TRIGGERnometry - July 05, 2023


Richard Dawkins： God, Truth & Death


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 6 minutes

Words per Minute

165.08073

Word Count

10,918

Sentence Count

586

Misogynist Sentences

7

Hate Speech Sentences

22


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.680 Do you not think that there is a fundamental part of us as human beings that needs religion?
00:00:06.000 You could say that there's a deep psychological need for religion.
00:00:12.400 The comfort that you get from believing a falsehood is like a drug and it's a perfectly
00:00:20.320 valid argument to say that there's everything to be said for the drug.
00:00:24.240 I just want to make a distinction between what is true and what humanity needs and it
00:00:28.240 may very well be that we do need false ideas in order to flourish and prosper but I'm also
00:00:35.200 interested in what's true.
00:00:36.880 A lot of people are zipping their mouths because of political pressure and if people for political
00:00:44.320 reasons are trying to deny that there really is a binary separation between the two sexes
00:00:49.680 then that is anti-scientific, anti-rational and is a subversion of language actually.
00:00:58.240 Hey Francis, do you think financial platforms should be apolitical and not cancel people
00:01:10.240 just because they don't agree with their politics?
00:01:12.160 I'll never forgive what those absolute f***ing b****** that Tide Bank did to us.
00:01:17.120 Now Francis, we don't know if our bank account was cancelled because of our politics.
00:01:22.000 Give me five minutes in a room with them and I'll find out.
00:01:24.800 What are you going to do? Test your new jokes on them?
00:01:26.800 Yes, and my Celine Dion impersonation.
00:01:29.200 Don't want to see that.
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00:02:52.000 who support freedom. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine
00:02:58.880 Kishin. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our
00:03:04.240 terrific guest today is a world-famous evolutionary biologist, prolific author, and one of the four
00:03:09.680 horsemen of the New Atheist Movement, Richard Dawkins. Professor Richard Dawkins, welcome to Trigonometry.
00:03:14.240 Thank you very much. Oh, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show. As I said, you're world-famous,
00:03:18.720 but for our audience who will already know some of your story. Tell us a little bit about the
00:03:22.720 background. Who are you? What's been your journey through life? How do you end up sitting here,
00:03:27.120 a set of huge accomplishments throughout your life, talking to us? How far do you want to go?
00:03:32.960 Back to birth? As far back as you want to go? Yes. I was born in British colonial Africa,
00:03:39.920 and my father was in the colonial service. And our family came to England when I was eight.
00:03:47.600 And then I went to boarding school, and then Oxford. And at Oxford, I was inspired by a world-famous
00:03:57.040 biologist called Nico Tinbergen, who later got a Nobel Prize. And I did my doctorate under him, and
00:04:03.680 have done, been in academic life ever since. And first of all, I went to University of California for
00:04:09.200 two years, a very junior assistant professor. And then I came back to Oxford, where I've been for
00:04:16.720 all my life. I was a tutor at Oxford, doing the rather unique Oxford tutorial system. And I started
00:04:24.800 writing books. And I wrote a lot of books, which for a general audience, which many of them sold very
00:04:29.840 well. And then I was given a professorship with a public understanding of science, the Charles
00:04:34.560 Symonia Professorship, of the public understanding of science. And then I had to, that was my job then,
00:04:39.600 was to communicate science. And pretty much that's what I've been doing, is communicating science.
00:04:44.560 I've written about 16 or 17 books. And retired, ooh, about 10 years ago now, longer,
00:04:53.040 and carried on writing books. And that's where I am.
00:04:55.280 It is indeed. And one of your first, or was it the first book, The Selfish Genius?
00:04:59.280 Yes.
00:04:59.600 That's your very first book. That was a book that revolutionized as a young student,
00:05:03.600 I remember reading it, and understanding things that I never understood. And some of the challenges
00:05:09.200 then to the idea, to the evolutionary theory, for example, altruism, were beautifully addressed in that,
00:05:14.720 in a way that even someone who's not an expert could understand. And you wrote that book almost half
00:05:20.800 a century ago now, in 1976. I'm very pleased to hear you say how much that influenced you, because
00:05:27.120 it sums up my attitude to biology. It's somewhat misunderstood, mainly by people who've read it
00:05:35.600 by title only, who think it's a book about selfishness, or even an advocacy of selfishness,
00:05:41.840 which of course it isn't, quite the contrary. And yes, it's coloured my whole
00:05:50.560 career, really.
00:05:51.680 And one of the things I wanted to ask you is, as I say, that was 1976, or nearly half a century ago.
00:05:58.480 What things, what discoveries have been made, what theories have been posited that you think,
00:06:04.480 in your field, and also more broadly, perhaps in science, have emerged in that half century,
00:06:09.440 or nearly half century, that you think are some of the most crucial things for human flourishing,
00:06:13.920 human development, that we've made in that period?
00:06:17.920 I suppose the main thing is the flourishing of molecular biology, because, I mean, it was
00:06:24.400 it was written long after Watson and Crick discovered the DNA double helix structure.
00:06:30.160 But that led to the to the unravelling of the genetic code, and the realising that biology is
00:06:37.040 fundamentally digital. And that's what's really going now in biology is dominated by this digital
00:06:44.160 view of genetics. Everything is digital. And some people have asked me, has that changed the selfish
00:06:53.120 gene? Would I would I change it if I rewrote it now because of the revolution in genomics? And I
00:06:58.800 think I wouldn't. It's still, um, it's still valid as far as evolution is concerned. I mean,
00:07:06.240 evolution is the differential survival of genes in gene pools. And that's,
00:07:11.840 could have been said in the 1930s, actually. Well, it pretty much was.
00:07:15.920 So, Richard, my question is, how much does biology dominate our lives, as in our own lives? Does it
00:07:25.680 dominate everything? Do we have free will? Or is it, are we just purely a product of our genetics?
00:07:31.600 Well, free will is a question that doesn't necessarily need a biologist to answer it.
00:07:37.600 It's a deep philosophical question. And it's not a question that I think you can answer by
00:07:44.320 looking at genetics. If we have free will, or we don't have free will, that won't be influenced by
00:07:52.000 looking at genes. You can say, um, nothing that I do is anything other than predetermined by the
00:08:01.680 things that happen in the world. The molecules in my brain, everything is predetermined. And genetics
00:08:09.600 will not just be a part of that. So there's not really a question for a geneticist. It's a question for
00:08:13.520 a philosopher, I suppose, um, or any scientist. And it's not a thing that you'll, that a geneticist
00:08:23.040 has any specific, um, input on. And is it, what, what revolution that can you see coming or is
00:08:32.480 happening at the moment that you actually get excited by? Because that's the exciting thing about
00:08:36.400 science, the changes, the innovation, the discoveries that we're seeing at the moment. Well, I mentioned
00:08:42.000 molecular genetics and, and that's happening all the time. It's not, it's not a single revolution.
00:08:46.240 It's just going on and on and on. Um, and so, um, the fact that you can actually read very swiftly
00:08:53.760 nowadays, you can actually read the genetic code of any animal. It's always the same genetic code.
00:08:58.960 And what it says is in detail different. And so you can take any animals you like and read the genetic
00:09:05.360 code, any people you like, and read the genetic code and compare it letter by letter, line by line,
00:09:11.120 just as you might compare two manuscripts. And that's an astonishing thing. I mean,
00:09:16.320 that, that would have amazed Darwin, I think. And that means that you can reconstruct the whole
00:09:23.840 tree of life, the whole pedigree, the whole family tree of all living things, um, in, in minute detail.
