This is just a taste of what this guy can write. If you liked this, do yourself a favor and check out couple of his books. (They're pretty evenly divided between atheism and evolutionary biology. If it's first published before 2000, it's probably the latter. And don't be afraid of older dates, The Selfish Gene was published in the 70s and it's still probably the best).
I feel that dogs are somewhat of a plighted animal in modern society. They have a strong desire to wander and be social within their neighborhood, but our living environments today are so heavily bisected along property lines and car traffic that for the most part, they are not allowed outside except in very restricted ways at specific, supervised times.
So the modern dog owner has to work extra hard to keep their instinctual needs satisfied, and most owners can't manage this. Hence, the dogs will bark, and bark, and bark, or try to escape or misbehave, because that's the next best thing they can do when they want to communicate and get attention.
I'm raising a high content wolf hybrid and a Shiba-ken. I can see the plight you speak of daily. However, the strange thing is that it affects my dog more than it does my wolf. During their walks, the little Shiba just wants to run wild, play with everyone, and generally explore his world. The wolf just wants to run to every shadowy corner he finds, and generally avoids people. He is happiest when back home.
A strange thing I've noticed is that, while at home, both of the animals behave as though they were the same species. Only when outdoors, do the differences become pronounced.
It's interesting having both these guys, I can easily identify which traits of the wolf have been suppressed, and which have been amplified.
"... We can imagine wild wolves scavenging on a rubbish tip on the edge of a village. Most of them, fearful of men throwing stones and spears, have a very long flight distance. They sprint for the safety of the forest as soon as a human appears in the distance. But a few individuals, by genetic chance, happen to have a slightly shorter flight distance than the average. Their readiness to take slight risks — they are brave, shall we say, but not foolhardy — gains them more food than their more risk-averse rivals. ..."
I see flight distance every day outside with birds but have never seen it explained well.
Now the question I'd really be interested in is, "could ideas like 'flight distance' be explained in Startups with respect to risk?", "Can you think of Startups in business evolutionary terms? where founders take more risks to obtain more personal reward?", "What are the 'pleiotropy' traits associated with Startups? and are they close to what's described in 'Startups in 13 sentences'?" ~ http://paulgraham.com/13sentences.html
The most obvious pleiotrope that I can think of associated with startups (possibly all businesses) is that CEOs tend to be, putting it bluntly, jerks.
The same qualities that make for a successful CEO -- ruthlessness, tenacity, the ability to play fast-and-loose with the facts when necessary -- also make for the kind of person you don't want to hang around with much. The better CEOs I've seen are able to compartmentalize this ability: they can be likeable, loyal friends, and restrict their ruthlessness to their business relationships. In the close-knit startup world, where the lines between business partners and friends blur, this is less practical.
I'm not saying I would change this -- I need a CEO who is ruthless -- but the side-effects are unfortunate.
> The better CEOs I've seen are able to compartmentalize this ability: they can be likeable, loyal friends, and restrict their ruthlessness to their business relationships.
I've been thinking about an idea in this vein a lot recently due to a less than ideal business transaction. It seems to me that the idea of a ruthless CEO is a myth constructed and put up on a pedestal by a largely male business community (combative/competitive instincts, right?). A successful business person need not be ruthless in the strict dictionary definition. What they need to be is persistent in pursuing their own economic goals or those of their organization. From the outside, this might look like ruthlessness, especially in a transaction between friends, but experience has shown me that applying social norms to a situation where market norms should rule can end badly.
I disagree. There are those people out there, and some of them are successful, but I dont believe that being a jerk makes you successful, and while I dont have any hard data on this, I do know a number of highly successful business owners who are also decent human beings.
It turns out, if your model makes sense, you are selling things to people that they want, and they like you for it. There is no need to be ruthless in these types of scenarios, just effective. Look at Zappos.
It may be true that 'Jerks' get ahead many times because they are willing to cut throats to do so, but that doesnt mean that you need to be a jerk to succeed, especially if you learn to define success a little differently.
