Once again, the superstitionists proclaim the death of New Atheism—and atheism in general

March 26, 2026 • 11:30 am

The oxymoronically-named Union of Catholic Christian Rationalists (UCCR) has joined the yammering pack of believers that keeps telling us that New Atheism has died, when, in fact, it did its job and then moved on. It’s like saying that suffragism failed and has died out!  The New-Atheist-dissers are trying desperately to explain the failure of a phenomenon that not only succeeded in changing minds, but whose proponents, no longer consumed by a need to point out the lack of evidence for gods, have moved on to other things.

You can read this tripe by clicking the UCCR articlebelow. Excerpts are indented, and my own comments are flush left. The piece is also archived here in case they want to correct stuff like their mis-naming of Rebecca Watson.

Here’s their intro (bolding is theirs):

Why did New Atheism fail?

Numerous observers have tried to explain the astonishing failure of new atheism, despite a society that was intellectually lazy, affluent, and consumerist, and that agreed with them on everything: the supposed anachronism of religious thought, the bigotry of moral judgments, the violence generated by religions, and the unhealthy mixing of politics and religion.

And yet, as the rationalist Scott Alexander observed, “in the bubble where no one believes in God anymore and everyone is fully concerned with sexual minorities and Trump, it is less painful to be a Catholic than a fan of Dawkins.”

Indeed, Alexander continues, only in the case of “New Atheism”, “modern progressive culture turned toward the ‘new atheists’ and, seeing itself, said: ‘This is truly stupid and annoying.’”

UCCR was born precisely during the years of fame of the “new atheists,” out of the need to provide a tool for believers “surrounded” by opinion-makers, intellectuals, and journalists. We followed the evolution of the phenomenon and its deflation, despite predictions that it would dominate the scene.

Having familiarity with the topic, we suggest five decisive factors to explain the disastrous end of “New Atheism.”

They are of course more biased against atheism than they are familiar with the topic.  I’ll condense the five factors; there is more text at the site:

1.) The election of Obama

It may seem incredible, but former U.S. President Barack Obama delivered the first major blow to the “new atheists.”

First of all, his election removed the “common enemy” that had ensured unity within the movement.

Before 2008, the glue binding activists was the much-hated conservative George W. Bush. Biologist PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins (today bitter enemies) appeared together publicly to oppose Bush and became idols celebrated by the progressive establishment.

Secondly, the Obama administration—supported by major media and cultural circles—pulled the rug out from under them: it reshaped American (and thus Western) culture by making criticism of Islam politically incorrect.

In fact, “New Atheism” emerged in the aftermath of September 11, and for years Islam was the preferred tool for generalizing about religious violence.

Under Obama, however, it became a minefield, and the first to step on it were two leading figures, Sam Harris and Michael Onfray, who began to be viewed negatively and portrayed as racists even by progressive media.

Obama was elected in 2008 and, as you see below, America’s rejection of established religion was well underway by then.

2.) Rejection by the academic world.

After the publication of his bestseller “The God Delusion” (2006), Dawkins, together with the other “horsemen,” began to denigrate agnostics and “moderate atheists,” accusing them of tolerating religious opinions and refusing to take sides.

Over time, the entire academic world was accused of cowardice for not joining the attack on religion. One example was Coyne’s media campaign against the agnostic historian Bart D. Ehrman, author of works defending the historicity of Christ.

Another emblematic case was the media pressure by Sam Harris in the New York Times and against the scientific community to prevent the Christian geneticist Francis Collins from remaining head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The attempt of “New Atheism” to enter and influence the academic world was explicitly stated at the 2006 Beyond Belief conference.

But the resounding failure was confirmed by the deep embarrassment expressed by non-believing academics themselves. For example, Nobel laureate Peter Higgs stated: “The problem with Dawkins is that he focuses his attacks on fundamentalists, but clearly not all believers are like that. In this sense, I think Dawkins’ attitude is fundamentalist, from the opposite side.”

Having lost the academic world, all their visibility depended entirely on media support, which gradually began to crumble, as seen above.