00:09:31.440 You can say, which is the, which pairs of animals and plants are the most of the closest cousins.
00:09:36.160 You can estimate how far back they had a shared ancestor. That's isn't, that's only an approximate
00:09:42.000 estimate, but, but you can roughly lay out the complete history of the branching tree of life
00:09:49.600 by looking at these molecular genetic, um, sentences.
00:09:55.360 Richard, and for someone like you who is a scientist and who is, uh, I, I think there's a sort of
00:10:02.000 wondrous appreciation of all these things and the beauty of the natural world and so on.
00:10:06.480 Uh, what are some, for, for our audience and, and for us actually, what are some of the practical
00:10:11.120 applications that come out of these discoveries that we may not yet have seen when we go to the
00:10:16.640 doctor? We may not yet have experienced in our own lives as a thing that's become part of it.
00:10:22.160 What is coming as a product of this, uh, steady, slow, but ongoing revolution?
00:10:27.840 Hitherto, doctors have treated us all as pretty much the same. I mean, maybe a bit different male
00:10:33.520 and female, old and young, but apart from that, if you've got a certain disease, you get a certain,
00:10:39.360 a certain medicine, a certain treatment. Um, what will come is when doctors are able to read the, um,
00:10:47.760 if they can in principle do it now, but when it becomes cheap enough that a doctor will know
00:10:52.480 the genome of each patient, then the prescription that the doctor will give for any particular disease
00:10:59.760 will vary depending upon the, uh, the genotype of the individual patient. Um, in a very sort of
00:11:07.600 crude way, we already have this when certain particular diseases are known to be caused by
00:11:12.320 certain particular genes. Um, but when everybody's patient, when everybody, every patient's genome
00:11:19.120 is on file in the doctor's computer, say, okay, well, I look at me as I see your genome, so you
00:11:24.080 better have this, this drug and the next patient, you better have this drug. Um, I think that that's
00:11:29.920 the main thing I can think of immediately off the top of my head in answer to your question.
00:11:35.200 Richard, are you worried that, no, no, for, from a medical point of view, that sounds incredible.
00:11:40.480 I'm like, of course, that, that is wonderful. That's what everybody should have access to.
00:11:44.480 But do you worry as well that this type of information could be used in a, in a way to
00:11:49.040 discriminate against people, for example, to prevent people getting health insurance because
00:11:52.880 you might have like the Baraka gene and that means that you have a 90% chance of developing breast
00:11:57.840 cancer. That's a big worry. And, uh, it's one of the things that needs to be looked at very carefully
00:12:03.360 because, um, life insurance companies at present have a very crude way of, um, doing their actuarial
00:12:11.280 calculations. They look at your age, they look at whether you smoke, whether you drink to it to
00:12:16.000 excess, that kind of thing. Um, but, um, apart from that, we're all treated pretty much equally.
00:12:23.360 And that means that, um, that those of us who are, um, who are, who are healthier in a sense subsidizing
00:12:28.880 those of us who get ill and that that's the way insurance works. If, if it came to it that, um,
00:12:37.600 genetic, uh, knowledge enabled actuarial calculators to say, okay, he's got, he's got another 25 years
00:12:47.200 to live. He's got only 15 years to live. Um, then life insurance would become impossible. I don't think
00:12:53.280 it'll come to that because it's not that predictable, but nevertheless, um, there would
00:12:58.080 have to be careful regulation. I'm not sure how that would work. I suppose to prevent insurance
00:13:04.960 companies getting access to data, which, which would have to be kept confidential. That would
00:13:10.720 be one way to do it. Uh, another where I, I'm not quite sure what, how, what the legality of, of it
00:13:15.760 would be, but that, that is a big worry. And, and also as well, what it brings into, I mean,
00:13:21.520 the term designer babies is, is used. I think it's more of a kind of tabloid description,
00:13:26.400 but we know what we mean, where people, where babies are then having screened for certain
00:13:31.680 genetics and certain genes are taking, are taken out or eliminated or played with. Do you think
00:13:37.600 that scientists playing God, or do you think that's actually where we need to get to as a species,
00:13:44.080 so thereby eliminating certain illnesses, diseases? I think it's hard to find an objection to eliminating
00:13:50.240 diseases. So I think as long as that's used, not for making designer babies, but for, um,
00:13:58.240 screening against hereditary diseases, it seems to me that that's really hard to object to that.
00:14:04.800 Richard, sorry to interrupt. Do you not think there's a moral conundrum there? Because it kind
00:14:08.800 of depends where you draw that line, doesn't it? For example, if you have a baby that's, I don't know,
00:14:13.680 has a higher risk of cancer. Now, I have a young son, I wouldn't want him to have a higher risk of
00:14:20.320 cancer. But if I could then, you know, select him from a number of fetuses and discard the others,
00:14:25.360 wouldn't that be maybe perhaps too far going in that direction? Well, I don't think necessarily so.
00:14:31.920 I suppose the way it might work, this would be something like this. In IVF, in vitro fertilization,
00:14:37.600 the woman is given hormone treatment to super ovulate. So she gets maybe a dozen eggs,
00:14:44.800 and the dozen eggs are all in a Petri dish. And what happens at present is that the doctor picks
00:14:51.200 out one of these eggs at random, well, they all get fertilized if they can, picks out one of the
00:14:56.880 zygotes at random and re-implants it in the woman. Well, um, if the, instead of picking at the
00:15:07.440 zygote at random, you, you, you examine the genes, and this can be done when it reaches,
00:15:12.560 say the eight cell stage. So you let them develop to the eight cell stage. So they are eight cell
00:15:16.720 embryos. And then you can take out one cell of the, of the eight, and look at the genes of that,
00:15:23.040 and it doesn't damage it. And you say, oh, okay, this one has the gene for haemophilia,
00:15:29.360 and this one doesn't. Why on earth would you choose at random if you know
00:15:33.840 that some, that half of them have the haemophilia gene and half of them don't?
00:15:38.960 Obviously, it makes moral sense to pick one of the half, one of the 50% that do not have the gene
00:15:45.600 for haemophilia, whatever it might be. I suppose the question that it brings into,
00:15:48.960 and this is part of the other conversation we want to have with you, um, in terms of atheism and
00:15:54.560 religion, it brings into question, uh, life. What is life? Is, is a eight cell zygote life? Can it be
00:16:01.360 discarded? Uh, is that, that, that's where the moral conundrum comes in? I have no time for those,
00:16:07.120 that kind of argument about, is this a human, human life? You don't really? No. Why not? Well,
00:16:12.400 because this eight cell zygote has no feeling, it has no nervous system, it has no capacity to suffer,
00:16:19.360 no capacity to feel pain. Um, so that there's, I mean, no, no moral difficulty at all in choosing.
00:16:25.920 You're going to pick one of them anyway. You want a dozen of them,
00:16:28.640 and the, and the 11 that you, that you don't choose are going to be flushed away anyway.
00:16:34.000 So, um, you've already taken that moral decision in a way. It's a question of whether you choose one
00:16:38.880 at random, whether you choose the one that, that does not have the lethal or sublethal.