I've got an other question: Might that shying away from humans be kind of a folk tale amongst species? Which new/remote species don't know about? Like Galápagos?
Not a folk tale, just a visible representation of the local competitive environment. Animals in the Galapagos are generally less flighty because the entire ecosystem is not very competitive: everyone lives off the bounty of the sea. The booby birds, the iguanas, the tortoises... are not intimidated by us because there are no land or air predators to eat them -- not in their risk profiles. Like any other security measure, you optimize for the challenges you expect.
In other environments, apex predators still have a flight response because they still have predatory competition (e.g., wolves against other wolves, or other dangerous situations). The flight response increases based on individual vulnerability - e.g., a well-fed pride of lions will barely observe nearby vehicles on safari (they are some of the most self-confident animals you may encounter) but hungrier singles take more notice.
I think the most important truth about dog evolution is that we still don't know how it happened. Dawkins only discusses one of many plausible theories that have been put forward (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_domestic_dog).
We still live in a mysterious world, with lots of unanswered questions and plenty of avenues of exploration open to anyone curious enough to pursue them!
I think we kind of know. I mean, wolves and dog like creatures live along side humans all over the world. They hunt with us and eat what we leave behind and we use things or did for a long time, things they left behind. It's only natural that the ones that shared knowledge with each other among the group benefited more along the direction of a shared ability to communicate amongst themselves than would members of groups that did not care to share such a bond. ref: http://tolweb.org/treehouses/?treehouse_id=3804
We see avatar and see how far into the future he saw those animals and they had evolved these complicated neuronal cross species connections. Now if you believe in evolution, then you can't argue with that as a potential reality in the future. In a way, it does exist across species now in more trivial forms, including, if you will allow me, eye contact. I would offer to suggest that eye contact may actually be one of the first forms of cross species and even family. Birds, fish, all kinds of mammals... You can make eye contact and communicate with them if you have the patience. The more primitive the organism, the more patience is required to communicate with it -- if it can communicate.
When you notice a characteristic of an animal and ask what its Darwinian survival value is, you may be asking the wrong question. It could be that the characteristic you have picked out is not the one that matters. It may have _come along for the ride_, dragged along in evolution by some other characteristic to which it is pleiotropically linked.
I wish the evolutionary psychology folks would paste this sentence to their wall.
Wow, the end of this article really brought home to me in a visceral way something that I already intellectually knew - that I (and the rest of us) really do have distant past ancestors that were fish, mouse-like creatures, etc.
This kind of clear, accessible relation of everyday observation to real science is what Dawkins became known for, excels at, and what I wish he would stick to. His strident anti-God rhetoric elsewhere does much to damage the reputation of evolutionary science, turning it from a widely-accepted theory into a symbol of the inevitable triumph of rationality over irrationality, to be fought tooth-and-nail by religious zealots everywhere.
What I don’t get is why critics of Dawkins always seem to use words like “strident” or “shrill”. He always has been very polite where I’ve seen him talk. His criticism of religion would certainly be considered very mild mannered if it were – for example – directed at a political party. I’m genuinely confused when many religious people seem to go pretty nuts when they are confronted with Dawkins’ (hilarious) chapter on the old testament. Who in their right mind would be offended by that?
We have nothing against high profile scientists expressing their opinions about politics. We should have nothing against scientists expressing their opinion about religion.
I would consider it anti-religion rhetoric, not anti-God. How strongly can one oppose something they don't believe exists? And which god exactly would he be opposing?
I'll be more sympathetic to your point of view when 40% of Americans no longer believe the Earth is <= 6,000 years old and that humans were created in their present form.
Religion is voluntary stupidity, and stupidity has consequences for civilization. Dawkins understands that, having seen it firsthand.
"Earth is <= 6,000 " and evolution are interesting choices. I'd have included reincarnation, astrology, yoga as a spirtual practice, "spirtual energy" and possibly "evil eye".
One interesting thing about my list is that believers are more likely to be Democrat/Independent than Republican and Liberal/Moderate than Conservative. (In most cases, Democrat more than Independent and Liberal more than Moderate.)
