The Poetry of Reality | Peter Boghossian & Richard Dawkins

it's just amazing what a privilege it is to to live in a world after Newton and Darwin and and and Max Planck um and and to understand the universe in which you live and that's a wonderful almost a spiritual experience and it's so much grander and so much bigger and so much more worthy worthwhile than Petty little concerns [Music] welcome to another episode of conversations with me Peter burgosian my guest today is a Titan of intellectual discourse a man whose work has transformed the world of biology and pushed the boundaries of thought related to religion and skepticism and eminent scholar author of The Selfish Gene The God Delusion and many others a voice that has been a beacon for reason critical thinking and scientific Integrity now he's embarking on a New Journey to explore the Poetry of reality through his own podcast we talked about whether trans ideology is directly analogous to the Catholic belief and transubstantiation the role of delusion for human beings what to do about it and much more it is my honor to introduce one of my personal intellectual Heroes and one of the most decent and kind people I know Professor Richard Dawkins Richard thanks for having a conversation with me today it's a pleasure Peter I appreciate it how have you been very well thank you I never caught covert as far as I know did you uh no I not as far as I know not at all and I don't know why because uh I engaged in a lot of high risk activities well I hit away for a year because I I have Crohn's disease so I'm immunocompromised so I I didn't and in the beginning you know we didn't know how bad it was and then after like a year and a half I started doing wrestling you know Jiu Jitsu which is like wrestling and it's a high risk activity because you're basically wrestling with 10 12 15 people an hour every day and I never caught it that's okay you must have been well vaccinated then uh yeah I was I was Triple that I am triple vaxed boosted in facts but so what do you we're here in Oxford what do you spend your day doing what are you doing today I'm writing a book just about finishing it actually and I'm just starting a sub stack on the YouTube channel and a podcast yeah the Poetry of reality yes that's what that's what they're all called um and also just bought a house and so um that's being done up in a big way in Oxford okay why did you buy it there my family has lived there since 1726 I think and um uh my most of my most of my well my sister's family and all they're all there tell you about some things that I've been thinking about okay you you can give me a reality check and tell you tell me what you think so for a long time I wrote you know a manual for creating atheists and I was trying to make the world more sane and more rational and I was trying to help people become more thoughtful and reflect on their beliefs have reliable epistemology is upon which they could rely and one of the things that I noticed since maybe 2013 maybe 2012 was that as religiosity decreased deranged woke beliefs increased and I guess my first question to you is uh I don't know who came up with this I might have come up with this I don't know who came up with this but the substitution hypothesis yes so so do you think and I honestly do not know the answer to this question do you think that as one religion Fades another like default is the belief state for humans they just have to believe something and and as one is the old religion Fades a new one has to come in yeah gullibility expands to fill the vacuum exactly yeah precisely I I I suppose that's right I hadn't really thought of it before but um it sounds plausible to me um I think GK Chesterton who was a very religious man said when people stop believing in God they they believe in anything yeah um and um he was a very witty clever man although he was a devout Roman Catholic um there's something in it I think and there's no doubt about it that um we are having we seem to have exchanged one form of superstitious religiosity for another yeah and the analogy goes pretty deep um I think um John mcwhirter pointed out that there's a strong relationship between original sin in the Christian religion or that was me pointed that out okay where's my article James Lindsay privilege is the original sin but yeah go ahead good for you yeah um so original sin being we're all born in sin we all inherit the sin of Adam right we white people inherit the sin of slavery right and colonialism and because we're white we have to feel guilty for what our not necessarily our ancestors but people of the same color as us in past centuries did so that's that's one analogy and then um the level of transubstantiation right which is the Catholic religion you know um the wine literally turns to blood where literally doesn't quite mean literally it means what Aristotle called the accidentals stay wine but but this true substance of the wine becomes blood so when somebody stands up and says I am a woman although they've got a male body right that's transubstantiation um in the accidentals they still have a penis and they still have Y chromosome but in the true substance um they have become um they have become female um so trans that's where the word transubstantiation comes from the transubstance yeah and um there's a very strong analogy to