 of Arvid’s book for discussion on this ( doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198862260.001.0001 ).
But Americans (and I would say much of the rest of the world) seemed to take the metaphor literally. Is that Dawkins fault? I’m not sure. To what extent are you responsible for how your readers read your work? Again, I don’t provide an answer to that here and my central thesis does not depend on an answer to it.
Dawkins was certainly a lot more careful with both metaphors and highlighting alternate perspectives in his second book The Extended Phenotype (TEP). But at that point, the damage had been done and TEP was written for an academic audience not the layperson, so did not reach as high a readership.
Hope that clears things up a bit.
Jake
If I remember correctly it was the selfish gene where here also introduced the concept of MEMEs.
So admittedly he had to be aware of what memes can and will do after introducing them to broader audience.
I'm not that familiar with his works, but heard him in a recent podcast with Sean Carroll's Mindscape and it was embarrassing for me (as a molecular biologist) to realize that a physicist (younger than him) has a much broader philosophical grasping of the world than an accomplished and well known (almost epitomised) figure in biology.
I got the impression that while Dawkins knows very much he is Not ABLE to see things from many perspectives. I would even consider whether he is sociologically impaired:
maybe he was traumatized by some religious notions in his childhood?!
His pragmatism seem to verge on bitter cynicism:
mentioning domesticated animals grown for food as examples for the utility of eugenics in human societies?!
Or is he using radical comparisons to draw ATTENTION to our still biased views about our very nature.
That we so easily rationalize our standards toward other animal species:
but after all we may not be even that "special" as most of us (more rational peoples) would like to see.
What age was he when he wrote selfish gene?
@@Littleprinceleon Yeah he is very “my way or the highway.” And just quietly, every biologist I’ve talked to (at least here in Australia) thinks he’s an arrogant prick who misrepresents what the field is really like. He wrote it in 1976, a quick google should be able to check his age.
I think his lack of political awareness has changed little over the years, again as we can see in the Piers Morgan interview which was filmed only a few weeks ago.
@@SubAnima Thanks for the reply and apologies for not having read through the comments more carefully.
I have to admit I'm a bit astounded that you are on the fence as to whether Dawkins should have published TSG if he had been more politically astute. Darwin almost didn't publish Origin of Species, under pressure from his wife. Indeed, he was concerned about the potential backlash. Yet the book is possibly the most important work in the last 200 years, notwithstanding the abuse of the theory.
TSG as almost as important. The shift of view from egocentric to gene-centric is very instructive. When you talk to people who have had just high school level biology, they are often bewildered by why biology isn't more perfect. You can see this easily, for example, in the transgender debates, or in the anti-vaxxer campaigns. Their views are often shoehorned into their own religious beliefs. TSG undercuts all of that baloney.
Dawkins himself has admitted that he probably should have used different terminology, and no doubt his own belief in the primacy of science led him to conclude that all would be OK.
But I get a bit of the heebie-jeebies when people talk about the politicization of science. There is little doubt, for example, that the climatologists here in the US have agreed to scale back their warnings in part because of the concern that they would scare people into a state whereby no climate action of any kind could get done, socially or politically. That has had frankly disastrous results.
What can I say? Haters gonna hate, regardless of whether you give them ammunition or not. Voter fraud, transgender issues, critical race theory - all of these are non-issues, yet seized upon by unscrupulous idiots for political gain. To me, the word "politics" contains within it the notion that, within a structure, there are ebbs and flows in public policy based on the mutual interactions of disparate groups. When one group simply decides to stuff cotton in their ears, I don't think we're doing "politics" any more.
@atd6573 What is your point? If someone writes a book on the details of how to run a society-wide eugenics operation or how best to destroy civilisation with nuclear weapons, what should we do? Stand by and do nothing because that’s a subjective “worthless value judgement”?
Dawkins himself repeatedly expressed he's not in favour of Darwinian society, let alone a selfish one.
I have to point out a glaring issue in your argument here. It's not just that "scientific facts" influence our political views; it's a two-way street. Our political beliefs often warp our interpretation of empirical data.
Take, for instance, the anarchist. Their passion for anarchism and freedom might lead them to cherry-pick instances of cooperation in nature to align with their ideology. Meanwhile, the authoritarian type, hungry for order, may manipulate data to find brutality in nature as a justification for authority and control.
But let's not forget a crucial point here - nature itself is neither inherently brutal nor cooperative. These are merely man-made labels with no objective grounding in the natural world.
If the thesis of the video is "science can't be separated from politics", I don't think that "political beliefs warp our interpretation of empirical data" refutes that. I think it rather supports it.
@@SapphFirepersonally, I don't think the thesis of the video is wrong. I think what's wrong is the conclusion that scientist must somehow bare responsibility for the possible political misinterpretations their work could have. How are you supposed to do any useful science, if you're constantly worried about the possible interpretations people could get from your work? Every research that could have at least a hint of a "bad" interpretation wouldn't be followed through, delaying or potentially stopping the development of a branch of knowledge that could have taken us forward as a society.
@@lordk12 when it comes to Dawkins, we are mostly talking about his pop-science books, not his papers, aren't we? I believe that when it comes to interpretation of science communication responsibility should be taken.
@@lordk12 You said something interesting - "how are you supposed to do any useful science, if you're constantly worried..." - That's the key, the *usefulness* of the science. If the main outcome of a piece of research is to, say, fuel a political movement that creates unnecessary harms in the world, you haven't done useful science. I agree that worrying about all possible outcomes would hinder science. But there's a spectrum of responsibility - no person has to worry about the infinite potential outcomes of their choices, just the ones that seem a) likely, and b) harmful.
An extreme example: If I wrote a computer science paper methodically detailing how to hack into my competitors' computer systems and steal their data, it would be unreasonable to say "I've only presented empirical facts about the world, I can't worry about every possible interpretation people could get from those facts." When you voluntarily choose a career, you're also voluntarily accepting the responsibilities associated with that work.
@fallacyDetector I don't think that's been omitted, the video states that politics and science are constantly influencing each other - see the diagram at 8:14.
I'm positive the creator of this video understand that human beings create their own labels and apply them to the natural world. This point doesn't undermine their argument, imo.
This video is a premium example of how our personal views influence how we interpret data...
I agree about the issue of Interpretation of data but, this guy is not the first but Dawkins himself.
@@RLekhy
This guy willfully quote-mined a comment and created his own motivated reasoning sentence. One might consider he could be a fundy religious person.
The vid should be called the problem he has with being honest about Dick Dawky.
ACTUAL WORDS We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism, something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world (215)."
The problem with scientists becoming overly concerned with political implications, is that they cease doing science, and start producing propaganda. Even if well intentioned, it can stunt the development of fields, lead to unattended consequences and generally lower the tone of what should be a culture of intellectual rigour and integrity to a shouting match between ideologues.
Not only will we lose the science in the propaganda, but it isn't even going to be effective. You can't save crazy from itself by sanitizing science. They'll find a way. It's pompous to believe you can control them like that.
An example is the handling of the climate crisis. Many scientists felt they had to do something beyond just dryly presenting their dire findings to the public. So they warned us that we had to do this and that before such and such date or else... This message could then be turned against its intention by climate deniers who could call it "alarmist" etc.
@@letMeSayThatInIrish I can understand people feeling that way. But I don't for a moment. Think that the opposition to science in the example wouldn't have hesitated a moment before calling it alarmist just the same or coming up with some other silly narrative. I think believing otherwise is just us trying to give ourselves the illusion of control.
@@ahrengroesch8774 I don't know how old you are but in a not so distant past people were much more indifferent about climate change science. They usually didn't held strong opinions about any aspects of the discution and the scients were much more free to argue. However, it is increasingly difficult to do good science the more attention, therefore pressure, your field gets because political interests aren't nescerraly align to the search of the truth.