We see the same thing wrt "In Touch with the Dead", ghosts, and fortune-tellers.
Things are a little different wrt personal mystical experiences. (Dems and Repubs are tied at 50% while Independents are somewhat less likely while the order is Conservative, Liberal, Moderate.)
See http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=490 , specifically "Beliefs of Demographic, Political, and Religious Groups" and "Supernatural Experiences" (about half-way through).
No one is trying to force reincarnation, astrology, yoga, or voodoo into public-school science classrooms, though. Astrologers weren't behind Proposition 8, and New Agers have been responsible for relatively few outrages-of-the-week as well.
When these things happen, these groups too will come under attack by the reality-based community.
Ah yees, the folks who think that fire can't melt steel....
While evolution and age of earth are important, they aren't directly relevant much of the time.
If you're going to argue that competence outside of biology and geology depends on whether one believes in evolution and earth age, you get to explain why believing in ghosts and other such things doesn't have a similar effect.
And yes, ghosters and the like do push things on the public schools.
Hint: it's not about evolution, or cosmology. It's about respect for the scientific process.
Cultures that have respect for the scientific process thrive.
Cultures that don't, don't.
It's that simple. (The US is actually a rather startling exception, if you look at a graph of popular religiosity versus any number of metrics of a healthy, successful society.)
Ah yees, the folks who think that fire can't melt steel....
WTF...?
And yes, ghosters and the like do push things on the public schools.
Gonna call "citation needed" on that.
About the closest thing I can come up with is the occasional group of morons demanding that schools shut down their WiFi networks due to allergies to the radiation, or what-have-you. Same stupidity as religion, different manifestation. It all comes down to lack of respect for processes that actually improve our lives, in favor of ones that contribute nothing but BS.
> Hint: it's not about evolution, or cosmology. It's about respect for the scientific process.
I agree completely. What part of ghosts, yoga as spiritual, etc do you see as respecting the scientific process?
> (The US is actually a rather startling exception, if you look at a graph of popular religiosity versus any number of metrics of a healthy, successful society.)
You're assuming that religiousity taints all. It didn't have that effect on Knuth (who is extremely religious).
That's why I pointed out that not believing in evolution or "old earth" isn't necessarily a handicap. You can argue that it is, but then you get to explain Knuth and deal with ghosters and the like. (Surely you're not going to argue that creation and new earth are the only misbeliefs that matter.)
>> Ah yes, the folks who think that fire can't melt steel....
> WTF...?
A significant fraction of "the reality based community" consists of "truthers". One of their core beliefs is that 9/11 didn't happen the way it looked like it happened is because the planes "just" spread fire through the world trade center. However, they insist that something else took the buildings down because "fire doesn't melt steel". (They apparently don't know that different things burn at different temperatures and melt isn't necessary.)
> Gonna call "citation needed" on that.
You don't think that ghosters participate in the body politic?
I don't describe myself as religious as that to me has connotations of order and regulation that I don't ascribe to. However, I am a man of faith (I believe we all rely on faith in some way) - I've directly experienced God and as a Christian most people would pigeon-hole me as "religious". I have not directly experienced or observed evolution. I find macroevolution to be too large a leap based on the evidence I've seen.
You describe me¹ as adopting voluntary stupidity. Could you give me some pointers as to where I'm being stupid.
---
¹ I'm assuming "religion is voluntary stupidity" to mean "all those with religious faith are choosing to be stupid".
Yes, but I don't have time right now - suffice to say I have as much faith in the external existence of the world as in the existence of God. I'm quite skeptical (in the metaphys sense, not quite pyrrhonic though) but as much as I experience through sense data the world and by extension other minds; as much as that I believe in the triune God of Christianity (but not all the details, many I'm agnostic on).
You describe me¹ as adopting voluntary stupidity. Could you give me some pointers as to where I'm being stupid.
When you say "I am a man of faith", followed by "I find macroevolution to be too large a leap based on the evidence I've seen," you're demonstrating that you hold an inconsistent worldview. You demand an arbitrary, apparently-unmeetable standard of "evidence" from your biology teacher, while giving your anecdotal, irreproducible, and wholly subjective experience of "God" a free pass. That's stupid.