transubstantiation in transsexualism oh uh tell me more how so well um the the wine becomes blood and when the priest simply declares it that it is and a male person becomes female when he declares himself to be female uh and um in the Aristotelian terms the substance has changed right the substance wine has changed to blood the substance of maleness has changed to femaleness but the accidentals the incidentals uh are regarded by Catholics as trivial and by trans people is Trivial so they they really believe that they have become the other sex it's remarkable how obvious it is that those are delusions I mean it's Crystal Clear to anybody not caught in the orbit of the ideology that that is a delusion yes um they get around it by this word gender which which is separate from sex and there are some who who I think even think their sex has changed correct and others who think that they admit that their sex hasn't changed but their agenda has um yeah so I guess I have two questions one is it seems to me that there are degrees of delusion that one can have so if we accept that like there are certain things that are like if I told you everybody you know those books are really aliens from another planet and they've come out okay that's another level of delusion and so I often think this is the thing that that's been causing me to think about this I'm utterly incredulous at the sheer Madness that people believe now in a way that I was not incredulous you know in 2010 or 2001 so if so let's take a look at somebody walked on water this guy named Jesus he walked on water you know this is a in intervention in the space time continuum by a supernatural being and it caused this individual to walk on water okay that's clearly a delusion if somebody believes in it if someone accepts that is true and then you have the belief that men can get pregnant that to me seems like a significantly more profound delusion yeah or am I wrong I think it doesn't it come from the post-modern belief that feelings are more important than facts yeah standpoint epistemology yeah yeah and it comes I guess they they could just say that it it's the redefinition of the word but they actually like they literally believe men can get pregnant and the thing that I've been thinking about is kind of goes back to Plato is it better to let people believe benign delusions I mean in an Ideal World people wouldn't believe people would proportion their confidence in the belief to the evidence they have for the belief but humanity is sloppy and messy and the thing that I've been thinking about recently is if it's true that there are degrees of delusion and if it's true and I don't know if it's true that there's a substitution hypothesis then should rational people um step out of the way or not encourage people to believe things that are false because I would never do that and I think that's grossly unethical but um there are certain delusions that are better for people to believe in mass than others yeah so if you've got to believe in a delusion if there's something some law that says you there's a certain quotient of deludedness that everybody's got to have right and certain some some are more harmless than others correct correct I mean I I sort of feel this a little bit about Islam and Christianity that um um Islam is is such an evil at the moment or islamism is such an evil at the moment that in Africa especially maybe Christianity is a better alternative and right it may be that it's no good trying to preach Atheism in Africa right um and Christianity might be a better a better alternative I think Ayan Hersey Ali has suggested something yeah similar to that she has I think the last one of the last times I saw you I did a talk in Kamloops Canada yes and uh it was uh about deprogramming jihadis and one of the things that they do in the Deep program jihadis is they don't use atheism or Christianity they use more benign interpretations of the Quran and so I've just been wondering in terms of the the so I no longer think it's true I used to think it's true if people just stop believing the silliness all of a sudden would have a flourishing of rational human beings that engaged each other in proportion their beliefs to the evidence but the last decade has shown that that's monstrously false in fact the last decade has shown that we now have wide scale institutional capture of our institutions particularly our academic institutions uh I'm specifically referring to the United States but I'm also referring to here we went to goldsmiths and did some videos the other day and places where the ideology has seeped in and I've been thinking about like how do you create a prophylactic to prevent an institution from succumbing to what's morally fashionable you know to to succumbing to the new religion so you're on the board of University of Austin I'm a founding faculty at the University of Austin today the issues are free speech and open inquiry which are under attack but maybe tomorrow it's something that we can't even think about right maybe we I mean who knows what it's going to be so is there a way that you can you know subspecy attorneys or is there a way that you can I don't know what it would be like write something into the mission statement or what can you do to prevent an ideology from having a domino effect and just taking over whole