It sounds more like secularists have this issue rather than scientists
This is the first video of yours that I am uncomfortable with. What's the take-away? Should Dawkins not have put forward his theory because of possible political implications?
Perhaps he is exposing the flaws, and perhaps irrationality, within a alleged ‘scientific’ proposition that is on the rise in the secular west, and the greater world for that matter.
This is a great question, Jared. Maybe I should have added an extra minute highlighting what the take-aways could be, but I wanted to finish with the quote. Here’s what I would have said:
Dawkins obviously cant be held responsible for all of the interpretations of his book. But that doesn’t mean he gets away scot free. We live in a society implicitly familiar with the arguments of Hobbes and the idea that genes have a privileged causative power on biology. Dawkins should have known better how people would misconstrue his argument, given this societal context. He also needs to understand than whenever you write anything, whenever you do any science, it has political consequences. So what could he have done differently?
1. *Emphasise other scientific perspectives.* Dawkins’ kin selection is an extremely narrow view of life. In fact, it says nothing about what organisms are really like it’s too focussed on genes.
It can’t tell you anything about the molecular details of the cell or how an embryo becomes an adult or how life ended up with genes in the first place. You need different fields of biology for that where selfish genes don’t exist anymore.
So once we contextualise kin selection within the framework of other factors of evolution, it’s not this universal acid anymore of “everything is selfish!!” and the political consequences are then a lot better.
2. *Decrease the use of the selfish gene metaphor.* Yes I know thats the title, but Dawkins writes that he could have easily called it “the cooperative gene”. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but he needs to be mindful that such a powerful metaphor is very memorable. Not only that, but once you drag the selfish gene metaphor out of the kin selection context (which laypeople will definitely do and indeed did) it becomes not only useless, but actively harmful to understanding life.
If the metaphor was used more sparingly, this misinterpretation might have been avoided. Here’s a great article by Philip Ball about this: doi.org/10.1038/news.2011.115
Interestingly there is a British/American divide on the interpretation of the book and whether to take the metaphor literally or not. Brits were used to seeing playful metaphors in science writing and willing to go along with the fantasy. See Chapter 3 of Arvid’s book for discussion on this (link in description).
But Americans (and i would say much of the rest of the world) seemed to take the metaphor literally. Is that Dawkins fault? I’m not sure and we’re using hindsight here. But he was certainly a lot more careful in his second book The Extended Phenotype.
Thanks for the question again. If enough people ask this, I might make it the pinned comment just to clear it up.
@Abc Abc This too though. I fear that many people believe that science just exists beyond politics. It’s very dangerous to think so, as the quote at the end highlighted.
@@SubAnima It seems like two different things; (1) recognizing that science has political implications and (2) asking the scientist to let those political implications inform their work.
Here's three concerns.
Dawkins isn't a political theorist. It's not what he was trained to do. Even were he to have embedded a political take in his book, it likely would have been weak and ill informed by work already done in the area.
Second, by tying a theory to a political philosophy, it creates a mutual dependency where one depends on the other for legitimacy. If one theory fails, the other may fail with it. Is Selfish Gene so good you would want it to be the ground upon which your political philosophy is argued? Is any biological theory?
Third, there's a question of whether it would lead to better science if Dawkins tried to force his theory to fit a particular point of view. But I don't think this is merely a hypothetical. Dawkins may not have considered the political implications of his book, but only because he was so focused on the religious implications. What selfish gene gets wrong is wrong precisely because he believes his reductionist approach justifies his atheism. If Dawkins were less concerned about religion, I believe his scientific views would be less dogmatic and narrow. Dawkins justifies atheism on reductionist grounds and is a worse scientist for it.
@@SubAnima Do you mind elaborating on point 1? Is the fact of kin selection controversial?
As another commenter has commented, this video is the only of yours that makes me uncomfortable. I agree with the naiveness of Dawkins to not see the link science and politics can have. But the video gives me the feeling of criticizing Dawkins for showing his research because of how some communities can interpret it. This is a very wrong take from my point of view. It is not Dawkins who should be criticized for showing it, but the people who make an awfully wrong interpretation of it. Dawkins has no responsibility how a community twists the meaning of things to impress a view of the world. (I dont mean to say you don't criticize those who wrongfully interpret the science. You obviously do, and rightfully so).
You could say the same thing with natural selection: it can go close with the view of the world that only the strongest is worth it. So disabled people shouldn't be taken care of. I wouldn't criticize anyone defending natural selection because it can help this view of the world. I woudl criticize the people who use that science to tell a narrative.
We should try to teach people how to use reason correctly, not criticize those whose arguments are reasoned wrongly.
you simply cannot ignore that he knows what he's doing and continues to do it. he could do literally anything else.
Dawkins is pretty much responsible for huge chunk of that interpretation you are talking about. You are assuming he is not acting as a political agent and he does, because we all do which is the actual thesis of the video.
I think there's value in your criticism, but I also think we need to consider our audience. When writing for a lay audience, we need to be aware of how our work might be received, especially if there's a chance it might be so badly misinterpreted by those who have not read it. It's not the scientific facts in The Selfish Gene that are up for criticism here. It's the presentation, and that's something he chose. And if it's true that he could have just as easily called it The Cooperative Gene, that raises the question, "Why didn't he given the significant downside to misinterpretation of the selfish gene metaphor?"
@@frostjune6072 ??? what do you mean??? He is a evolutionary biologist, its his job.
Are you implying that Dawkins wrote the selfish gene with the intention of giving nazis validation?... or what are you suggesting?
@@lobachevscki define responsible.
If book X is read by person Y and person Y commits a terrorist act because of his interpretation of the book. Then i only believe that the author is resposible if that was his intent with the book.
However, i feel like you (and the person in the video) would argue that its the author's responsibility to safe guard his book so that noone could ever interpret the book in such a way? "idiot-proofing" the book?
I dont like using the word "responsibility" for that. If a person wants to idiot proof their book, they can, im fine with it. I would even encourage it. But i would not chastise anyone for not doing it. I dont see it as an obligation. I myself more enjoy reading things that treats me as an adult rational being that doesnt need to be hand holden for the entire journey.
I mean yeah, you're right in saying that people will use facts to try to back up their "oughts", but the selfish gene view has a lot of explanatory power etc and we can't just ignore the actual facts because it may lead some people to do dumb things with them. I would have hoped that you'd give an alternative way to present the idea of the selfish gene that wouldn't lead to the problems that it sometimes have. The problem is that some facts about the world can be used in attempts to justify awful ideas, so what do we do about that? We can't shape our understaning of reality after our wishes for how we want reality to be. We need more nuance, we need to understand that human society isn't just a reflection of basic biological facts etc. To be clear: I very much don't like a lot of Dawkins bigotry and nonsense.
Can you offer some examples of his alleged bigotry and nonsense?
@@BUSeixas11 I won’t since it’s not relevant to what my point was.
he is trying to redefine natural phenomenon using a concept shaped through ignorance of that phenomenon. it's like saying you can never be genuinely kind to another person because in the end you're only trying to make yourself feel good by having been kind. the answer to that would be "we know dude, that's what kindness is." and similarly the answer to the "selfish gene" is "of course dude, that is exactly what we mean by altruism."
ascribing loaded and antropological terms to nature is dawkins' personal choice, yet he is baffled when his stuff is used as ammunition for bigotry (a category he is fast approaching mind you)
@@conscientunit1157 have you read the selfish gene? Because it sounds like you’ve misunderstood the idea.
@@danielduvana the fact is that dawkins frames his observations in a way that is ripe for bigoted use.
I think the problem lies with extrapolation. The degree and direction matters. You stretch any good idea in an area that is only right on the surface and thus is bound to break eventually. It does not do justice to either the idea or the area.
You can't blame Dawkins for what the nazis do. You can't blame the maker of a knife for murder, even partially, if someone used that knife for murder.