00:16:44.960 But what I mean is once you've created that selection process, given that parents would want
00:16:49.680 their children to be happy, but also clever and charismatic.
00:16:54.000 Now you've moved on to quite a bit of a different topic. Now you've moved on to...
00:16:57.440 But that's where I was going with it, right? Okay, okay.
00:16:59.360 So, and that's, I think, the core of Francis' question too is,
00:17:01.760 if we've got the opportunity to select the optimum baby for us,
00:17:05.760 are we not going to end up in a position where parents are encouraged to go down that path?
00:17:10.240 Well, yes. Incentivized even.
00:17:11.600 But you've changed the subject, and I, I, I was talking about the removal of...
00:17:14.960 Of course. Yeah.
00:17:15.600 I'm not trying to catch you out. I'm trying to get to the bottom.
00:17:17.360 No, no, no. It's a very interesting question.
00:17:18.720 Yeah. And then you can say something like, um, if it became possible to know that of these,
00:17:25.280 of these dozen zygotes that we've got, um, some of them have a gene for musical genius,
00:17:34.080 and some of them don't, um, we're nowhere near that at the moment. But, but if, if in the future that,
00:17:39.520 that came about, then would you worry about parents who say, I want my child to, to be a great musician,
00:17:46.560 or a great composer, a great mathematician. Um, and that's very interesting. That's a more difficult
00:17:53.280 moral dilemma. Um, if, if you object to that, then I might say to you, why do you object to that
00:18:02.720 when you don't object to parents, even forcing their child to practice the piano? See, you know,
00:18:11.040 you, you haven't done your music practice today. Get on with it. You're supposed to practice,
00:18:15.200 because the only way you will become a great pianist is by practicing six hours a day, whatever it is.
00:18:20.880 Um, why would you think that is, uh, okay, when you would not think it okay to pick out
00:18:28.880 a zygote from a Petri dish, which contains a genetic predisposition to be a great musician?
00:18:34.480 I'm not answering the question, but I'm saying that, in a way, these sorts of moral questions
00:18:39.280 can best be answered by comparison with other, other things. And I'm just comparing this case,
00:18:45.120 asking sort of question a moral philosopher might ask. Um, what's the difference between
00:18:51.520 encouraging a child to practice the piano and giving the child a head start by giving it the
00:18:57.440 gene of the, of the ones that are available in the Petri dish in an IVF situation, um, to become
00:19:05.280 a musician? Well, I suppose the problem with, with the answer to that is we come back into the realm of
00:19:11.760 religion and morality, because I think at the core of it is the idea that the creation of life is some
00:19:18.480 kind of random miracle. It's supposed to be sort of, it's, it's not supposed to be is a word that I've
00:19:26.640 introduced of course, but if we, if we call it a miracle, um, it's supposed to be random to some
00:19:33.520 extent. It's supposed to be down to chance when you, when we start interfering with that selection
00:19:38.000 process. Instinctively, I, I don't, I can't explain it perhaps. I feel a certain, there's something off
00:19:44.560 about that for me. I know that's not a very rational or scientific argument, but I do think that's one a
00:19:50.560 lot of people share actually. Well, it's not rational. No, I acknowledge that. It sounds as though you're
00:19:54.800 religious. It does, it does, which I'm not interestingly, but I feel that that is probably
00:19:59.600 how a lot of people do think about it. Yes, I suppose they do. Um, I think it's more of a worry
00:20:07.440 would be if some mad dictator, some kind of Hitler, started using these techniques and, and mandating,
00:20:13.920 you know, this, the selection of blonde, blue eyed, Aryan, you know, um, the sort of thing Hitler
00:20:24.240 might have, might have selected. Um, I was talking about more giving parents the opportunity
00:20:30.160 to have their, um, to do their IVF in a, in a non-random way. I mean, to, I, I can sort of see
00:20:37.920 that both ways. I don't, I'm like, but on the other hand, if it, if you have a dictator who says,
00:20:42.800 we want to breed in this country, a race of people who are, who are of such and such a type,
00:20:48.960 um, that I think is deeply sinister. I would agree with you. What would you say as well,
00:20:53.600 Richard? Because I think about this a lot. So when I was a teacher, I taught, for instance,
00:20:58.560 uh, children who were on the autistic spectrum and they were quite far on the autistic spectrum,
00:21:04.080 so they were non-verbal, but I also saw children who were autistic and as a result of their autism,
00:21:11.360 some of them were highly gifted in mathematics and would go on to be scientists, physicists,
00:21:17.200 et cetera, et cetera. You see artists who have depression, for example, very severe depression,
00:21:23.520 but that almost gives them an insight into the human condition and human suffering.
00:21:28.240 My worry is with this, we go, okay, we're going to get rid of depression. We're going to get rid of
00:21:31.280 autism. And then you could argue, well, look, we're going to get rid of, we're going to lower
00:21:34.800 suicide rates. As a result of that, we're going to, non-verbal autism will be eradicated completely.
00:21:41.200 But also, aren't we going to get rid of the outliers, the, the, the great thinkers,
00:21:46.000 the people who look at the world in a different way that move our, our species forward?
00:21:50.240 That's an excellent point. Um, and, and it's one that I should have come onto anyway. Yeah.
00:21:54.480 Um, when you do any kind of selection for any one characteristic, you're in danger of
00:22:00.160 having side effects, which you never, which you never thought of. So if, if you select for, um,
00:22:06.240 to, to, to remove some kind of psychological problem, then it might, could well be that you're
00:22:11.520 then having a side effect of, of, of never getting any, any genius mathematicians of something of that
00:22:17.040 sort, is what you're saying. I think that's a very good point. And, um, it's what, it's one of the
00:22:22.240 problems with any kind of eugenic selection is that, is that you, you don't know what the, what the
00:22:27.840 byproducts are going to be of the selection that you're, that you're engaged upon. And that's
00:22:32.160 what I mean when, when you have a dictator who says, we're going to breed for such and such.
00:22:36.560 You see this with, with breeding animals, you, you breed for racehorses who have very, can run very
00:22:42.400 fast and, and they break their legs. I mean, they've, they've, they've, they've become more vulnerable
00:22:48.000 to, um, leg breakages because you're breeding for one thing, namely speed.
00:22:52.480 And in nature, that doesn't happen. In nature, it's, it would be counterbalanced by selection
00:22:59.360 against raking the legs. Well, you're only using a human example, which is much more serious,
00:23:04.080 um, where, um, geniuses, outliers, as you rightly said, um, are quite likely to be selected against,
00:23:14.640 if you naively, um, go for removing certain psychological problems. So there's, there's,
00:23:25.040 there is something to be said for letting nature take its course. But I think I come back to the
00:23:31.040 negative things of these, these sort of genetic diseases, which are, which are, I think anybody
00:23:36.320 would agree are undesirable, like haemophilia. Um, and, and it seemed, it seems to me that taking a moral
00:23:44.960 letting that your moral concerns overspill into forbidding the removal of genetic diseases
00:23:53.920 like haemophilia, that, that are obviously negative in all respects, um, that, that, that's going too far.