scale institutions when they feel right about the substitution hypothesis that's a very pessimistic conclusion I don't know that I am my whole life has been devoted to the idea that you you simply argue in favor of evidence-based beliefs and uh um I suppose I'd take a rather sort of take it or leave it attitude I mean this is this is what the evidence shows yeah why don't you believe it but if you're right about the substitution hypothesis then I'm rather inclined to give up I mean I don't know how to cope with that um I used to think that the one thing that would make me want to die would be if I found myself in a world where I was surrounded by people who no longer believed in evidence and believed in something else other than evidence somehow felt contempt for evidence and I hope we're not approaching that now I I don't I mean none of my friends are like that yeah I was thinking about that like uh talking about death it's like at all I've been thinking about my own death but I wouldn't want someone to be kind to me on my deathbed because they thought that if they weren't kind to me they were going to go to hell I would want someone to be kind to me because they wanted to be kind yes right yes and so even this idea that there's this place where people burn or something like I want people to be motivated not by something external to themselves like a reward for being nice yeah like I agree yeah so so I don't know I mean so this is what okay so this is one of the things that that I've learned from thinking about this stuff for I don't know over a quarter century and I'd love to hear what you think about it I think so we go around the country we go around the world we now go around the world and we set these lines up uh their lines of tape on sidewalks I don't know if you've seen me do this or not and uh strongly disagree disagree slightly disagree neutral it's like this tablecloth here uh slightly agree agree strongly agree and then we'll ask people a question like should there be a trans women should be in women's sports or uh whatever whatever it is and one of the things that I've learned and then we say three five four three two one go and they walk to a line and then I do Street epistemology on them I ask them why they believe it what it would take them to change their mind sometimes people change sometimes people don't but here's what I've learned about this and here's what I've learned a key lesson in my intellectual life from the new atheist movement and from speaking to literally tens of thousands of people in prisons everything is that people will go to a line not based upon the evidence they have for the line but they'll go to the line because they think that's the line that they should be standing on that makes them a good person yes uh and um it may be the line that is compatible with the the political correct tribe or religious tribe right um I think Stephen Pinker in his latest book has evidence that when we make our political judgment we I mean Humanity yeah it tends to be not based on evidence but tends to be based upon tribal loyalty and that's a very depressing conclusion and by the way um one of the things that's been depressing me about my my being sort of anti-working and yeah anti the militant trans Lobby is that people think I must be right wing and I'm never I've never been right wing I've voted left all my life and um I mean I detest Donald Trump for example but there are people out there on Twitter especially who think that because I detest Donald Trump therefore I must be an apologist for trans wokeism of or vice versa yeah so let's talk about that I think I think that that is an intentional tactic of people I think that that is what woke people use people who are have fallen to their have been have had their cognitions hijacked to this ideology and I think it's very easy to write you off entirely if they say oh Richard Dawkins he he's just a right-wing extremist but you know a Pinker he's a right-winger extreme Mr look he's the second largest donor to the Democrats and Hillary Clinton and Harvard or whoever it is I've never voted for Republican candidate my whole life I'm constantly getting that I'm on the right but I think it's a tactic both because they don't have to do the intellectual work to rebut the arguments so they can just a priori say that's not true and it's a tactic because the left-wing media won't have me on for example so the left-wing media won't it has a kind of allergy to any self-criticism so then I'll go on the on the right right wing media and the people on the left will say well look bogojian's a right winger well no I'm I'm only going on the right because I'm more than happy Rachel Maddox Jose nobody's ever invited me I've actually invited myself and they won't have me so I think it's a kind of strategy to not do the intellectual work to rebut the position because it's hard to it's hard to reluct a position so you know we've been talking about them the trans thing um and the main problem well yeah I think it is the main problem I have is I don't think children under 18 can consent to uh you know Lupine or surgery or it would Abigail schreier calls irreversible damage and I just spoke to Helen Joyce about this she's from England she's from originally from Ireland yeah she's her trans is great and I just spoke to her about this um