Neither can you blame Einstein for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is not a matter of blame but of responsibility for your actions. And of course Einstein can be held partly responsible for the atomic bomb (and Openheimer to a greater extent) even though they were against how they were used. It happens that many scientists are very naive and fail to see beyond their creations and their little egos.
@@psicologiapsicoactiva
Blaming means putting on responsibility, this is what you and the show host are doing. You can't hold Dawkins responsible for what others do with his book to any slightest degree.
The Wright brothers invented the plane. Are they also responsible for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Are they also responsible for the 9/11 attacks? They didn't see beyond their little egos?
If a woman was raped, she's responsible just because she put on the wrong clothes?
You can only judge Oppenheimer cuz he invented the weapon that was only intended to kill. Dawkins' book, Einstein's theory were not intended to harm let alone kill anyone and just describe reality.
Do not shift the blame from the wrong doer. Nazis are responsible for their interpretation alone.
@@psicologiapsicoactiva WOW. So we should avoid reality if it disagrees with your personal ideology?
@@psicologiapsicoactiva you can't take responsibility.. It's not your choice..
Absolutely correct. If we allowed the midwits anywhere near scientists we would still be making blood sacrifices for a good harvest and being wiped out by plague every three years.
Science is always being persecuted by ideologues whether it's Galileo by the Catholic Church or Dawkins by the trans-cultists. Certain intellects don't have the expanse to understand the necessity of risk to development and progress.
Nazis were NOT individualistic. Were very collectivist. Neo nazis are a little different. Interfering in science because politics, is the opposite of science.
I think the overwhelming majority of people that read the book The Selfish Gene badly misunderstand it in its entirety. I think half of this is due to the fact that we assign negative morality to the word selfish. They fail to appreciate how the word is used in this context. Then, they make wild unjustified extrapolations based on their misunderstanding such as "if genes are selfish then everything is selfish" or "if genes are selfish, then we are all supposed to be bad people" and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
The genes in our cells are a layer of our reality that is an emergent property of biology which is an emergent property of chemistry. Chemistry is an emergent property of how atoms behave, which is an emergent property of the layers below that all the way down. The same is true of a person, society, and all the way up. Just as Newtonian physics doesn't make sense at the quantum scale, individual gene selection and survival has little to say about individual moral decisions or any given society's moral climate. Genes which give us feelings which drive behavior we would label as good, moral, or altruistic, were selected for in humans because they lead to better outcomes. FULL STOP. That doesn't mean anything beyond what that is. It simply is. That being the nature of most of our moral feelings and behaviors doesn't tarnish those feelings and behaviors, nor does it mean we are "supposed to" be more selfish. That's simply how that layer of reality works.
On the far end of this we have people driven by anger and hate, addicted to their own feelings of judgement, that go through life looking for things to justify their feelings and knee jerk reaction behaviors. Through many layers of abstraction, all of their own self interested creativity, they have decided that The Selfish Gene means something that it doesn't. To say that Richard Dawkins should not have written it because such people exist is absurd. Not Richard Dawkins, nor anyone who creates something, is responsible for how it is interpreted by those that twist anything to suit themselves. I mean my god, are we supposed to all tiptoe through life censoring everything we do and say because someone somewhere might misinterpret it?
The book describes how genes proliferate in a magnificent easy for the layman to understand fashion. To blame the author for the existence of those that twist it's message to suite themselves, just as they do with literally everything they encounter, is ridiculous. This is science. We want to know how things actually work. Moral judgements of the ignorant be damned.
You're right, you can't separate anything from politics. But to say that we should silence the voice of science, truth, and reason because "maybe the whack jobs will have less crazy fuel" is absolutely ridiculous.
You have some very interesting things to say, but I think you are way off the mark on this one.
Thank you for this comment!! I was very tempted to spend time I don't have writing something detailed and thoughtful, making these exact same points. But I don't have to, because you've done it. And very well! 👏
Fully agree, and I think the point about our behaviours being an emergent property of what genes were selected for by evolution but not directly governed by the selfish genes is a crucial distinction. Our behaviour does not have to be selfish just because the evolutionary drivers for the evolution of that behaviour was 'selfish'. I feel like that is skipped over in this video by a somewhat shallow reading of The Selfish Gene.
@@ylhajee that's the thing with every criticism of the book I've heard. They sound like they missed the point of the book like they were too stuck on this preconception to actually comprehend what the author was conveying.
Fine points, but I must have missed the part where the video suggests silencing “…science, truth, and reason…” I think it merely suggests being aware of the political implications of scientific information. I frankly think Dawkins did some of that by suggesting we rise above our nature, but you’re correct, I think, in saying he can’t be responsible for what is made of his work, and shouldn’t be called to carpet for every fascistic extremist touting it.
That’s not to defend him, since his work stands alone, and really isn’t properly subject to political analysis. And his errata, though limited to his astonishingly anti-scientific and uncharacteristically ignorant comments regarding transgenderism, has no informed defense.
Beautiful answer. Many people seem to miss the point of the book entirely.
I just discovered this channel, and I am already binging all the videos! Great stuff
On the broader moral thesis in the video, I agree that scientists shouldn't be recklessly throwing ideas out there without considering the political implications and potential (net) welfarist consequences. But I question how forseeable those consequences really are. Just because nazis are gonna nazi with new ideas doesn't mean the consequences of the ideas are going to be net-bad - the Selfish Gene had a lot more of an impact than just this, it constituted real scientific progress. Even just bracketting off the political, nazis are always gonna nazi about something, and I don't think that is was obviously forseeable that the net welfarist consequnces of the TSG was going to be negative; I don't think it's even fair to assume that they in fact were. Is there more injustice in the world were TSG was published compared to one where it wasn't? The world is demonstrably less bigotted than it used to be, perhaps TSG had something to do with that as well, via driving greater acceptance of naturalism/secularism. Perhaps I'm assuming a vague & overly permissive net-consequentionalism approach here, but that seems better than taking an "avoid the possibility of doing any specific harms at all" stance, which suggests that interesting ideas should never be published.
So yeah, agreed, science can never be separated from politics, but the upshot of that is not clear to me. It's a tall order to expect scientists & philosophers to both do good work and have a degree of political prescience and understanding about the effects of publishing it which we still lack (imho) decades after the fact.
That’s a fair stance, thanks for the detailed comment! However I still disagree primarily because it is such a short path to take from “all life is selfish” to “selfishness is the way things have to be.” No long term political prescience is needed to see that connection being a likely possibility. See the pinned comment for more details.
@@SubAnimaFor you, maybe. Who's to say how long that path was for Dawkins? The first statement is purely biological and refers to evolutionary fitness. The second is a sociopolitical claim. Especially for a biologist, I imagine that leap isn't a particularly obvious one.
@@GlacialScion isn't that a great argument for encouraging scientists to think about and discuss these sorts of things?
And for the record, I don't think it's necessarily that far for a biologist or any other scientist to go. I know biologists who are aware of these things, and we did some work on thinking about the ethical implications of our work when I studied engineering. I'd love to see more, but it's a start.
@allanjmcpherson Sure, it seems like a good idea. But you can't just say someone was retroactively being irresponsible because they didn't look at a thing they said in the past with the same perspective as you look at it now.
@@SubAnima Real Nazis are not a threat (not simply MAGA or other things people call "nazis"), and just a bunch of screaming losers. Giving them legitimacy actually makes me suspect of your political motives.
If philosophers misunderstand or misuse science, it is the fault of the philosophers, not the scientists.
It is the job of scientists to seek truth, regardless of implications.
Don't blame Dawkins.
This whole idea that we need to protect people from the truth to prevent them from misunderstanding or misinterpreting it is morally repugnant.
Are genes selfish? Do they knowingly function only to replicate themselves? Do they consider every situation the organism gets into and then force behaviors that will be best for replication? That was Dawkin's famous metaphor - but that was not "truth", it was a powerful metaphor based on human behavior, not what genes actually do. Genes are not self-aware, they don't make decisions, and they're not independent of the environment the organism lives in. Dawkins was promoting his own interpretation of how genes work - not "truth".