00:24:01.040 And Richard, we have a lot of scientists saying that they're worried about where science is going,
00:24:08.240 the state of science in general, free speech in universities, scientists no longer being able to,
00:24:14.560 allowed to explore certain avenues. How do you see the field of sciences at the moment? Are you
00:24:19.360 optimistic or are you a little bit more cautious? Um, what examples are you thinking of where scientists
00:24:24.560 are not allowed to? Well, we, we, for instance, when it comes to talking about, but, uh,
00:24:30.880 the sexes and saying, you know, there, there, there's differences between the sexes investigating
00:24:37.520 the differences between the sexes. Certain scientists would say, look, I don't feel able to
00:24:42.960 investigate that anymore because people will complain. People will say certain things about me
00:24:48.800 that, you know, that I'm denying the existence of trans people, for example.
00:24:53.040 Yes. I think you're right that, um, not just scientists, but, but, um, a lot of people are zipping
00:24:58.880 their mouths, um, because of, um, a political pressure of the sort that you're saying. Um,
00:25:06.560 and it, it is important, I think, for scientists to, to be honest and to, uh, use language precisely.
00:25:14.640 And in a particular case of sex that, that you mentioned, it's one of the few cases where there
00:25:18.400 really is a, a, a, a bifurcation, a binary bifurcation. There really are two sexes. And scientists
00:25:27.360 have to, have to work on, under that, that fact. And if, uh, people for political reasons are trying
00:25:33.920 to deny that there really are, there really is a binary separation between the, between the two
00:25:38.800 sexes, then that is anti-scientific, anti-rational, and is a subversion of language, actually.
00:25:45.200 Richard, uh, I, I actually didn't want to make this conversation in any way about the cultural
00:25:52.240 discussions around that issue. But since, since we've come to it, do you sit there and sometimes
00:25:58.320 have to pinch yourself that you, one of the most eminent evolutionary biologists in our society,
00:26:04.480 go on the, on, on the mainstream media and you are asked to talk about the fact that there's men and
00:26:10.800 women. Do you not, do you not feel, do you not experience that as like a gigantic regression?
00:26:15.600 Richard, I do. I, I, I, I do because, um, I, I've, um, one of the main points I, I, I like to make
00:26:23.200 is that very often, um, I, I call it the tyranny of the discontinuous mind. We're, we're far too fond
00:26:29.200 of making discriminations, um, things like, um, well, we were talking a bit earlier about, um, embryos.
00:26:37.920 When does, when does an embryo become human? Is there a particular moment when an embryo becomes human?
00:26:42.880 No, there isn't. It's a continuum. It's a sliding scale. There are sliding scales everywhere.
00:26:48.160 We, in universities, when we examine students, we give them a degree first, second, two, one,
00:26:55.040 two, two, third. We, we, we insist upon making a divide between one class and another. We know
00:27:01.760 perfectly well that the top of one class is closer to the bottom of the one above than it is to the
00:27:08.720 bottom of its own class. And yet the information about the sliding scale is actually in bell-shaped
00:27:15.200 distribution in this case, um, is thrown away when we divide. We insist upon making divide. So,
00:27:22.240 um, the tyranny of the discontinuous mind is one of my catchphrases. And if I look around and say,
00:27:28.720 is there any case where there really is a proper divide, a real, where there really is no spectrum,
00:27:34.560 spectrum. And sex is, is the one thing I can think of. There really isn't a spectrum. You really are
00:27:39.440 either male or female. And so, um, I do have to pinch myself when, um, for once, uh, it goes the other
00:27:50.080 way. I mean, there, there really is no spectrum there. And, um, yes, I, I, I do have to pinch myself.
00:27:56.320 And where do you think this regression, if you agree with my use of it, where does that come from?
00:28:02.240 Well, in certain social sciences, um, they've been very influenced by what they call postmodernism.
00:28:07.840 I don't really know what postmodernism is. In fact, I think the so-called postmodernists don't know
00:28:12.720 either. But I think it's something to do with, um, words meaning something that is determined by
00:28:24.000 politics. And you don't, you don't actually have a fixed meaning of words like male and female,
00:28:32.720 because there's an intellectual movement in, in the social sciences that says that everything
00:28:36.960 is a social construct. And male and female is a social construct. There's no real, well,
00:28:42.320 validity to the, to difference in male and female. It's all a social construct, um, or cultural
00:28:48.880 relativism, the idea that, um, um, different cultures have completely different ways of classifying
00:28:54.400 the world. And so, and so it's just our white Western way of looking at things that, um, that says that
00:29:01.680 there are, there's a divide between males and females and something like, like that.
00:29:05.600 And Richard, with this social, uh, constructivism thing, my sense is that is,
00:29:12.320 the erosion of the concept of truth itself. Is, is that too strongly put or would you?
00:29:17.440 I think it's absolutely right to say that it is erosion of the concept of truth. I mean,
00:29:21.760 it, it is valid to say that language evolves and, and what words mean today is not the same as what
00:29:27.600 they meant 200 years ago necessarily or a thousand years ago. Um, and so we have to accept the fact that
00:29:32.880 words change them, their, their meaning, but we also have to live in a world where, um,
00:29:39.680 we have to be able to communicate. And so we have to be able to say that there are certain words that,
00:29:43.680 that, that, that at present means, mean such and such. At present, black means black and white means
00:29:48.320 white and blue means blue. And it, and it, if, if that changes in a hundred years, that's okay.
00:29:53.840 But for the moment, we've, we've got to use words that everybody understands. And words like male and
00:29:58.560 female are pretty clear in everybody's mind, what that means. And, um, to come along and say,
00:30:06.000 oh, that's just a social construct, um, is subversion of language, subversion of truth. I think you're
00:30:11.280 right. Do you think that this is a religious belief, Richard? I think it has a lot in common
00:30:17.360 with religion, with religious belief. Um, it's different in that it doesn't invoke anything
00:30:22.080 supernatural, but it's very similar in the ways that heretics are hunted down. We've seen this in
00:30:30.800 Oxford recently where Kathleen Stock has been, has been, um, vigorously, not almost violently,
00:30:38.080 sometimes they are violently hunted down. Then there's actually rather detailed parallels with,
00:30:44.640 with religious, um, dogma, um, the, the doctrine of, um, original sin. Um, Christians, especially Catholics,
00:30:57.440 believe that, um, we're all born in sin. We're all, we're all in, we all inherit the sin of Adam.
00:31:02.640 Um, although they no longer think Adam ever existed, but somehow they sort of managed to
00:31:06.640 talk and go on about talking about the sin of Adam. Um, and so we all, the moment we're born,
00:31:13.040 we're born in sin. We had to be baptized to be cleansed of sin, that, that kind of thing.
00:31:17.520 And I think we see that in the collective guilt that all white people are supposed to inherit
00:31:23.840 because of slavery. And, you know, even if they, obviously they have no direct connection with
00:31:30.480 slavery, maybe even if they never had an ancestor, most probably did, but, um, and we are all
00:31:40.080 collectively guilty for what people of, of our type did in some past age. And that is original sin.
00:31:49.840 I mean, it's exactly like original sin. Francis, may I jump in just very quickly, Richard? Yes.