so one of the things that she said in that interview that I was like wow like I just literally never thought of it before she said so I I always took the figure of 0.06 that .06 percent of the people were legitimately trans and anything above that is a social contagion right it's kind of but she said no that's not true the whole thing is a culture Bond syndrome like all of it and I just it really gave me pause and I thought well I thought the the idea was that there was something operative in people's brains you know the whole born in the wrong body and she said no it's just this is not true I see well I long ago and when it came out I read um Elaine sorry um Jan Morris or Jan Morris yeah yeah John Morris's book conundrum where she was she was a journalist and she was one she was the only journalist I think on the original Expedition that climbed Everest she didn't plan every Spirit but in those days um James Morris was was the journalist and then um She Wrote This Book explaining how she really did feel that she was a woman trapped in a man's body and I was sympathetic to that it seemed to me to be well argued uh she's a very good writer and she went through a tremendous ordeal I mean she was a hormone treatment and surgery and things as an adult I think he had a sort of Journey of about 10 years or maybe even longer um so I sort of feel you have to respect somebody who sacrifices so much for that belief whereas people who just suddenly say I think I'll be a man or a woman especially after they see the inside of the court and they've been sentences guilty oh yeah right yes um or or that six foot two inch she was intact so Leah Thomas had her penis and my understanding is when she Leah Thomas I don't even know the pronouns but when Leah Thomas was in the shower there's the there it was dangling out and so there is something about uh so you want to be compassionate you want to be sympathetic in a liberal Society you want to let people live the kind of lives they they want to live and have all the rights they want to have but with that said that there does seem that there do seem to be some like Kathleen stock I was talking to her today you know women's only spaces there is something there's a prudence and a wisdom in that and to me it's never been about people who are I don't want to say actually trans because I don't even know what that means but it's that people can claim to be trans to access women's only spaces to abuse well to also get swimming records yeah to break records to break records and become a swimming champion um yes but but there are people they may be deluded but at least they've been through hell to get there um yeah um and as adults too not not seduced as children by by doctors who so that's the moral thing right so this is the thing that I'm thinking about about the trans issue so somebody who is adamant and and so you know trans women or women Transit period trans women are women and and from that it follows that they should be able to compete alongside NATO women in sporting events what I do not think is happening is the belief was formed on any you know rigorous epistemology evidence-based epistemology like in other words I don't think that they did a careful examination of the evidence and concluded that either the differences were trivial or there were no differences I think that they form the belief that trans women and I always have to I I translate the word Trans in my head is fake because I get mixed up by the words that trans women NATO men should participate in women's sports on moral grounds so there's no evidence that you can get it's like the line thing where you stand on the line there's no evidence that you can give them the potential strength cardiovascular whatever whatever the evidence would be because the moral uh Intuition or the moral sentiment would override any consideration of evidence so then how do you you're talking about a competing Battle of morals and I guess that kind of gets back to the substitution hypothesis like wouldn't we rather have people in society okay again we would rather nobody have any delusions but if it is the case that people are gonna that delusion is the default then I don't I don't want to say we should nudge them to benign delusions but it would be certainly better for everybody if they had more benign delusions yes I I hope the substitution hypothesis is wrong yeah I I mean if if it's right I've kind of wasted my life really because I'm I've I've been simply trying to persuade people to be influenced by evidence and if if that's if that's a losing if that's a lost battle I don't think it is but here so let me throw this out to you do you think the best way to persuade people to be influenced by evidence is that it's a is that that may that act itself makes them a better person so in other words could you use a moral argument to persuade somebody to be influenced by evidence because what seems to not work is and I think our friend Sam Harris has said this that the um there's no evidence that you can give someone to persuade them to formulate their beliefs in the basis of evidence so maybe you have a different tact yes I it would never occur to me to try to use a moral argument I mean I think my I would prefer to go for Science and say science is wonderful and science is um poetic science is something that you