His current anti-Trans opinions are, he claims, based on human genetics - but he ignores the entire new field of whole-genome polygenic inheritance, which has shown that every human trait studied so far has had a strong genetic component - including traits like gender and religiousity and curiosity and empathy. Why is pretending that body of research doesn't exist? He's a geneticist, he can't claim that he doesn't know anything about this new subfield.
@@nycbearff
"Are genes selfish?"
The effect of their functionality serves to promote themselves.
"Do they knowingly function only to replicate themselves?"
No. Genes are no concsious.
"Do they consider every situation the organism gets into"
No. Genes cannot consider anything.
" That was Dawkin's famous metaphor"
Yes. It was a metaphor. Do you know what a metaphor is? Look it up, please.
His current anti-Trans opinions are, he claims, based on human genetics"
What has Dawkins said that is anti-trans?
Something isn't wrong, just because the wrong people think its right or just because you don't like it.
Exactly. Hitler or his regime invented the VW and the autobahn. Just because we may think those were good ideas, does not make us Nazis. Hitler twisted Darwinism to justify his beliefs. Although we may disagree with Dawkin's ideas, it is completely unfair to equate Dawkins ideas to Hitler's.
I always thought the selfish gene was a lesson. That this is why we tend toward selfishness and dividing and that because of this we have to actively created more accepting communities to help promote all our strengths.
Same! It is good to look at theories as opportunities for exploration and not as limitations. This type of critical thinking is needed in every field, and helps us have respectable discussions full of curiosity rather than fear.
Actually, the main thesis of the book is that evolution selects the individuals with the most suitable alleles for their current environment and the process is not benign as a whole. So the appearance of selfishness (which of course is a human trait) is on display. Dawkins was careful to point out that this does not mean that human society should be structured that way. The last point has been missed or ignored by many people posting here.
I think altruism is a learned behavior and the genetic trait involved is more along the lines of submission.
@@paulspence7600 No one here read the book. Most apparently, SubAnima himself...
@@johndiss No. We see it in many species. beyond mammals.
I don't agree with you on this but your videos are crazy good, they all give me a new interesting point of view. Subscribing to see more!
The "selfish" gene was the title of the book NOT a description of the moral outlook of the gene. The point of the book is that organisms have evolved through natural selection. There is no teleology in genes.
'How does he justify the implications of his book?'
He doesn't have to.
It's a scientists job to discover the true nature of reality and not worry about the implicationa of their discoveries.
You should not let political bias cooud your judgement as this channel clearly does.
As for the selfish gene and it's implications. Why would we take our morality cues from our genetics. Anyone who follows that principle is inherently no better than an animal who might practice cannibalism or infant mortality.
Anyone who thinks about the topic for more than 5 minutes can realise we shouldnt derive morality from evolutionary sound behaviors.
As a sociologist who has spent decades trying to explain to students why they should critique sociobiologists--who make proclamations about human behavior based on Dawkinsesque evolutionary biological beliefs that they deny are beliefs, and who ignore all the work done social scientists who actually study human interactions and behavior--I want to say thank you for this excellent video!
Natural selection of gens are a fact. Not a belief.
Probably because sociology like behavioral economics etc sucks, is rife with fraud, and doesn’t understand genetics?
You belong to a discipline that conducts research based on what the sociological implications of that research might be.
Dawkins belongs to a discipline which creates models of reality.
I'll take Dawkins, thank you.
@@cygnusustus perfectly said.
@@cygnusustusso you take Dawkins's word over social phenomena even when he lacks the expertise for it because you like him more?
Sorry, but that is a dumb take
One thing that I think is still misunderstood by the video is what is meant by the statement at 5:39, "our commitment to the science of evolution says nothing about our moral outlook."
The quote says that *this specific* area of research says nothing about *their* moral outlook. To me, it doesn't seem to claim that "our" means "all of humanity", but instead, I think they mean just the authors.
The moral statement that would be needed to bridge from "genes evolve to favor selfishness" to "we should act selfishly" is the claim "we should act in a way that our actions mirror the processes of nature". In other words, you would be committing the naturalistic fallacy, because said bridging statement is one that people would not grant this easily.
A different bridging statement would be "evolutionary advantage is the best way to ensure our survival, and we should strive for survival". But this is even secretly begging the question, as "our" survival could mean anything from the survival of a small group, to the survival of whatever they define as a race of people, to the survival of humanity as a whole. The only way for the bridging statement to lead you to the conclusion "the selfish gene implies that we, as a race, should act selfishly" is that you assume that "we" means "my race", so you've already used racism as a premise.
So in short: I'm still convinced that regardless of whether you accept the "selfish gene" metaphor, you would need to add fallacious premises in order to be able to make broad moral conclusions. What the authors did was say that they themselves made no such conclusions.
3:50 I strongly disagree. You should always work towards truth, whether you like it or not. People will anyway abuse any work that happens to support their world view. Scientific facts and ethical considerations are two separated things. If your views are against facts, then you should change the views, facts cannot be changed. Only lied.
5:42. I can't find the highlighted part in my epub version (2006, 30th anniversary edt). Selfish Genes was first published in 1976. Dawkins must have realized his faux pas and removed it later, probably in the 1989 second edition. If so, good for him.
Which edition are you quoting from, @SubAnima ?
he’s not quoting the selfish gene there.
2:53 Oh look! The biggest tragedies to ever happen to the English speaking world in modern history walking together
Third year undergrad bio student from Croatia here. I love your channel, it gives me great joy to see that not all in our field distance themselves from more philosophical topics of our work.
I like the expansion of this channel from mostly (philosophy of) biology into broader important philosophy of science ideas / connections with politics with this video! Great job as always:)
Thanks again Marco!
Well if science and politics cant be separated(as he claims) it seems like this channel was always political.
It is evident that he scews towards far leftist ideology. Especially with the media he presents to cover a women's rights activist with the epitaph of anti trans...
He should be conscious of his bias as well.
I thought your channel was good. I was just starting a marathon of watching all your videos. I felt something strange, but sensationalism, clickbait titles and thumbs, political proselytism and virtue signalling are pretty common in UA-cam these days, even among my favorite content creators. However, what you are doing is much worse. You are perverting the scientific method and the limits of human knowledge and justifying it with a heavy moral realist basis but leaving your viewers none-the-wiser about your own ideology (making it feel like this critique of Darwin is overwhelming, almost a consensus), trying to pass moral realism as the only absolute truth there is and giving no counter-arguments to your own. You are trying to prove your moral realist stance is the absolute truth, using science to back it when it isn't even near to anything like a consensus or majority among philosophers. You are no different than the inquisitors who sent Giordano Bruno to the stake or Galileo to prison, because, for you, people should only be able to understand reality if it morally and politically servers your agenda. This is highly unprofessional, pseudoscientific and dishonest behavior (considering your own moral stance, I suppose...)@@SubAnima
@@detectordegados5292 something else that's strangely common on UA-cam is people who feel the need to repeatedly post the same comment as if that somehow strengthens their position, or the chances they'll be listened to, when it's actually just annoying. Glad there's no one like that here.
"In the evolution wars and sociobiology debates, Gould and Lewontin had a scientific agenda that they wanted to air publicly - that adaptationist, gene-centered arguments in evolutionary theory can be carried too far, and that much in the history of life can be explained by non-adaptive processes and a multi-leveled analysis of genes, individuals and groups. What better way to do it than to use Wilson as their foil? But who in the general public knows or cares about adaptations, spandrels, contingencies, and other esoterica of evolutionary biology?
What the public does understand quite well are Nazis, eugenics, race purification programs, and other abuses of biology of the past century. Thus, sociobiology's critics reasoned, the best strategy is to begin with it's ideological implications - particularly the racist overtones in genetic determinism - to capture an audience, then segue into the scientific arguments about the problem with hyperadaptionism."