00:31:54.320 You said there's nothing supernatural. Do you not think that the claim that you can change your sex
00:31:59.040 by means of incantation is a claim that is supernatural? I mean, yes, I mean, you could,
00:32:04.080 you can make that case. Um, it's not quite supernatural in the same sense as, as believing in gods or believing in,
00:32:10.960 in fairies. Um, but yes, it's sort of like that. Um, let's take another religious example, the Catholic belief in
00:32:21.920 transubstantiation where the consecrated wine and bread becomes the blood and body of Christ. And the,
00:32:33.760 the, the way they put this is, is to use the Aristotelian idea of substance, essence, something
00:32:42.560 and accidental. So, so, um, um, um, Aristotle made the distinction between the, the, the real substance
00:32:52.880 and, and the, and the accidentals. And so they, they say that while the accidentals of wine is still wine
00:32:59.440 in this sort of accidental sense, but in real substance, it becomes the blood of Christ. And
00:33:04.560 that's the verbal trick that they use to, to justify this ridiculous idea that the blood becomes the,
00:33:12.240 sorry, the wine becomes the blood of Christ. Um, so yes, that's very, very similar to, you're quite
00:33:18.080 right. That's very, very similar to saying that it's an incantation that you say, I stand up and say,
00:33:23.760 I am a woman. Therefore I am a woman. Therefore everything about me is, is a woman. You're not allowed to
00:33:29.360 misgender me. You're not allowed to say anything against the idea that I'm a woman. That's very,
00:33:33.760 very similar to, to the accidental and real substance argument of Catholics in the accidentals may, may,
00:33:42.080 may say I'm a man. I still have a penis, but in my real substance, I'm a woman. And that's very,
00:33:48.160 very similar. Yes. Richard. Now you, you're obviously a very famous atheist and you've written
00:33:54.960 fantastic works talking about your atheism. Do you not think that there is a fundamental
00:34:01.040 part of us as human beings that needs religion? Yes, very possibly there is. Um, it doesn't mean
00:34:08.320 it applies to everybody. It may mean that there's just a, um, it is quite difficult to eradicate when
00:34:15.040 you have something as fundamental as that. And, and yes. Um, and I suppose a psychologist could delve
00:34:21.920 into that and say something like you, we all need, um, to believe in something higher than ourselves.
00:34:29.360 And we have a desperate need to believe that we're not going to disfizzle out when we die. Um,
00:34:34.480 so yes, uh, you could, you could say that there's a deep psychological need for religion. It doesn't
00:34:42.640 mean everybody has it. It doesn't mean that you can't get out of it. Uh, but, but there's probably
00:34:47.600 there's something like that to explain it. And because being critical of organized religion,
00:34:54.720 as you were, was there ever, did you ever think that you might, that you went too far with your
00:35:01.360 criticisms of God in particular? Or would you look back on it and go, no, I was absolutely justified in
00:35:08.720 what I said at that particular time? Um, I, I've always tried to seek the truth and, uh, I've,
00:35:19.360 I've never wanted to be, um, I never wanted to upset people. Um, but I just think that we should be
00:35:25.680 free to argue points. And, um, so, uh, I don't think I've gone too far. You could possibly dig out
00:35:37.280 cases where, where are you, you might challenge me and I might say, yes, perhaps I did go too far there.
00:35:42.240 Um, but, um, I think in general, I've always just tried to be loyal to the truth. I think that
00:35:53.440 religious claims are not trivial. And I think that they're very interesting. Um, it, it,
00:35:59.920 it's in a way is one of the biggest questions that perhaps the biggest question there is in science is,
00:36:04.720 is, is does some kind of supernatural intelligence lurk behind the universe? Is the universe a planned,
00:36:15.760 um, entity that, that, that there's a super supernatural being conceived? I mean, that's a
00:36:24.480 profound scientific question. If it's true, then we're, then the entire universe we're looking at
00:36:30.320 is a very different kind of universe from one where there's nothing behind it. Um, and so it's a very,
00:36:36.320 very deep scientific question. Um, and I think the, the answer is clear. There is none, but I'm, I, I don't
00:36:46.880 write it off as something trivial. I don't write it off as a case where you can just say, um, it's not
00:36:53.520 interesting. Of course it's interesting. Um, it's interesting. A scientist has got to be interested
00:36:58.560 in this, this suggestion that the sort of universe we're studying is a planned, designed universe.
00:37:05.680 That's a very, very different kind of universe. So it's a very, it's a very deep question.
00:37:09.440 It is a very deep question because I, I sense, and I'm not a scientist, that the more you discover
00:37:15.040 about the world, the more you learn about the beauties, the details, the intricacies, the way things are
00:37:20.000 interlocked together. Isn't maybe a part of you that thinks this can't have been an accident.
00:37:27.120 There must be something else here. It's very, very tempting to say, yes,
00:37:32.320 everything works so perfectly together. And the, the, for me as a biologist, the complexity of life,
00:37:37.680 the, the enormous panoply of, of plants and animals and forests and birds and insects,
00:37:44.160 everything working together. No, it's, it's, it's a huge, beautiful construction. And what,
00:37:52.640 for me, what is absolutely marvelous is that nevertheless, there is a perfectly decent explanation
00:37:58.400 that it did all come about without, without planning. So one of the beauties of it is precisely
00:38:04.080 that we now can explain it or we're well on our way to, to explaining it without invoking any kind of
00:38:11.200 supernatural intelligence. And it is a great temptation because, um, we are so used to the
00:38:20.240 idea looking at our own machines, looking at things that we've made like computers and cars and planes.
00:38:26.320 And, um, these are clearly the result of design, deliberate design, deliberate construction.
00:38:35.840 And when you look at something like a bird's wing, compare it with an airplane's wing,
00:38:40.640 the temptation is huge to say, oh, they must both be designed. And it was the genius of Darwin to break
00:38:48.320 away from that and say, you actually know, there is a proper explanation. There is a, a materialistic
00:38:53.600 explanation for that. Um, and so, so the flip side of, of the, of the temptation is that when you've
00:39:01.200 overcome the temptation and worked out that it is possible to explain it in
00:39:07.920 simple scientific, I, I, I really mean simple because it, the ideas, the idea,
00:39:13.520 Darwin's idea is a deeply simple idea. And yet, given enough time, the Darwinian idea of natural
00:39:20.960 selection, given enough time, can build up to prodigies of complexity and beauty
00:39:27.920 and the illusion of design. And that's a, that's a measure of the genius of Darwin to see that.
00:39:34.880 And Richard, in your book, The Blind Watchmaker, you make that point, I think, beautifully.
00:39:39.520 And I do actually think that just slightly, no disrespect to France, is probably one of the
00:39:44.160 weaker arguments against your position. What I think is a stronger, stronger argument is the one he made
00:39:48.400 earlier. And this is about the psychological need people have for religion, but also at the level
00:39:54.560 of society. And this is really something I want to get into with you. Uh, uh, Noah Yuval Harari,
00:40:00.000 for example, in his book, Sapiens, his central argument is that the reason homo sapiens were able
00:40:05.520 to out-compete other, uh, species of human, uh, human, uh, humanoids, humanids? Hominids. See, I got both
00:40:13.760 wrong, hominids, was that, um, they were able to build shared myths that allowed them to create tribes that
00:40:20.800 went beyond the, the 150 limit of sort of being able to know everybody. And when we look at the
00:40:27.680 world today, uh, our generation, I, uh, when you're not in the room, I sometimes refer to us as, you know,
00:40:33.840 the children of Dawkins and the children of Hitchens in the sense that you took away with your beautiful
00:40:39.440 books, our ability to have that illusion that the world around us is, you know, this God created
00:40:46.560 mysterious place for which there's no other explanation. But as I look around at the world
00:40:51.920 with its inability to agree on what words mean, uh, what people call now the crisis of meaning,
00:40:59.760 where a lot of people are kind of lost. They don't know what the purpose and meaning of their life is.