really can devote your life to and feel fulfilled and as you have well yes and so meant plenty of other people have I mean any any scientist would probably say something like that and really it the the strides that Humanity has made in science in evidence-based reality-based view of the world is staggeringly impressive we have made no strides through self-delusion no no delusions no cured cancer given us the CPU sent us a rocket ship to Mars that's right I mean and that those are all sort of practical things but also just understanding the size and shape and scope of the universe and time and space and and the the origin of all things and evolution it's just amazing what a privilege it is to to live in a world after Newton and Darwin and and and and Max Planck um and and to understand the universe in which you live and that's a wonderful almost a spiritual experience and it's so much grander and so much bigger and so much more worthy worthwhile then Petty little concerns yeah you'll get no argument from me so I guess here's my question to you um let's say that you make that argument to somebody let's say that you make that argument to an administrator at an institution or at an Institutional level and it's a lovely argument it's well articulated it resonates with some people and I'm I'm telling you one thing I have in my mind is when I was a teaching I tried to get a science and pseudoscience class in the uh in the K-12 system and there was a single slide that my team had put on and it was about Homeopathy and um and they gave the presentation at two high schools and both administrators from the high school said oh you can't you can't put that in there the slide basically said there's just no evidence for this it didn't say you know it was it was it it phrases it in the most polite way possible like this is not evidence don't do this and when the people from my team asked why this is what people will be offended by that oh people will be offended we don't want to we don't want to offend the parents who use Homeopathy but my point to you was that so so let's say that we want people to discover a love for Science and a passion for evidence-based epistemology um I know this is a weird question but if you cannot persuade them by evidence and wonder at the universe and the instrumental use of technology for human beings whether it's you know curing cancer what have you do you think that the moral argument is the way to go to persuade them well I haven't quite grasped what you would mean by moral argument like um you should do good people good people formulate your beliefs on the basis of evidence if you formulate your beliefs in the basis of evidence you're more likely to construct something outside yourself to bring about your flourishing and your own communities flourishing formulating your beliefs therefore for something like a quick syllogism formulating your beliefs in the basis of evidence is the moral thing to do because if you formulated on the basis of non-evidence you might end up planting a bomb kill infidels correct yes yeah if the Poetry of reality fails to persuade people do you think it's what do you think of them using the moral argument to persuade people to formulate their beliefs in the base of evidence or is that just a silly question no it's not it wouldn't be my way I I prefer to go the Carl Sagan route um and to try to persuade people of how wonderful science is um and of course you then you come up again you get put back from people who say well science gave us the h-bomb right things like that and you have to have to replace it by the way on Homeopathy it's not just that there's no evidence for it there couldn't be evidence for it because if you imagine doing a double-blind trial with a controller and an experimental they're identical and so there can be no evidence for it yeah they'd be identical you know we we did this um video um in which so this this this uh you're the perfect person to ask for this so um we do this video and one of the people said that there's no difference between uh NATO men and NATO women they're identical and if you look at the bones if you look at the skeletons of NATO women and natal men you couldn't tell the difference do you want um archaeologists can tell by the Digging Up Bones that have been dead for tens of thousands of years right so so I I uh unfortunately this conversation was off camera but I said to this guy I said listen let's say that we get 10 skeletons right here we have 10 skeletons and we do a double-blind we we we we find you know paleontologists we find whoever would be a bona fide expert in this and if all 10 of these people could correctly identify each time with a very small margin of error would you be willing to change your mind um and say yes there's a difference between male and female skeletons and he said no and I said well why not because that would be like the gold standard for evidence and he said because it's not possible and I said okay well let's just hypothe this is a hypothetical and I found and I'm wondering if you found this too but not possible what what do you mean by not possible well that's what I said and you you get these experts and you had given these skeletons you get them to double blind so they don't know which skeleton is which um he said it's he said it's not possible for them to tell