- Michael Shermer (The Science of Good and Evil, 204.)
Page 180 - "The Selfish Gene."
- This chapter, and the next in which we discuss conflict between mates, could seem horribly cynical, and might even be distressing to human parents, devoted as they are to their children, and to each other. Once again I must emphasize that I am not talking about conscious motives. Nobody is suggesting that children deliberately and consciously deceive their parents because of the selfish genes within them. And I must repeat that when I say something like 'A child should lose no opportunity of cheating... lying, deceiving, exploiting...' I am using the word 'should' in a special way. I am not advocating this kind of behavior as moral or desirable. I am simply saying that natural selection will tend to favor children who do act in this way, and that therefore when we look at wild populations we may expect to see cheating and selfishness within families. The phrase 'the child should cheat' means that genes that tend to make children cheat have an advantage in the gene pool.
If there is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature."
- Richard Dawkins.
I think that some clarification is needed. Are you saying that Dawkins should have never written the selfish gene due to its potential political implications? Or, are you saying that what Dawkins' book was lacking is some discussion of the political implications and making the audience aware of other issues, such as the naturalistic fallacy? A very naive interpretation of your video would interpret your message as the former rather than the latter.
Incidentally, I think that it would have been good for you to talk about the naturalistic fallacy as a different angle on how science and politics should interact. This is another way of viewing the separation of "is" and "ought to be". And maybe scientists have to do a better job of explaining this to the public.
To clarify, I think my central thesis of the video was clear (given that I said it twice): science can never separated from politics.
Ok great, but how then should we view Dawkins writing of The Selfish Gene? That I wanted to leave more open-ended because it would seem impossible to prescribe how to deal with potential political implications of any scientific theory.
At a minimum, Dawkins should have been aware of the way in which his book could be interpreted. It's not too hard to see how a 200 page treatment saying "nature is selfish" could have negative political consequences. If he had been aware of that and still wanted to write a book on kin selection then he would have had to do both of the following (copied from a comment somewhere below):
1. *Emphasise other scientific perspectives.* Dawkins’ kin selection is an extremely narrow view of life. In fact, it says nothing about what organisms are really like it’s too focussed on genes.
It can’t tell you anything about the molecular details of the cell or how an embryo becomes an adult or how life ended up with genes in the first place. You need different fields of biology for that where selfish genes don’t exist anymore.
So once we contextualise kin selection within the framework of other factors of evolution, it’s not this universal acid anymore of “everything is selfish!!” and the political consequences are then a lot better.
2. *Decrease the use of the selfish gene metaphor.* Yes I know thats the title, but Dawkins writes that he could have easily called it “the cooperative gene”. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but he needs to be mindful that such a powerful metaphor is very memorable. Not only that, but once you drag the selfish gene metaphor out of the kin selection context (which laypeople will definitely do and indeed did) it becomes not only useless, but actively harmful to understanding life.
If the metaphor was used more sparingly, this misinterpretation might have been avoided. Here’s a great article by Philip Ball about this: doi.org/10.1038/news.2011.115
Interestingly there is a British/American divide on the interpretation of the book and whether to take the metaphor literally or not. Brits were used to seeing playful metaphors in science writing and willing to go along with the fantasy. See Chapter 3 of Arvid’s book for discussion on this (link in description).
But Americans (and i would say much of the rest of the world) seemed to take the metaphor literally. Is that Dawkins fault? I’m not sure and we’re using hindsight here. But he was certainly a lot more careful in his second book The Extended Phenotype.
I think I will retype this up and make it the pinned comment as there seems to be a little confusion on my intentions with the video. Thanks for the discussion as always Alex.
@@SubAnima I guess he could have de-emphasized the metaphor, but if he did, we may not be talking about his book, not because he would have dodged some philosophical bullet, but because he would not have advanced a bold new way of looking at the world (which for the record I think he over-interprets). In the end it is important that scientists advance new ideas, especially those that challenge orthodoxy and widely held assumptions. Yes, science will end up informing public policy, so it is inherently political, but the error here is not that he failed to water down his message, but to that he could have done more to correct the naturalistic fallacy. If there are truths out there in the world that will make it harder for some to achieve their political goals, the answer is not to bury our head in the sand, but to better understand the obstacles. It would seem to me that the political critics of Dawkins, whom you discuss in your video, are also committing the naturalistic fallacy (as far as I understand it), and thus they stand on shaky ground.
@@SubAnima I'm using your video on my we cells not machines to discredit engineering based look and the works on various systems...
@@SubAnima this is why you’re utterly clueless. Science and politics have nothing to do with each other. Fact, and truth is all that matters, and science is a tool for finding truth. What people might do through misinterpretations of that evidence is separate. It is an entirely separate discussion from the objective truth of the scientific discovery.
Love your work!
7:40 - Could/should. That's an old issue. There certainly are things you can argue that we "could do but shouldn't." We face those simple questions living life every day - there are any number of bad things I go out and do, but I shouldn't and don't want to so I won't. Some of those things might bring me direct benefits. But it gets complicated at the whole-culture level. We became capable of developing nuclear weapons, and we did develop them. Should we have? is a tough question. The bottom line is that someone was going to - would we rather it have been the Nazis? I don't think so. In that sense it "had to be done." Furthermore, even if you could wave a wand and move us into a timeline in which no one had developed nuclear weapons, that's not necessarily a better timeline. Who knows how many conventional wars might have occurred in such a timeline? Mutually Assured Destruction as a policy is easy to poke at, but on the other hand we've managed to never have a nuclear war. We cannot say that we aren't living in the best timeline possible on that front. There's just no way to know.
Technology advances, and if a technology is dangerous in some way that's all the more reason nefarious players will want to "go there." The best strategy is to move as quickly as possible on the development of such things, while also being the best "moral players" we can be.
1:32
"Reproducing through your relatives."
Well, down here at alabama we got another word for dat.
😂😂
It wants, or it doesnt want, its selfish or just a mechanistic tendency. Who cares ? We should be flexible in our thinking. I dont know how it can be so hard.
I’m here because of a deep respect and admiration of Professor Noble. I only look at numbers. All the surprises look to me like people stretch their brains too much and why should all of these things be tied up to the hard problems
Hooked to watching several of your videos in a row. Great insight and meaningful discussion, thanks for the contents 🙏
7:42 empirical facts shapes our ethics.
Fact-value.
10:49
Condemning a scientific theory based on political impact is similar to what the inquisiton did against Galilei, is a destructive thought process.The selfish gene theory does not give a base to racism, all human have very close relations, almost all genes common, even with carrots we have 60% common gene base.
Totally agree
The point is not that the theory is wrong, the point is that the way you CHOOSE to explain it and the things you CHOOSE to omit or stress, are inherently political and should be judged as such.
His statements about sex is a clear example: "The biological sexes are two. That's It". Yes, that's true. That's obvious. No one is doubting that. But answering that to a question like "what do you think about all this talking about sex and genders?" is an obvious and political statement. He is subtly saying "i don't support this gender thing, and science says i'm right", which Is... wrong, and stupid, because It doesn't say anything about the relationship beetween sex and gender and the ethics of it.
Objective science exists. But, often, some scientists (expecially the popular ones) use those magic words ("objective science") to make opinions look like facts, or, inversely, to shut the doors to opinions and interpretations that could legitimaly arise from real facts.
Jordan Peterson does the exact same thing... more brutally and with less intelligence
@@antares894 I think he criticizes political/social movements on a scientific basis, which is the opposite. A personal attack on a debate is also not a sign of intelligence.
@@antares894 The most case you have xx or xy chromosome, which determine your sex, or in unmodified language gender.The problematic cases( the social movement almost never on this basic), XXY etc, your traits depends on Y chromosome, if you have Y you get male traits, if not you get the default female. All cosmetic changes not change it, you can not change Sex/GENDER, the attack on these basic objective facts is financed to aim depopulation, with all other modern time craziness.
dawkins' meme theory was challenged by bret weinstein (of darkhorse podcast) a few months ago, but dawkins was not willing to entertain the rebuttal, or perhaps even understand the criticism...