However, your writing doesn't suggest any innate cognitive handicaps. That's why I'm assuming the stupidity you exhibited above is voluntary. It's something you could overcome with education and disciplined thinking, if you wanted to.
giving your anecdotal, irreproducible, and wholly subjective experience of "God" a free pass
I only give my experience of God the same free pass as I give my experience of reality. Yes it's subjective.
Has anything ever happened to you that you mentioned to someone and they simply said "don't believe you"? For example I met Tony Blair on the beach once and my flatmates didn't believe me - hardly an impossible scenario - as it is communicating other experiences. For some reason we don't each recognise our experience of God or experience Him as directly.
I don't think my standards for biological evidence of macro-evolution are impossible to meet.
Finally, Dawkins at his prime, not preaching anti-god bullshit. The man is a complete genius when it comes to explaining natural selection, yet he wastes so much of his time preaching atheism.
IMO any intelligent person should come to the logical conclusion: God cannot be proved or disproved, so stop wasting your time! It's as useless as discussing whether a glass is half-full or half-empty, it's a glass with liquid in it!
Dawkins' massive waste of time preaching atheism like it's the Papacy 2.0 is retarded. It loses him all his credibility to everyone except the atheist wackos who are holding him in infallible regard like it's the second coming of Jesus.
Dawkins is a scientist, and as such should be working to teach people to conquer ignorance. Yet he'd rather spend his time alienating the people he could be enlightening. It's, quite frankly, a pitiful waste of such genius.
Edit: I repeatedly hear Dawkins being praised as highly as Feynman, and he is far from Feynman. Feynman was a pure genius, possibly the greatest scientist to grace the earth, but he was so great because he had the ability to relate to the common person, to every person and he had the ability to explain even the most complex ideas to the simplest of people.
> Dawkins' massive waste of time preaching atheism
Given the amount of harm religious extremists do, fighting them seems reasonable. If you reduce the amount of religion in a society, you reduce the number and effectiveness of religious extremists.
> Dawkins is a scientist, and as such should be working to teach people to conquer ignorance. Yet he'd rather spend his time alienating the people he could be enlightening.
One of the worst aspects of religion, IMO, is when the religious claim that their beliefs and values deserve to be givne special status over and above everyone else's beliefs and values. This is bullshit of the first order, and needs to be fought.
Fighting religious extremists just justifies their existence, which further enhances the problem.
Creationist moronism is a mainly US problem, linked directly to the abhorrent education system. Creationist belief is inversely linked to the quality of education, but instead of actually spending time increasing the quality of education and managing to spread understanding of the sciences people are wasting time fighting the extremists.
It's, quite frankly, ignorant. Instead of advocating education, you're advocating wasting time. You can destroy the creationist and extremist belief through positive efforts and action towards increasing education. The 40 year olds who believe in creationism will never be educated, you have to educate the 10 year olds who haven't had their minds set in poor ways by time and lack of education.
Dawkins has a remarkable talent for explaining science, and he should be targeting this towards the young. If he managed to strike the right chords, he could destroy creationist thought in the majority of that 40% of US citizens who believe during his lifetime. If he hit the next 20-years of highschool students strong and hard, the US could easily drop its creationist belief well into the ranks of the rest of the western world.
Sadly, Dawkins does little more than provide fanservice to the atheist masses.
"Feynman was a pure genius, possibly the greatest scientist to grace the earth."
Feynman was certainly a pure genius, on that we agree, but saying that he was the greatest scientist is somewhat distasteful, imho. For starters, there's no metric that allows one to measure scientists. And Feynman himself thought that Gell-Mann was smarter than him.
There were various geniuses in the last 200 years. Most did not write their own biographies including lock-picking and doing physics at strip clubs, so the general public forgot about them. Truman once said that the U.S. Marine Corps' propaganda machine was second only to Stalin's. I would claim that Feynman's propaganda machine comes 3rd.
