Richard Dawkins interviews Steven Pinker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIMReUsxTt4

by ssp • 16 years ago

40 24 16 years ago

hugh3• 16 years ago

Having got two brilliant and interesting people like Dawkins and Pinker into one room at the same time, it's a pity they couldn't rustle up anything other than a single, handheld camera. I don't think I'm likely to watch the full 68 minutes, it's making me seasick. Oddly the fact that they're both standing up for the entire video also makes me a bit uncomfortable... why don't you take a seat, guys?

The other problem is that I really get the idea that Dawkins aren't really having a discussion as such, they're just talking back and forth about things they both know perfectly well.

I'm starting to appreciate the traditional style of interview, where the interviewer is ignorant, and thus a better stand-in for the audience.

dmix• 16 years ago

"What you see here is the full extended interview, which includes a lot of rough camera transitions that were edited out of the final program (along with a lot of content)."

This still doesn't explain why the camera transitions mid-sentence.

jasonkeene• 16 years ago

Yes these are the raw interviews filmed for the making of "The Genius of Charles Darwin" by the BBC. Not really just a hand-held camera, more the style of the production. I find it very interesting, giving a behind the scenes view of the documentary. Exposes a lot of the personal exchanges that normally get left on the cutting room floor. Check out the Dannett interview for some good bits around 37:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lfTPTFN94o#t=37m10s

Also I would recommend checking out Craig Venter's interview, was probably the best out of the bunch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E25jgPgmzk

chaosmachine• 16 years ago

It's sort of a Dawkins trademark. Many of his interviews are done in this standing, handheld camera style.

I find it creates this weird perception of almost being in the same room, like you're part of the conversation. It's distracting, but also engaging.

avar2• 16 years ago

Urgh no. Few things frustrate me more than reading interesting literature by people like Dawkins and Chomsky, then going online and finding that 90% of the interviews with them are conducted by ignorant mass-media shrills. Who obviously haven't read any of their works, and echo the same stupid questions that have been asked in every other interview with them.

I'd rather watch two experts in a field conversing. That's thought provocative, and it gives me good pointers on subjects that I should follow up on.

aptsurdist2• 16 years ago

In this interview they speculate about whether our attraction to music might be a by-product of the fact that we have evolved other specialized skills that aid our individual survival. For example, our survival is aided by our rhythm analysis which helps us walk upright, and our speech analyzing mechanisms which help us in many obvious ways - the idea is that we enjoy music because we are obsessively attuned to these survival-aiding perceptions.

I've always enjoyed contemplating the inverse of this theory; what if we gained appreciation for music and other collective rituals because by acting out these rituals (as individuals), our collective tribe benefited. These rituals cause us individuals to 'tune' ourselves as a collective and as a result, the tribe has increased chances of survival.

If this were the case, it would be more appropriate to say that our collective tribes evolved music and rituals for the tribe's sake - it doesn't directly help an individual survive and the individual might not even understand their compulsion to participate. For example, a drum beat might compel a soldier into battle. A religious ritual might compel an individual to supersede their allegiance in order to serve a king. If you look at other species like bees and ants that function as a collective, you see that their 'dance' is not an individual's language but one that evolved because it enabled the collective to survive. Again, the individuals might not understand their dance - they just wanna dance!

So actually, I like the idea that maybe speech, language, and what we call intelligence are all byproducts of adaptations like music and rhythm that appear worthless to individual survival, but in fact are crucial to the survival of the collective. What do you all think?

zemaj• 16 years ago

Seems unlikely. While music may be beneficial to a collective, a collective would not be able exist without some form of communication. It appears that the generation and appreciation of music relies on a number of genes that seem unlikely to have evolved purely for music. The selection pressure would almost certainly be stronger on very basic levels of communication before any higher levels of tribal organisation, if purely because they can't exist without the basic selection on communication.

goodside4• 16 years ago

"I've always enjoyed contemplating the inverse of this theory; what if we gained appreciation for music and other collective rituals because by acting out these rituals (as individuals), our collective tribe benefited. These rituals cause us individuals to 'tune' ourselves as a collective and as a result, the tribe has increased chances of survival."

This is called group selection. It's ironic that you mention it in response to this interview; Dawkins became famous by explaining the fact that group selection doesn't exist, and why theories like the one you've just suggested violate very fundamental principles of evolution. More: http://amzn.com/0199291152

Jach• 16 years ago

Well said. Even more (no need to get a book out): http://lesswrong.com/lw/kw/the_tragedy_of_group_selectionism...

jules3• 16 years ago

No, it's plausible that the rituals also benefit the individual. Group selection is nearly impossible if the thing that's good for the group is bad for the individual, but it's not clear that that's the case here.

But group selection is certainly not impossible. If you view a human as a population of cells, then cancer cells will tend to be group selected out.

asdflkj2• 16 years ago

A beehive or an ant colony is actually one organism, from the point of view of evolution. The individual insects are genetically identical within a collective.

avar2• 16 years ago

No it isn't, you should read The Selfish Gene by Dawkins. There's a chapter explaining that this is a myth with little grounds in reality.

There's a lot of backstabbing and competition that goes on within individual hives of the social insects.

crux• 16 years ago

I think this is a very worthwhile video to watch. Dawkins and Pinker (Dawkins in particular, of course) are part of a demimonde with something of a reputation for being uncompromising hardliners—no doubt because in their handling of theological questions they are uncompromising hardliners—but much of what Pinker's talking about here is teasing apart and deflecting the many superficial understandings of adaptationist and EvPsych-oriented thought that give it such a bad name. The fact is that many people who find EvPsych to be very attractive nevertheless have a pretty shallow notion of it and end up using it as a club, and offering cheaply Objectivist rationales for rape and looking at boobs at the like.

Pinker establishes two things within the first ten minutes that make his perspective a lot more reasonable and considered: any adaptationist account of a behavior MUST begin with an a priori appraisal of that behavior on its own merits. As an 'engineering problem', he puts it. So it's not enough to look at some human behavior and then explain that it occurs because it is a natural function of some basic need, if there would be no half-way reasonable way for that function to emerge as useful without already existing.

The second thing is that if you do establish or argue for some feature as an adaptation, you have only provided a possible account of its origin as an evolved behavior, and said nothing at all about its worth or appropriateness in the world.

I think that questions of behavior as adaptive would encounter less immediate resistance—and explanations of behavior as adaptive would lose much of their unsavory panacean appeal—if these factors were better understood.

berntb• 16 years ago

>>Pinker establishes two things within the first ten minutes that make his perspective a lot more reasonable and considered

This isn't new. Go back and check what Pinker/Dawkins et al have been writing for a long time.

>>I think that questions of behavior as adaptive would encounter less immediate resistance—and explanations of behavior as adaptive would lose much of their unsavory panacean appeal—if these factors were better understood.

You shouldn't just trust other people's description of the position they argue against, if they argue from political/religious standpoints.

(I don't know why the extreme left have problems with some behaviors being strongly influenced genetically. Frankly, I have better things to do than care what some idealists "know" are true.)

That said, you will find bad research in all areas.

Edit: I might add this reference from an old Gould discussion, to show that side of the coin...

http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/CEP_Gould.html

Or this fun review of a "classic" book:

http://dba.fc.ul.pt/evo/textos/dawkins_review_not_in_our_gen...

stuaxo• 16 years ago

Banned from your country on copyright grounds... ffs... channel 4 is from my country ... arg !

csallen• 16 years ago

If you're interesting in reading a very long, very engaging interview of Steven Pinker, check this out: http://www.cosmoetica.com/DSI4.htm

Richard Dawkins interviews Steven Pinker

Related Stories