What Dawkins attempts to do while invoking the is-ought distinction isn't that our morals (ought) cannot be influenced by facts (is). That contradicts Dawkins' position against religion: you ought not to believe religion because it is fiction, or because it is harmful. And I don't think he's contradicting himself.
What he's saying is that the facts, and our conviction of their truth, should not be influenced by moral values (so the other way around). He doesn't want to reject the gene's eye view of evolution because some Nazi nutjobs are claiming it. And I think there's a serious argument on how that might lead us to a slippery slope of deceitfully molding science and our understanding of the world into whatever dominant ideology is prescribing.
So yeah, I agree that politics should definitely be informed by science, and scientists should be responsible with that. But the opposite, science guided by politics, can go wrong in infinitely many ways.
This video comes across as apologetics for the moralistic fallacy. That Dawkins should carefully control what facts and theories he presents in service to morals is just anti-science. Surely putting extra political and social pressure on scientists to make and present their theories in a way that is compatible with moral worldviews won't lead to something like Lysenkoism. Surely the fact that science can't be separated from politics and morals entirely doesn't provide justification for increasing the influence of politics and morals on science through the shaming of scientists for their work or worse...
It's also important to note that Dawkins book "The Selfish Gene" is not 'The Selfishness Gene' or 'The Gene of Selfishness' or 'The Selfish Organism' , so the interpretation of the books title as saying that organisms are inherently selfish is a non-sequitur. Critics of Dawkins 'individual genes eye view' frequently make non-sequiturs in their attempts to criticize the perspective by presenting evidence that many genes need to exist even during abiogenesis and so from the very beginning you have cooperation between genes in systems of mutual dependency in which some RNA for a hypothetical example, produce effects they 'do not benefit' from, while leaving out that they still benefit indirectly by supporting a system that does in-fact help them to reproduce, which is exactly what would happen according to the selfish gene metaphor. The indirectness of the benefit to the gene is not evidence that an altruistic metaphor would be better, or even viable, unless somehow self interested behaviour couldn't lead to instrumental cooperation, which actually is an idea that Dawkins critics try to push, due to finding self interest "icky" for political and moral reasons. Reasons which usually have to do with pushing the narrative that voluntary instrumental relations are never or rarely win-win such that exploitation is and will continue to be inherently everywhere unless we radically transform society according to some utopian vision.
I'm certain that when Dawkins writes that he could have easily called it “the cooperative gene” he's referring to instrumental cooperation which is something that is much more easily understood from the selfish gene metaphor because the cooperative gene metaphor smuggles in the possibility that genes could survive long-term by benefitting other genes without also benefitting themselves indirectly. It also leaves out that some genes like 'killer meiotic drivers' that are harmful to an organism can persist in a population due to making themselves overrepresented in sex cells and effectively holding reproduction hostage but it's complicated so...
Thank you for recognizing PK! Well-being for all!
Read the Introduction where Dawkins makes a disclaimer that the Publisher chose the title. In actuality selfish has no meaning. Sociobiologist E O Wilson the antman who supported the selfish concept asserts in 2000 in a volte face that all beings are altruistic.
It should be said that Hume firmly believed that human decisions were largely driven by passion and emotions.
It's ironic that Dawkins not only chooses morally and politically charged language, like "selfish", to write about his ideas, and then he complains he's me misunderstood; but also, that his usage of the word "selfish" is asinine. In what way is a gene selfish? The problem is not that the genes do not have desires, so they do not desire to privilege themselves over other. It's that genes in a group of biological beings do not try to privilege their own "self", they just tend to favour the replication and maintenance of other complex molecules that have the same formal structure as themselves.
If anything, the effort to preserve what is only abstractly identical to myself is some weird, absolutistic collectivism.
Well, looks like UA-cam doesn't like comments about science and climate change. I give up :)
Thank you for the video!
Comments disappear all the time for me, even ones I'd really like to reply to and engage with. Oh well, hope to see you around in future videos anyway haha :))
Let's assume for the sake of argument that Dawkins' view of genetics is correct. What exactly would you have him do to avoid the political use/abuse of the conclusions? Not publish The Selfish Gene? Add a 5-page disclaimer at the beginning?
Take another example. Robert Sapolsky concludes that there is no biological foundation for the idea that we have free will. Should he not be allowed to say that because it undermines virtually the entire basis of criminal law?
See the pinned comment
You raise valid points. I think this video is rich in criticism without offering any solution. Scientists care about what is true. If you don't like that, you should stop funding science.
Terrific video as always
Thanks again! Looking forward to the Ibn Rushd video :)
Which problem?
I don't agree with this argument. You seem to be starting from an 'ought' ideological orientation (left-wing, broadly anti-Dawkins), and then attempting to support that position by changing what is in the 'is' realm of facts. I have no problem with substantive critiques of Dawkins' assumptions or methodologies. I do have problems with the assumption that not only is your personal ideological orientation 'correct', but it is so correct that it should act of some sort of totalising meta-narrative which should delineate where and how science operates. Shouldn't, as scientists, we be burdened with accepting the possibility that everything we believe could be falsified? If you encountered a scenario where Dawkins and his social Darwinist disciples were empirically proven right, would you accept this unless falsified? Or try to undo the new 'is' by coercion on normative grounds?
Hi sorry can you rephrase your comment into a clear question, I don’t know what you’re asking. Jake
EDIT: See the pinned comment too to see if it clarifies anything or not.
Did I just take a class on epistemology?
Slight disagreement. We are told we live in a capitalist society. It would be more accurate to say we are currently dominated by economic fascism, not free-market capitalism.
Oh no, a scientist that made you question you're religion of equally, scary 😱
Amazing to see how much debate this video is generating. This is not a thesis against science and a call to censor scientific content ! This is a call to make science while taking into account its inevitable political implications. Dawkins may have been right as far as a close window on biological phenomenons is concerned but : 1) It concerns indeed only a narrow perspective on biology, and it is necessary not to focus only on this narrow perspective to understand biology as a whole ; 2) If you only focus on this narrow perspective, you can develop easily a narrow perspective on what is life and social life ; so 3) The idea is to take into account those consequences to write smarter scientific content. The problem with Dawkins is that he does the opposite, and thus it is necessary to point this fact. That's all. This is not a call to censor Dawkins and science !
Exactly thank you!!
Dawkins has clearly stated that because evolution works the way he described it (correctly in my view) that is not the way humans should live. Why do people refuse to acknowledge this?
@@paulspence7600 Probably because Dawkins didn't and doesn't insist on this point ? Probably because he doesn't adress and tell much about this problem ?
@@paulspence7600 The video is about the need to be more aware about the implication of scientific statements on political views. When Dawkins wrote the Selfish gene, he probably didn't think enough about this issue.
@@fibresynthetique He did. He wrote about these in the book.
Excellent video!!
Thank you sir ☺️ only cost me 20% of a Lie Algebras assignment 😌
Hi! I really love your channel. Please let me critique this video in particular.
You, as Dawkin's critiques, are missing how Morality works altogether.
Your point goes as follows:
> mistreating other races is wrong
> there is a biological advantage to mistreating other races
> point 2 makes racism look good
> Thus we should lie to ourselves and our audience so we don't risk changing our moral opinions
And that's as wrong as it gets. My argument is this:
> Racism is wrong
> Racism has a biological advantage
> Material advantage is unrelated to moral value
> Thus treating people of different races with justice is an even more admirable act than I thought (before knowing that fact) as there is a natural tendency to do the wrong thing
Dawkin's anti-religious rants are insufferable but he is absolutely right about fact/value distinction.
I've read "The Selfish Gene" and "The Blind Watchmaker."