It's not that Feynman was not a genius, it's just that he was not the only one. What about Pauling, for instance? Why is that everytime I go to the Caltech bookstore I see an entire section dedicated to Feynman, a cult of personality that is almost nauseating, while there are virtually no books on Pauling, or Gell-Mann? Feynman was a pure genius not only in Physics, but also in marketing...
Incorrect. Why would you think not? After all, you can see God, pet God, and even show him to others. However, it may be that you are not referring to the Great Dane named God I read about online. It may be that, rather than assuming I'd know to which "God" you were referring (is there a reason you would assume such?), you meant ideas of supernatural gods cannot be proved or disproved, and on that I would agree. Of course, the problem is that such an axiom isn't limited to gods; there are all sorts of things that can't be proved or disproved including unicorns, invisible fairies, and even a magical whale named Brutus that wears a smoking jacket and is said by some (like me) to be a candidate for creator of the universe. My belief that Brutus may exist is safely beyond challenge, and that's fine. However, I would not impose any actions conveyed to me by Brutus, as I understood them, on others. If I did so I would hope someone like Professor Dawkins would show me why it was wrong to assert (and act on) any positive position that Brutus exists, rather than remain neutral until actual proof was forthcoming.
Yes, yes: 'On critical examination it can be disproved', so where is the critical examination there? Nowhere. This is simply someone saying, I'm anti-religion and I want my argument to be relevant, which it isn't, which is why it's on lesswrong a 'community blog' rather than somewhere legitimate or relevant.
The argument over the existence of god is simply put, pointless. Religions are irrelevant to the existence of god, they're a construct placed around an idea. You've got to disprove the idea, which places you squarely into philosophical debate, which as I already said is akin to debating whether a glass is half-full or half-empty: fucking pointless.
> Religions are irrelevant to the existence of god
As the blog noted, that's certainly not what most religious people believe. You're just not in Dawkins' target audience. So if it's ok with you, i'd rather not continue derailing this thread..
If you dislike derailing threads then when you post something, please ensure it is relevant to the discussion. Your link didn't even make the point you wanted it to, it basically stated "Saying god cannot be proved or disproved is wrong . . . for no reason whatsoever and I provide no justification for my reasoning!"
And no, I'm not in Dawkins' target audience and I'm glad I'm not, because they're anti-religious zealots frothing at the mouth clearly illustrated by your link. There was no evidence and no argument aside from "just 'cause", which IIRC is exactly the reasoning used by the bible.
> God cannot be proved or disproved, so stop wasting your time!
Just curious, what are your specifications for proof, and why should all things not meeting such rigorous criteria be a waste of time? I'd also challenge you to "prove" the sun will rise in the morning; I don't think it a waste of time to understand the physics in the movements of planets and stars.
I certainly agree about Feynman. I sometimes miss his clarity and honesty. (Among other things, I think he would have been so helpful in untangling the global warming controversy. But also explaining what evolution is and is not, to a layman.)
> God cannot be proved or disproved, so stop wasting your time!
The world is not so simple. Most people on Earth use some sort of God as their ethical basis. Some even argue that atheists cannot possibly have ethics, for they have no God. Thus whether to believe that the root of ethics is God, and whose God, is a crucial question.
What atheism argues is that reason alone, not faith, should guide our acts; an idea worth to teach, even if we must kill God in the way.
> What atheism argues is that reason alone, not faith, should guide our acts;
Surely this is axiomatic - you don't derive this by reason. So you are establishing that you should always derive logically your system of ethics except when choosing a system of ethics. Isn't there some crazy dissonance there for you. (I don't think you can square this circle I think it will boil down to a parallel of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem - you have to assume logic into your worldview by faith!).
I don't believe that "atheists cannot possibly have ethics" (that's not a Christian position as it's clear in the Bible that God has created in each of us a conscience) but I do think that atheist can't have objective ethical standards that are logically derived. It seems incompatible in my mind that neo-darwinist atheists can claim any action to be objectively right or wrong; things just are under such a world view.
How could you possibly have objective anything in a randomly occurring macroscopic quantum anomaly?