00:41:05.120 Do you worry that maybe the truth is that for Richard Dawkins, your worldview is perfect because
00:41:11.840 you are Richard Dawkins, you're able to be inspired by science, by the beauty of the natural world,
00:41:16.880 by the beauty of the universe. But for a lot of other people, what they actually need is not necessarily
00:41:22.960 the belief in God so much as the social function that religion used to fulfill, which is to bind us
00:41:29.520 together with a set of shared values and a set of shared morals and a set of shared ideas about what
00:41:35.920 it means to be human, what it means to relate to other people. And without that, we are lost and
00:41:41.040 therefore we create these new religions that sort of tear our society apart.
00:41:46.720 I think that's very interesting and I'm rather persuaded by Harari's argument. But notice what
00:41:55.680 you've just done. I mean, you said maybe humans need religion, maybe they need something to bind
00:42:03.920 society together and function as a unit and so on. And maybe they do. And that doesn't make it true.
00:42:09.600 Oh, I agree with you. And of course you do. How modest of you.
00:42:15.280 No, I mean, it's just that you can make an utterly watertight argument where humanity needs something,
00:42:23.520 which is false. Oh, fine. And I just want to make a distinction between what is true and what
00:42:30.720 humanity needs. And it may very well be that we do need false ideas in order to flourish and prosper.
00:42:40.240 But I'm also interested in what's true. And so, I mean, I don't want to get involved in that sort
00:42:45.920 of selfish idea that it's okay for us intellectuals, but hoi polloi need religion.
00:42:54.160 I wouldn't consider myself an intellectual. So I am the hoi polloi in this context. But I'm just
00:43:01.360 saying to you, to me, truth is a supreme value. And I agree with you. But at the same time, to me,
00:43:07.600 the cohesion of our society, the fact that people are able to live a life of meaning and purpose,
00:43:13.760 they're able to connect to other human beings and be fulfilled in their lives and know what to do.
00:43:19.040 And, you know, you don't have people who are disappointed with the way that their life has
00:43:23.440 gone because of the choices that they made, because they didn't have someone encouraging
00:43:27.680 them down a particular path. That, to me, is also very tragic, as tragic as the erosion of the concept
00:43:33.440 of truth. And I feel there's a balance to be struck there. That's what I'm saying.
00:43:36.880 Yes. I think that's a very good point. And perhaps I should say, accepting the possibility of that,
00:43:44.640 I might also say that, actually, there's something wonderful about truth itself.
00:43:48.560 Of course. And so you can lead a very, very fulfilled life in the search for truth.
00:43:56.080 And... But that's my argument. You can. You can. You are a scientist who spent his whole life
00:44:02.960 pursuing the truth with a microscope and whatever other tools you use, right? I haven't. I can't.
00:44:09.440 That's not what I can do. And that's not what a lot of people can do. It's not because they're
00:44:13.280 more stupid than you. It's just because they're not scientifically minded. Maybe they,
00:44:16.960 they're musicians or whatever, and they don't have that same mindset as you do. They don't have
00:44:21.920 the same brain as you do. That's the argument. I can't get involved in using myself.
00:44:29.120 But, but, um, I just want to repeat that, that, that you don't act, well, okay, you don't actually
00:44:34.400 have to be a working scientist. You can, you can, you can revel in the beauty of scientific
00:44:39.680 understanding, just as you can revel in music without actually be able to play an instrument.
00:44:46.080 And, um, there is, there is immense fulfillment to be had in appreciation of understanding of the
00:44:56.000 universe in which you live and why you live here, or why you exist. That, that's a wonderful thing.
00:45:02.880 And I, I don't want to accept the idea that only certain people are capable of doing that. You
00:45:09.680 want to actually have a microscope in order to do that. You don't. You can read books. You can see
00:45:16.000 the cosmos television series. You can see David Attenborough's films. Um, and there's huge
00:45:22.880 satisfaction of, of the kind of thing that I suppose religion aspired to do in past centuries. Um, and
00:45:30.560 uh, you can, you can get it by
00:45:36.000 almost worshiping, not worshiping in the sense of worshiping the supernatural, but the,
00:45:40.640 the, the, the, the, the, the wonder of your own existence and the process that has given rise to
00:45:46.160 your, to, to, to you, that has led to your existence, which
00:45:51.840 wonder of wonders, we knew, we now pretty much understand. I mean, we, we, it's a privilege to be
00:45:56.960 alive in the 21st century and to be in a position to just read a few books and see a few television
00:46:05.200 documentaries and understand why you exist. That's never happened before.
00:46:09.040 I, I think the thing that, the thing that religion gives people is a sense of safety almost. So,
00:46:21.120 for instance, if when, when somebody is very ill and maybe they have cancer and they don't know
00:46:26.000 if they're going to live or not, this knowledge that there is a supreme being looking after them,
00:46:31.920 or that there's somewhere that they're going to go afterwards, provide someone with a deep sense
00:46:37.440 of comfort in the darkest moments of their life. And whilst I agree with everything that you said
00:46:43.360 about science and discovery and the wonder of looking at the universe, I don't think that provides
00:46:50.160 that particular emotion. Do you see? No, it's probably true. Uh, and, um, again, you can say, um,
00:46:56.560 um, the, the, the, the solace that you get, the comfort that you get from a belief, even if it's
00:47:02.320 false, it nevertheless is comforting. Um, uh, you've probably read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
00:47:09.600 Yes. Where, um, um, the, uh, towards the end, the, the Mr. Savage, the person who's brought from the
00:47:18.800 reservation and who is, who has actually got access to reading Shakespeare and things. And he has an
00:47:22.800 argument with the world controller about whether dulling people's senses with Soma, with the drug
00:47:29.520 that they, that they all have to make them feel good. Um, comparing that with, um, the, the, um,
00:47:37.840 depth of emotion that you can get by reading Romeo and Juliet or, or, or, or Othello. Um, and the
00:47:44.400 savage is advocating Shakespeare and the world controller is advocating the pacification of people
00:47:54.560 with, with, with, with this drug that makes them all feel good. In a way, the, the comfort that you
00:48:00.640 get from believing a falsehood, um, is like a drug. And, and it's a perfectly valid argument to say that,
00:48:09.120 that there's everything to be said for the drug. And there are, of course, real drugs you can take.
00:48:13.600 It doesn't have to be a false belief. You can, you can take Soma equivalent.
00:48:19.280 Well, well, that, I mean, that is absolutely true. It's, you know, it's that drug is,
00:48:24.560 is such a powerful thing. You, you see, I can, I've got to the stage in my life, Richard, where
00:48:29.920 I can tell a lot of the time if someone is religious, because there's a lightness about them.
00:48:34.880 There's almost the, they, that kind of existential dread, which hangs off atheists. And maybe I'm
00:48:41.280 projecting somewhat they don't seem to have.
00:48:44.080 Not my experience. Um, uh, I would say you have the same lightness, by the way.
00:48:49.680 Actually, yes.
00:48:50.240 Okay. I, I, I'm not sure that that would stand up to a serious investigation.
00:48:55.920 A controlled experiment may not show that.