Everything he said in his books are just bullshit.
Should we question the use of rocketry because it was developed by a member of the SS? (Wernber Von Braun)
-So are genes selfish?
-"N-n-n-n-nnnnnazzziiiss bAaaAd"
powerful insight into biology
So it's morally good to m*rder people of races who are considered inferior?
@@sanmartinovallevictorjuven5187 Genes aren't moral. Get that through your pathetic excuse for a brain.
Dawkins is what I like to refer to as being "anally one-dimensional." He seems like that person who looks at the two fields of academia -(math/science) and (language arts/philosophy) and says that the (language arts/philosophy) route is completely pointless as it is completely diametrically opposed to the (math/science) route.
💯 And he thinks there is only ONE kind of truth; ONE kind of reality.. 😏
I agree with you that these things are inseparable. Nonetheless, the selfish gene idea is either right or it is wrong. Scientists need to be able to discuss it at that level. Our moral view of the world doesn't affect that one bit. Obviously those of us who want to discuss morals and ethics are going to seize on science as a source of ammunition. But the mechanical operation of the world doesn't care about that. Scientists need to do their work with a sensitivity to our values, but those values don't necessarily enter into the actual scientific details of their work.
So, I watched the video, read your replies to several comments, read the pinned comments, so I think I've been well informed to understand your position at this point.
The selfish Gene was written in 1976, so we can safely say, many of the political issues we have now were not relevant back then.
Maybe I'm wrong but you are assuming here that Dawkins character never changed in almost 4 decades. That he is as involved in politics as he is now. I lived for 3 decades now and I shifted my point of view several times in 10 years.
And your reproach to his work is that he should have predicted the consequences of his book. With all due respect, isn't it vastly exaggerated if not unfair? You are visiting his work while looking backwards so it's easy to connect the dots. A luxury he didn't have because the book didn't even exist.
Second, you are reproachinf him for not knowing exactly all you know with philosophies and all at that time, and said, "he should have known this".
Third, you are saying that, since he is insufferable right now, his work 4 decades ago must be politically motivated since, how couldn't he see that coming.
I mean, dude, just look at Christianity, a religion that teaches to turn the other cheek, to love thy enemy and to pray for them. People devoted to the religion and read the texts literally went on a killing spree of witch hunt on many places.
What I'm saying that whatever you write, it can be a fuel for other people to push their agendas (*whisper* including Nazis).
I usually find a common ground on videos I disagree but I find it very hard on this one and it's so weird that I'm actually on the side of Richard Dawkins, a personality that I very much dislike, here.
At first I found some things in the video a bit difficult to follow, but after reading your clarifications in the comments I agree with the points you make.
Thank you for making these videos. I think they are very interesting.
I thought your channel was good. I was just starting a marathon of watching all your videos. I felt something strange, but sensationalism, clickbait titles and thumbs, political proselytism and virtue signalling are pretty common in UA-cam these days, even among my favorite content creators. However, what you are doing is much worse. You are perverting the scientific method and the limits of human knowledge and justifying it with a heavy moral realist basis but leaving your viewers none-the-wiser about your own ideology (making it feel like this critique of Darwin is overwhelming, almost a consensus), trying to pass moral realism as the only absolute truth there is and giving no counter-arguments to your own. You are trying to prove your moral realist stance is the absolute truth, using science to back it when it isn't even near to anything like a consensus or majority among philosophers. You are no different than the inquisitors who sent Giordano Bruno to the stake or Galileo to prison, because, for you, people should only be able to understand reality if it morally and politically servers your agenda. This is highly unprofessional, pseudoscientific and dishonest behavior (considering your own moral stance, I suppose...)
8:50 "That these two philosophers came to diametrically opposed conclusions based on different purported facts about nature, goes to show how just how much the is's can affect the oughts."
Did Hobbes have different is's than Kropotkin? Was Hobbes unaware of the cooperation of bees in nature? Was Kropotkin unaware of how brutal nature can be? I think not.
On the contrary, it seems clear to me that is's have no effect on the oughts based off this example. Two well educated philosophers have access to the same facts (is's) yet come to diametrically opposed positions.
I quite like Dupre and O'Malley's article "Varieties of Living Things". It argues that selfishness can only be projected onto certain units of selection but for instance if we change scales, organism can only "selfishly" transmit its genes if all the single cell organisms are cooperating and collaborating.
"The boundaries of a plant and animal are precisely the sites where complex interactions occur between entities generally considered distinct, but these interactions are so closely coupled that we are strongly tempted to see them as parts of the same system. "
I'll definitely give it a look. I've read some of Dupré's stuff before and liked it quite a lot. Have you checked out Everything Flows?
@@SubAnima Amazing! Yes, that book got me into Denis Walsh. I'm now no longer a closet vitalist haha
I know it's late, but just got around to properly reading this paper (has been sitting in my to read folder for quite a while!). Wow what an amazing thesis they develop there. I've come to many similar conclusions myself from reading elsewhere. Once you take a process view of the world, the hard boundaries we're used to disappear and there's no clear cut line where 'organism' turns into 'environment.' Plus the case of a mammalian cell in a petri dish not being a "true living entity" was great. Similar to what I've thought before where a human in the middle of the desert is a very different individual to a human in the middle of a city which is markedly different again to a human in a hunter-gatherer tribe. So was the example of a virus doing nothing versus a virus actively replicating/developing - think i mentioned that in one of my other videos. Thanks for the recommend!
@@SubAnima I am not a scientist but I can follow your explanations. What you are talking about here sounds like it would make an interesting video.
I feel your arguments could be used to justify censorship and even persecution. Did the catholic church use similar arguments to justify silencing Galileo, as his views were felt at the time to be politically dangerous? Any historians out there?
Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake just over 400 years ago for suggesting there were other galaxies which the Catholic Church deemed as heretical because they thought it suggested the existence of more than one Christ.
3:40 - 3:52
That is just plain wrong-headed. Imagine i was a neo-nazi (im not by the way) and I said, "man i really love the work by SubAnima." Well, my friend youve just been endorsed by neo-nazis. You should really reconsider the work you're doing. Obviously, that would be entirely unfair as your work (as far as i can tell, ibe watched 3 videos so far) has nothing to do with advancing any neo nazi talking points.
Being a student of Anthropology, I see Richard Dawkins as delusional person. There is no single determinant but every thing is conditioned by many factors. If Gene was a single determinant of life, how evolution happened? Evolution means changing. Change breaks the law of determination. If Gene was single determinant we were still be a Unicellular organism.
The thing is that anyone can interpret any truth in a way that is flattering to their previously held beliefs, the truth is the truth, science is not moral, science may show things that make us uncomfortable. That doesn't mean that science should stop or that people should be censored.
He failed as a Shakespearean actor ,so became an angry atheist.( Sorry, I was being a Troll. )I have his book GOD DELUSION. Hes a great , entertaining writer! Although im a pentecostal.
İf you don't have at least a million subscribers in a year, I'll be surprised
I think you need to see this issue more in terms of not science, but the scientific process - and how then the fruits of that process are handled socially.
Science can certainly be separated from politics. Dawkins does it all the time. You're basically saying people "shouldn't" separate the two, and the implied bridge statement is "separating science and politics leaves a gap for nazis to fill, which is bad". But I disagree with that bridge statement, because I don't think you can judge the morality of one person's actions (Dawkins) based on the actions of others (the nazis)
The selfish gene concept is still very much relevant as of today. I read a recent book on Myrmecology, the study of ants, that explained how behaviors within the colony, notably who the ants support more, can be strongly correlated to their genetics similarities: for example, the males are haploid and the females (workers+queen) diploid, meaning that worker sisters have an average 75% genetic likeness, but only share at best a 50% likeness to males, making males the least prioritized members of the colony, often being cannibalized upon if ressources are rare
There are evolutionary benefits to altruism outside of the protection of individuals with similar genes. Cooperation is just a good survival strategy, long term, even on an individual level.