the difference before before you do the experiment and I said well just like hypothetically let's just say hypothetically yeah would you be willing to change your mind and he said no and the thing that that is a very revealing answer well yeah well so that was going to be my question to you so I I found that often the people who stand on the extreme lines you know strongly disagree strongly agree they have a an inability to imagine things they have an inability to entertain hypothetical even if you couldn't do it by the anatomy of the skeleton which I think you could yeah you've only got to take some DNA from the from the but from the bone um and it says the Y chromosome it's male um it's absolutely coming it's a hundred percent there'll be no question about it um so if you ask your your whoever it was you were talking to yeah would you not accept that evidence or would you would you not accept you've created a thousand bones and and every single one of them either has a y chromosome or it doesn't right and that is an absolutely cut and dried diagnostic and what would would he still not not accept it I mean yeah it's interesting um somebody put out a a really interesting tweet a few years ago Eric Weinstein put out a Tweety years ago if there's a conflict between biology and gender studies on which on which side do you air and I mean it was the like and I it just would be it was just amazing to me how many how many of the responses or how many people as well gender studies yeah because I mean they they would say that the biology may show that these these have a y chromosome and these don't but that's not how I Define male and female I mean for them it's a matter of of definition so um to a biologist um the the chromosomal definition would be watertight but they could say oh well I I agree that that you might find that half of them have Y chromosome that half of them don't but that's not how I Define a female so that they would they would take refuge behind a change of language so in that case the way that the way that we would adjudicate the claim would be anything other than science would be arbitrary would be subject to the moral Caprices of the age yes but they wouldn't use that kind of language they wouldn't use a word like Caprices they would they would say things like um human definitions are more important than science anyway because they despise science or right they do because science is a meta-narrative it's a it's a way like leotards said it's a way to explain explain the world so that's the other thing so we're dealing with people for whom um there's an open antagonism to science there's an open antagonism to reason and evidence and to borrow a turn or phrase their cognitions have been colonized right they've been colonized by an exogenous ideology and and this is I think a difference between uh faith and the new religion so with with uh the one of the old religions ultimately when you start asking people questions and you've done this more than anybody you start asking people questions about why they believe once you've cleared through all the nonsense they're going to say faith that's just once all the historical stuff Falls and the testimony Falls and whatever it is false they're going to say faith the problem is that anybody who is a little knowledgeable about wokism or whatever term we want to use they will do one of a few things they'll refer to a best-selling author um tanahasi Coates ibram X candy Rob and D'Angelo Etc so they'll they'll refer to that or they'll if they're knowledgeable and they're an academic they'll talk about literature the peer-reviewed literature and that peer-reviewed literature has been when I've written about before it's been ideal laundered so you get a bunch of people who are ideologues together uh who already they start with their conclusion first and they work backward from the conclusion the exact opposite of science so they start with their conclusion first trans women or women for example or whatever whatever the conclusion is they get together with other people who who have the similar beliefs they make a journal it goes in as a moral impulse it gets idea laundered and it comes out as a fact so those people they don't know nobody who who who buys into the ideology will ever use the word faith because they have authors and they have kind of high Priests of the ideology who have um either written books about this stuff so they'll reference a book but the books themselves they're predicated on nothing they're just they're completely made up the whole thing is made up and so they don't need they don't need faith for that yes I mean it's it's a it's a it's a more intractable intractable problem than someone just saying I believe this guy walked on water and after you ask them 20 questions or Socratic questions or so they say well I just it's my faith I Believe In My Heart well these folks aren't operating that way I mean they're operating in the way that they have these strong moral impulses and they feel things very deeply about social justice or the way the correct way we've been horrifically treated people in the past there's no question but there is something different about and this is why I think this is why I think that the one of the primary dangers we face now is the wholesale capture of the academy because the academy is