00:49:00.720 Well, okay. I mean, we've got nothing but anecdotes. Um, anecdotes I've heard. I, I was close to
00:49:06.640 somebody who, um, was in, was looked, looked, looked after an old people's home. And she said that,
00:49:13.440 um, the people who are really afraid of death are the Catholics. Um, and that seems surprising in a way,
00:49:23.280 but remember there's hell as well as heaven. And, and, um, there's purgatory before you get to,
00:49:30.480 to either. Um, and so, um, I think we need a bit, a bit more investigation before, before we talk about
00:49:37.520 this lightness of being that you, you get from, from, um, uh, Richard. And, and what about you?
00:49:43.040 Because, uh, you're in your eighties now, you're in extremely great shape, both physically and mentally,
00:49:48.720 but you are in, you know, you are in your eighties. And so the moment is coming, uh, for you at some
00:49:54.640 point, I hope very, very far away. Uh, an atheist, uh, deathbed conversion is not a thing that's unheard of.
00:50:01.520 Uh, how, how do you have that lightness? It, it, it's a, but often it's a myth. I mean, there's a,
00:50:07.200 there's a, there's a myth, there's a myth that Darwin hadn't had a deathbed conversion, which is,
00:50:10.960 which is utterly false. Um, I guess what I'm asking is how do you have the lightness that you have?
00:50:17.280 How do you face death? I think that, um, well, uh, I think it was Mark Twain said, um, I was dead for
00:50:26.800 billions of years before I was born and never suffered the smallest inconvenience. Um, it's
00:50:33.440 going to be just the same as before we were born. We were, we were, we were not there during the whole
00:50:40.880 of the Cambrian and the Ordovician and the age of the dinosaurs and everything. And we're going to be
00:50:46.400 not there after we're dead. So we have this brief time in the sun to have a full and fulfilled life,
00:50:56.800 which is what I am doing and intend to go on doing until I can't anymore. Um, the, the process of dying,
00:51:04.880 as opposed to being dead, the process of dying is often very disagreeable.
00:51:11.600 That is the most British understatement that's ever made.
00:51:15.040 We're not allowed to, we're not allowed the privilege that a dog has of being taken to the vet
00:51:20.400 and put painlessly to sleep. Maybe I should identify as a dog.
00:51:26.080 If I'm not allowed to go to the vet and asked to be put down or, or if the vet refuses to put me down,
00:51:37.280 I could sue him for misspeciesing. Um, so, um, okay. I mean, if there is something frightening about
00:51:47.200 being dead, it's the idea of eternity. Yes. And eternity is a sort of frightening idea,
00:51:53.280 whether it's before you're born or after you're born, it's a kind of frightening idea.
00:51:56.960 Um, and so the best way to spend eternity, therefore, is after a general anaesthetic,
00:52:02.240 which is exactly what's going to happen. Richard, I was going, you were saying that it was
00:52:08.160 under a general anaesthetic. Was there part of you when you were at the forefront of the new atheist
00:52:15.040 movement that thought you were going to defeat religion, that you, by using facts and scientific
00:52:21.040 reason and logic, you were going to, you know, defeat all of these different religions?
00:52:27.200 I was never that optimistic. Um, no, I don't, I don't, I don't think I ever thought that. And,
00:52:32.720 and there was no, no movement. I mean, would, you know, would, uh, four, four or five books came
00:52:39.280 out of rush at the same time, but by coincidence, but there was a, never an actual movement. I think
00:52:44.640 it's a journalistic invention. Were you, uh, close with Christopher Hitchens? Well, I, I didn't know
00:52:51.520 him that well. I, I, I met him from time to time. Um, I, I had a long interview with him for new
00:53:00.160 Statesman. I think it was the last interview he ever had before he died in, in, in, in Texas,
00:53:06.800 where he was being treated. And, um, so yes, but I, I wasn't one of his close circle of friends like,
00:53:14.560 like Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie. And what were your thoughts or impressions of him?
00:53:19.840 What kind of person was he? Oh, um, immensely eloquent, immensely erudite. Um,
00:53:26.240 the most eloquent speaker I ever heard, I think. Uh, and, um, and a huge loss. I mean,
00:53:34.160 wonderful intellect, wonderful command of English language, command of facts, um, command of historic
00:53:43.680 and literary reference. Richard, we, we would talk, we would, before I asked you about the
00:53:50.320 atheism question, you sounded as if you were pro euthanasia. Are you in order to alleviate
00:53:57.200 suffering at the end of someone's life? With the, with safeguards? I think you do need safeguards
00:54:05.120 against, um, you know, let, let's get rid of granny sort of thing.
00:54:11.760 You've got to get on the housing ladder somehow, Richard. Yeah. Um, I, I think there, there have to be
00:54:21.760 safeguards and, and there can be, and, and, um, um, legal scholars look into the possibility, but,
00:54:28.080 but given, given that, uh, yes, I am. I think that, um, um, um, we, we should have the right to, um,
00:54:36.960 end our lives when we want to. Um, I know of, of cases, I've personally come across cases where
00:54:46.160 somebody has committed suicide in a not very pleasant way, um, because they still had the
00:54:53.280 power to do so. And if they had waited any longer, then they would have been incapable of, of doing the
00:55:01.520 act themselves. And therefore their lives were actually made shorter by suicide because they
00:55:10.000 didn't have the comfort of knowing that if at any time later on, when they were no longer physically
00:55:17.680 capable of killing themselves, they could ask a doctor to do it for them. You understand what I'm
00:55:22.720 saying? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Richard, I want to, before we wrap up and ask you a final
00:55:28.640 question and go to locals where our audience get to ask you questions, I want to ask you a couple of,
00:55:33.680 uh, just like, uh, one-off questions, which is one of the things that a lot of people are talking about
00:55:39.040 now is the emergence of AI. Uh, it's not your field of expertise. Do you have any thoughts on the
00:55:45.760 development of AI as we currently have it? I, um, had a go with chat, GPT, chat? Chat GPT. Yeah. Yeah. Um,
00:55:56.400 and I was quite interested in that. Um, it's factual knowledge is lamentable. Yes. Um, I mean,
00:56:03.520 it's actually quite comic. Uh, um, I happen to be interested in JBS Haldane, um, who was a great,
00:56:12.400 great biologist. I can't remember why, why that subject came up. And, um, his wife, his third wife,
00:56:19.440 I think, was a woman called Helen Spurway, who was a geneticist. Um, and I can't remember why I asked a
00:56:27.440 question about Helen Spurway, but I did. And it said, Helen Spurway was married to Richard Dawkins.
00:56:37.680 And, um, so I was sort of aghasted by this. And, um, later on, I, about three weeks later,
00:56:44.880 I thought, well, let's check up again. So I said, um, who was Helen Spurway managed married,
00:56:51.120 who was Helen Spurway married to? And they said, Aldous Huxley, which again was false. Um,
00:56:58.160 so I don't understand quite why it's factual knowledge of silly details like that is so poor,
00:57:05.120 because anybody can Google something now. I mean, why didn't they just Google, uh, Helen Spurway and,
00:57:12.320 and come up with the correct answer, which is that she's married to,
00:57:15.440 she was married to JBS Haldane. I mean, it's a, it would take about two seconds for a human to do
00:57:21.120 it, let alone for AI to do it. So, um, that's just a, I suppose, a vaguely amusing anecdote about
00:57:27.920 factual knowledge. Um, it is said that there, that people are using it to write essays and things like
00:57:37.200 that. It is pretty impressive. Um, um, if you, if you ask it to, um, give a, to write an essay
00:57:48.560 about something in the style of somebody or other, it produces something pretty impressive.