Politicians are the masters of putting a spin on anything that serves their agenda. As a scientist, it doesn't hurt to use nomenclature that makes that somewhat less likely, but ultimately it will happen if you're popular enough and work in the right field. It's not fair IMO to set the bar so high that your work should be impossible to misinterpret or be taken out of context.
This video is criminally underrated, keep up the great work and you'll blow up
Thank you!
@@SubAnimaI have a question. Around 9:41 you say, ”If you want to just do the science and ignore the politics, people will come and join it together…” What was the purpose of this statement? Are we to withhold facts & information from people just because some will use it to form bad opinions?
@@tberry79 Your question somehow sent my thoughts to the old priests of Old Egypt, Mesopotamia, Aztec, Maya & Inca Empires, Persia, Middle Ages, etc, who "withhold facts & information from people just because some will use it to form bad opinions" or rebel against them.
It’s trash. The video and the thesis are rubbish.
@@inpugnaveritaas found the dawkins alt account
Sounds like the problem is "people". I have no problem with the idea of "I study/educate myself on a subject and I don't need its implications to change how I conduct myself or view the world". Maybe that's not the concensus of the human species, but I have to think that no matter what some component of my behavior can be broken down into, it doesn't change the nature of how we evolved to experience empathy or express altruism. I still care about people, I can still cry if I hear certain music or see a beautiful sunset. The feeling of love hasn't changed from when I was a young religious person to now as a secular adult. My biggest problem is, if we can't separate science from politics, science illiterate people shouldn't be making political decisions.
I agree the most to your view on that subject. Really hard to have a definitive answer on that.
The fact that science can never be separated from politics doesn't, and can't, in itself mean that we shouldn't try. (Whatever that should mean exactly is another difficult question.) This should/could be an important follow-up of the "central thesis" of the video, i.e. examining how to at least approach the question whether we should or shouldn't try to keep the act (profession) of answering questions (science) from the act (profession) of deciding what questions to ask (politics).
And, if the answer is yes, with the avid knowledge that it cannot be done perfectly in real life, we should be prepared to deal with the social/political implications, and indeed strive for shielding science from its ever present -- and also ever changing -- social/political environment. BTW "changing": when Dawkins wrote the book half a century ago, it was an entirely different world. So, pondering today whether he should have written the book (as has been done in the comments) is almost certainly moot, if not downright meaningless.
A better question could be: who's that "we", above, that should "deal with the social/political implications", who should work on interfacing science with politics?
I'd say it's definitely _not_ the scientists themselves. Or the politicians. It's never good if skilled/talented professionals are forced to spend their limited & valuable resources on chores they are way less effective at than a) they are at their real area of expertise, and b) also less effective than others that _are_ the experts of those other specific areas (in this case e.g. social psychology, diplomacy, whatever). That profession may not exist yet, but probably should. _(Or it does? Like "science communicator"? But it's not established/powerful enough -- yet? Now that looks like a job for (a different kind of) politicians to change, so science can finally get promoted as the real brain of the social system.)_
Anyway, scientists should do science, politicians should do politics, and the idea that they should kinda do both, feels naive and silly to me, and I sure couldn't cite a single convincing case from history to show that it's still a working model.
This all is not so simple though, of course, and has far-reaching implications, but the point is kinda exactly that: it's far from a simple, done deal.
Guilt by association is an argumentative fallacy.
It's an informal fallacy.
It's not argumentative at all. What a stupid comment
Right, because nothing we say or do ever bears any influence on our environment.
3:40 So people like Baldur Springmann made organic agriculture invalid?
Ok, you're right. Science and politics cannot be separated. But politics often misuses science by drawing wrong conclusions in the same way that statistics and religion are misused. Dawkins is probably a bit naive if he believes his statements would not attract political attention.
Or he simply doesn't want to face responsabilities, just enjoy his public role without criticism.
This was not a critique of Dawkin’s arguments in the Selfish Gene slightest. Moreso it was a critique of those who utilize that science for immoral ends.
Whether or not facts influence people’s ethical conclusions, those facts are still facts. The Selfish Gene and its conclusions are still correct, regardless of any social consequences.
Do you have the same problem with Albert Einstein publishing his discovery that E = mc2 given that it was used to make nuclear weapons?
Hi Subanima! 1st time viewer.
Would you please describe your expertise in the various posts?
Those that you are criticizing most likely could explain the problems you may be attempting to describe.
Why must he defend himself from how others use his findings?
I'm so glad I've found your channel, amazing content
Sheldrake PROVED speed of light is NO constant
3:47 dumb take.
you could have common interest with the nazis and still be in the "right".
Communist logic lol
@@heizensperg exactly.
I feel like this video comes off as entirely too concerned with what other people think. Like I don't agree with Dawkins on a lot of things but he can do science and concern himself with what he believes is true without it impacting me or what I do, it is up to the individual. I think the real issue is people thinking politics and science must be linked together so when you talk about what you think you are judged as if you are trying to have an impact on society rather than just have a conversation in order to exchange information.
"In 2006, he supported the scientific validity of eugenics asking, "If you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability?" He also asked, "I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler's death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons."
Dawkins may not be 100% accountable for when people he probably doesn't have any moral relations with use his research, and reframe it as fuel for their toxic and hateful rhetoric. But he is a pretty odd guy ngl
Beautiful video. 🩵
If you want to understand just how dark a turn science and politics can take just look at what happened between 2019 and 2022 and then imagine how this could be abused even further "for the greater good"
Yeah, it's problematic when the politics of Free-dumb Convoys over-rides the sensible application of sound science...because "freedom" is considered "the greater good". 😉
I prefer the term 'the self-promoting gene' in that regard; it's explains Richard Dawkins politics and behavior, UA-cam, and why things are the way they are in general(hint: there can never be full equality).
10:52 "Of course the speed of light is the same under socialism and capitalism" but there are belief systems where this is not true, and where there is no such thing the speed of light; and where Evolution is not true, and where the Earth is flat, or the universe goes round the Earth, etc.
In relation to the whole statement at the end: I get a bit suspicious when people possibly want me join in with a "We believe...".
Hume's is-ought problem is a double-edged sword. Proceeding from a factual statement to a moral judgement takes more than just one initial assumption, because that initial assumption must also be explained. To make a moral judgement, you have to make a moral assumption, and to make a moral assumption, you must make a moral judgement.
But indeed, both moralizing and empirical description share the common element of setting expectations, and the violation or enforcement of expectations is the greater part of human indignation. We expect things to do what we expect them to do: Our conceptions sneakily become our moral assumption. So while the observations may be correct, characterizations like "selfish" offer a blinkered view. How can a gene be selfish? It doesn't know anything, it just replicates itself.
Overall, sweet video! I've come to really appreciate your work.
The survival of an organism depends on its ability to fulfil the requirements or preconditions of its own existence. That's it. Any other selection theory is just fanciful reification. Genes don't survive. Species don't survive. Only individuals do. Fundamentally, the matter of life and death is only one pertaining to individuals. Nothing ontologically exists except individuals, just as a matter of definition. Species are collections of individuals. Genes are parts of individuals. Organisms only pursue altruistic strategies if it's mutually beneficial. Read Harry Binswanger.
I don't think saying "If nazi's support you you are wrong" is a stable argument buddy maybe you should reconsider that.
thank youu for making this video
6:29 You should be aware that Stanford did a study, published in July 2023, that proved Chat GPT 3.5 and 4, when asked in March and then June as to whether 17077 is a prime number, only got it right 8% and 98% of the time respectively in March and then got it right 86% and 2% of the time respectively in June (yup, you've got that right, it went DOWN from 98% to 2%). Apparently Chat GPT has a ways to go.
Not really something I agree with about Dawkins responsibility as of dec 14 2024 but it does leave a interesting discussion, I suggest you change the title