giving these people jobs for Life they're not allowing dissonant voices to come in they're pumping out automatic I mean complete Madness that's what we try to do in the circle squared thing to try to you know take the robes off show that the emperor has no clothes but in traditional religions it does doesn't have that sophistication it doesn't have that imprimatur of institutional legitimacy that you get from what we have now organizational capture I hope not in science departments although unfortunately I do think there's some evidence for capture in science journals yeah for sure um Jerry's been writing about that yes that's right in Scientific American and nature um but I think the capture of universities is maybe true of Departments of sociology and um perhaps Humanities um but I hope not all yeah Joe I wonder I've been thinking about I've been thinking a lot about and everybody's talking about a unified field Theory um it's all the rage and science I've been wondering if what do you think do you think that there could be like a excuse me like a unified field theory of rationality like certain core components that make somebody rational that unify different well um I suppose the organization that I'm a non-profit I'm in the center for inquiries has been devoted its time to tell us about that tell us about well it's it's has partly an atheistic secular of arm and it has partly a skeptical alarm that fights Homeopathy and telepathy and psychokinesis and things like that so so it's it's in in the business runs two journals one a journal A secular journal and called free inquiry in one skeptical Journal about all the other stuff which is called the skeptical Inquirer and it's been added for decades now and um I think we've I sort of now realized that that we have a new problem on our hands right um Neil deGrasse Tyson a few years ago had this idea of a virtual Nation called rationalia um yeah and and he was going around inviting people to become citizens of the of this can I join yes how do you think what do you think is the best way to move the needle on this stuff as I say I can cannot do better than the Carl Sagan way of inspiring people with the Poetry of reality science you know when we did a when we did our last event and I and I read your autobiography I remember something in there about um it was just so obvious that the process that for you that science was a process and doing it was a reward right so there's something um emotionally would you say okay I guess it's would you say there's something emotionally fulfilling about doing that kind of intellectual work yeah yes what would it what was it like a sense of satisfaction or what ah yes um satisfaction in understanding why you exist and why the world around you exists I mean it's hard to imagine in a way a greater sense of satisfaction than that and biology is one of the few fields that can actually answer why we're here maybe not in a in it yes yeah that's true and and since Darwin and his successes we can do that not in detail but in Broad outline we can and um I think that should give us courage with respect to physics and cosmology as well I mean because there was a time when um people who wish to infer than this the need for a Divine Creator thought that biology was by far the strongest argument they had now they've rather given up on biology because Darwin Darwin solved that one and so they moved on to cosmology and the origin of all things and um I think that the fact that Darwin solved that problem and Darwin darwinian solved that problem for biology should give us courage to move on to physics and cosmology is there is there anything I mean I I'm not a biologist obviously but is there any huge area of biology that we haven't figured out yet well the origin of life we don't know about that and we darling as it were takes over when once you've got a self-replicating molecule which can give with DNA in this it probably wasn't DNA originally um once you've got that then Dominion natural selection takes over and and you get the whole glorious spreading out of life and and the illusion of design the complexity of life um there's that I don't think we understand Consciousness subjective consciousness um it's obviously it's a manifestation of brains but how it comes about we don't understand I I think in that case we don't even know what an answer would look like in the case of the origin of life we know what it would look like um um it's a seemingly unusual question but are you happy that you are you if you were to do it over again and I'm almost positive you'd say you'd go into science would you go into biology again I think so yes um I sometimes thought I might go into computer programming I I was I was addicted to computer programming oh in my 30s and 40s absolutely yeah yeah so for you you think there's something unique about biology that gave you a kind of satisfaction that another another intellectual discipline would not I am not mathematical enough to do physics yeah and so um I shouldn't really admit that but but um yeah yeah you know one of our last uh talks I asked you about the Fermi Paradox where is everybody where is everybody um and you one of the things that you said was if there are intelligent life forms in the universe they would be subject to Natural Selection yes yeah and I've been thinking about that