00:57:53.600 Well, you are, I, we could probably ask it to write an essay on, um, evolution in the style of
00:58:01.280 William Shakespeare and, and it would produce a pretty good pastiche of Shakespeare's style. Um,
00:58:09.120 I'm not quite sure. I haven't really been into, as you rightly said, I haven't really been into the
00:58:14.640 things that worry people about it, but, but I, I'm, I'm alive to the possibility that there are grave
00:58:22.320 dangers in something getting out of hand, getting out of control. And, and do you have some sense of how
00:58:28.400 that might play out? Not really. I need to do more reading on the subject. I think, I mean,
00:58:34.800 I need to read some of the people who aren't seriously worried about it and whom I respect.
00:58:38.400 Well, one of the concerns, there was an article now, I don't know how accurate it was, but it is
00:58:42.400 an example whereby they were training some kind of military system of AI to choose targets. And then
00:58:49.520 a human operator had the final decision over whether that target should be struck or not with a missile.
00:58:55.600 Uh, and allegedly, according to this article, the, because the human operator sometimes denied
00:59:03.920 a strike on valid targets for other reasons, the AI decided that the human operator was the
00:59:11.840 obstacle in the way of destroying the targets that needed destroying. And in this simulation
00:59:17.840 attacked the human operator, right? That is a sort of, so the argument about AI at least seems to be that
00:59:23.680 it's a baby now and it's getting the wives of the people wrong because it's still learning how to
00:59:28.720 walk and talk, but eventually it could grow up to be like a Hitler or whatever. You know what I mean?
00:59:32.880 Yes. I think, I think that's a very valid point. And I could imagine, um, some kind of AI
00:59:41.600 asked to determine what would be the best thing for the, for the sum of happiness would be to
00:59:45.680 exterminate everybody because we're all miserable. Yeah. Um, yes, I, I, as I said,
00:59:51.280 I need to read more about it. I think it's, it's interesting and, um, I'm in favor of, uh,
01:00:00.160 looking cautiously into the future and saying for about all sorts of things, what, what kind of
01:00:05.040 dilemmas are likely to arise in the future? What kind of problems is scientific progress? And this is one,
01:00:11.680 AIs is one example. Scientific progress likely to, to raise in future. We need to be prepared in
01:00:17.360 advance for what's going to happen. And I, I certainly have read enough to know that, um,
01:00:25.200 um, AI is capable of doing things which are really beyond our dreams at the moment. And,
01:00:31.840 and who knows where that will lead. And now, other question I wanted to ask you
01:00:36.480 in this part of the interview is this, on the balance of probability, are we alone in the universe?
01:00:41.920 And second part to that question, if we're not, is it wise to seek contact with those other sentient
01:00:48.000 life forms? I think the balance of probability is that we are not alone. Um, if we are alone in the
01:00:54.240 universe, then that has interesting implications. It means that the origin of life on our planet was
01:00:59.440 a supremely improbable event. So improbable that we're probably wasting our time trying to work
01:01:04.720 out how it happened. Um, but I don't believe that. And I, I do actually believe that we are
01:01:10.880 one of many, um, uh, life forms in the universe. And I would love to know what, what the others are like.
01:01:19.680 I mean, I'd, I'd love to know how unique we are. I'd love to know, I, I could make a few predictions.
01:01:24.400 I mean, I think I could predict that, um, there's going to, it's going to be Darwinian. Um, it's going
01:01:30.320 to be, um, it's going to have some kind of digital genetics. Um, there's got to be, there's got to be a
01:01:36.240 very accurate genetic system. We could make predictions of that, of that sort. Um,
01:01:41.040 um, is it wise to, uh, well, first of all, there's a very, there's a big distinction between life and
01:01:49.360 sentient life. Um, uh, intelligent life. Uh, the, um, intelligent life is a big step further.
01:01:59.760 And so if there's, there's probably a lot more life around than there is intelligent life around.
01:02:04.240 It's a big barrier to get through there. Um, and intelligent life, if we ever encounter it,
01:02:09.920 we'll almost certainly encounter it, not physically. We won't actually meet them
01:02:14.160 because the distances would be too great. Um, but, um, we, we're most likely to meet them through
01:02:20.960 radio waves. Um, SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence where they have
01:02:26.480 actual dishes pointing out, looking for signs of intelligent life. Um,
01:02:30.880 Um, I don't think it's likely to be unwise to respond to any such messages that we find,
01:02:39.200 that we hear because the distances, again, are so great. And, um, you, we won't be able to have
01:02:45.680 a conversation. I mean, even, even the nearest star, um, is, is, is so far away that you could,
01:02:55.280 you could only send a message and then you all be dead before, before you get.
01:02:59.200 With current technological levels of development, wouldn't we be a little bit like the Navajo
01:03:03.760 sending a message in a bottle to the, to Spain in the 1450s?
01:03:07.280 Well, if you, but, but if you believe Einstein, um, then, then there is a limit to, to, to,
01:03:12.800 to how fast information can, can travel. It's limited to the speed of light.
01:03:18.160 Um, and so, um, the, the, I mean, the two science fiction books that I've read, which, um, come to
01:03:26.240 grips with that, that problem is you, you, um, Fred Hoyle's, um, Ava Andromeda and, uh, Carl Sagan's
01:03:34.800 contact where, um, both authors face up to the fact that, um, the distances are too great for direct
01:03:42.320 control of humans, for direct manipulation of humans. We don't have to fear that they actually
01:03:47.280 come in flying saucers and, and run our lives. And you can't run people's lives by radio unless
01:03:55.520 both books face this, come to the same conclusion. The, the instructions are build a computer
01:04:01.920 computer which will then control humanity. Both authors, I don't know whether they independently
01:04:09.360 thought of it or whether one of them, I forget which of, which of those books came first. Um,
01:04:13.760 so the, the extraterrestrial intelligence sends information
01:04:22.080 telling people to build a computer which will do certain things.
01:04:26.800 And the, the original senders of the information may be long dead
01:04:31.440 because it takes so long for the information to get here.
01:04:34.880 But once the information is here, then the computer can work in short-term time
01:04:41.840 and can, um, manipulate us. And, and in both cases, um, that, that, that's what,
01:04:48.480 a very interesting science fiction idea. Uh, and that's, I think, the only way we need to be afraid.
01:04:55.280 We're not going to be visited by people in flying saucers. That, I think, is too improbable.
01:04:59.360 Richard, what an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show. The final question
01:05:03.760 we always ask is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?
01:05:09.120 Well, I suppose we've sort of touched on it, really, the, looking into the future, we don't know
01:05:14.800 what's going to happen. And we know, looking into the past, um, that we are horrified by certain
01:05:21.120 things that we did in the past, like slavery. Um, and maybe what we should be doing is looking into
01:05:28.160 the future and imagining what will our descendants look back at our time, uh, and shudder with horror
01:05:34.960 at what we did, um, in the same ways we look back two or three centuries and shudder with horror.
01:05:42.320 Richard, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure.
01:05:46.080 And please make sure to join us on our Locals where we'll be carrying on with this conversation.
01:05:52.400 Elon Musk is keen to escape Earth and build on Mars. As an evolutionary biologist, how do you feel about
01:05:58.160 that? And what do you think establishing a successful second planet means for the human race in our
01:06:02.960 evolution?