for like a long time could you explain that well I wrote a paper a a universal Darwinism which looked at all the Alternatives that have been suggested which is mostly lamarkin both the principle of use and disuse the more the more you use a bit of your body the bigger the bigger and stronger it gets yeah and then the second one is the inheritance of acquired characteristics so the your arms get bigger and stronger because you use them and then it's passed on to the next Generation that that's the marking evolution in its simplest form and that happens not to be true on this planet but it's not inconceivable it's easy to imagine another planet in which it is true um but my point in that paper was that even if it's true that acquired characteristics are inherited it's not a big enough Theory to account for the evolution of complexity it can it may account for big muscles but it can't account for the fine the delicate adjustment of the eye for example I mean this beautiful structure this beautiful camera which has a matrix of of um light sensitive cells millions of light-sensitive cells a three a three color system just just like a just like a computer screen um and um you cannot do you can't get that by the principle of use and disuse isn't it it's not the case that the more you use an eye the better it gets the more the better it isn't but focusing and resolving and you get that how natural selection no matter how detailed no matter how deeply buried in the in the body something is natural selection will will smell it out natural selection will detect it is natural selection a necessary mechanism for organisms that of all no actually if I say evolve that gives away the show but is natural selection a necessary mechanism for organisms anywhere in the universe I think so I think it's the it's certainly the only one that anybody's ever suggested um is it is it is it also necessary for non-carbon based life yes I think so um if there is non-carbon based life which I I doubt but that's a separate issue I mean in fact well you can imagine silicon-based life or something well I I suppose it's open to somebody to find an alternative but nobody ever has and I think it's something so powerful about natural selection this this non-random seeking out of of improvement yeah um and it's capable of uh not just blacksmith's arms kind of thing but muscular growth it's capable of fine chiseling every single detail of the animal right down to the cellular level the biochemical level every single thing that affects its survival and reproductive success no matter how deeply buried within the animal if it it has even the slightest effect upon the survival prospects of the animal then natural selection will pick it out and favor it utterly extraordinary and Darwin said this um nature is daily and hourly scrutinizing every detail so one thing that you said that I want to come back to you said you doubt non like a silicon based life well that's a separate issue and and I'm I'm not a chemist but I'm the chemist every chemist I've ever spoken to about it things it's got to be carbon based because carbon is so prolific in forming um huge molecules of joining up with with other carbon atoms and with other other atoms as well and I think it's probably going to be protein based as well because protein is the special kind of organic molecule which forms itself spontaneously into three-dimensional shapes which are determined by the one-dimensional sequence of units which are amino acids and that three-dimensional shape of a protein is what gives it its catalytic properties its enzymatic properties and so the whole of our kind of Life at any rate is run on enzymes which are catalysts protein molecules which because of their three-dimensional shapes speed up chemical reactions hugely orders of magnitude many many orders of magnitude and that's how life is run and the one-dimensional sequence for minor acids which is what determines the three-dimensional shape of the enzyme the one-dimensional sequence of amino acids is determined by the one-dimensional sequence of codons in DNA well I'm not sticking out my neck and saying that any alien life is going to have DNA probably not but I think it probably is going to have protein probably a completely different repertoire of proteins from ours but nevertheless proteins and there will be some kind of genetics which I think I stick my neck out and say it's going to be digital genetics really though if not not DNA but anyway digital genetics and which might be one-dimensional might be two-dimensional probably not three-dimensional um and it will be darwinian life is again I'll stick my neck out I just want to say in conclusion you your work has been unbelievably inspirational to me in my life and um yeah and um it's been intellectually inspirational and it's really been a beacon for me about not just how to think about things but how to how to be courageous when you walk through the world and so I just really wanted to thank you for certainly that and I worry a little bit that we've been agreeing with each other so much that people are in the same room well that's okay thank you very much thank you thank you foreign [Music]

Channel: Peter Boghossian

Views: 45,446

Keywords:

Id: 3MfBLPuwwdo

Length: 51min 40sec (3100 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2023