In fact, in the last relevant survey I could find, published in 2010, 23% of American college professors were agnostics and atheists, compared to just 4% of the American public. If there were no reporting bias, the rate of nonbelief among university academics is about six times higher than that of the American public in general. Once again, the authors of this dire piece are not using data as evidence, but simply ad hominem arguments—mostly detailing people’s criticisms of Dawkins and Sam Harris. But given the continuing rise of “nones” (which may have hit a temporary plateau but has not decreased), these are post hoc rationalizations. As faith slips away from Americans, it’s not enough for religionists to hold on to their personal beliefs—they need the support of like-minded people to make them think they’re on the right track.

I should add that as I quote and document in Faith Versus Fact, American scientists are 41% atheists, with only 33% believing in God (the other didn’t answer or were “spiritual”). If you look at more accomplished scientists, the rate of atheism rises to nearly 100%. It’s simply dumb to think that academics as a lot have rejected New Atheism.

3.) The response of believing intellectuals

Another reason for the decline of “New Atheism” lies in the entry into the debate of various Christian scientists, philosophers, and thinkers.

A new generation of believing intellectuals succeeded in presenting reasonable arguments in support of faith, showing that the “New Atheists” spent much of their time constructing straw-man arguments about religion, only to knock them down.

In his books, for example, Richard Dawkins strongly opposed a god that no one has ever believed in: the famous “god of the gaps”.

Some of these Christian intellectuals engaged directly with “New Atheism” by publishing books explicitly opposed to it, catching irreligious activists off guard. Among them:

  • John Lennox, emeritus professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, author of “God’s Undertaker”;
  • Amir D. Aczel, professor of Mathematics at the University of Massachusetts, author of “Why Science Does Not Disprove God”;
  • Francis Collins, renowned geneticist, author of “The Language of God”;
  • Kenneth R. Miller, emeritus professor of biology at Brown University, author of “Finding Darwin’s God”;
  • Owen Gingerich, emeritus professor of Astronomy and History of Science at Harvard University, author of “God’s Universe”;
  • Arthur Peacocke, theologian and biochemist at Oxford, author of “Paths From Science Towards God”.

More briefly, we also mention philosophers Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, Robert Spaemann, Roger Trigg, Richard Swinburne, and Richard Schroder; physicists Gerald Schroeder, John Polkinghorne, and Russell Stannard; and sociologist Rodney Stark.

I have to laugh when I look at that list of names.  While Ken Miller, who’s circumspect about exactly what he believes, is a good scientist and textbook writer, I’ve look at the beliefs of most of these people either on this website or in Faith Versus Fact. I usually don’t count theologians as intellectuals because most of them adhere to an unevidenced superstition—that there’s a God.  They are academics with a delusion.  If you want to take frozen waterfalls as evidence for God, for example, read Francis Collins. Or, for a good laugh when you want reasons why people think that Jesus was Lord, read the “evidence” used by C. S. Lewish. For every name they give above, I could give the name of five real intellectuals who are atheists.

This next one’s a corker, and even mentions me:

4.) The “Elevatorgate Scandal”

In 2011, a minor dispute about the behavior of participants at an atheist convention became known as “elevatorgate” and sparked the first major internal feud among irreligious activists online.

Feminist Emma Watson was sexually harassed in an elevator and publicly reported it, but was rebuked by leaders of “New Atheism” for risking negative publicity for their movement.

This episode marked the beginning of a break between the movement and feminism.

The situation worsened when Richard Dawkins made sexist remarks about the victim, hosted on the blog of PZ Myers. The community split between feminists and Dawkins supporters.

At that point, PZ Myers turned against Dawkins, labeling him racist and Islamophobic, alongside Sam Harris.

The media amplified everything and even named Dawkins among the worst misogynists of the year—a devastating blow to the movement.

Gradually, more commentators began to turn against the “priests of atheism”. Biologist Jerry Coyne tried for a time to defend Dawkins and Harris but eventually burned out. Today, much of his blog focuses on cats. . . .

First of all, “Elevatorgate” involved Rebecca Watson, not the actress Emma Watson. Do your homework, Christians! But beyond that, no, Elevatorgate did not make people start believing in God again, or erode the increase in nonbelief, as you can see by looking at the years around 2011 in the two plots below. It was a tempest in a teapot, and there’s not a scintilla of evidence that it buttressed faith, stemmed the rise of atheism, and so on. It just led some people who already hated Dawkins to criticize him even more.

As for me being “burned out” and focusing on cats, that’s ludicrous. I’m as atheistic as ever, and still promulgating it, as I am in this piece. But after I spent three years researching and writing Faith Versus Fact, I grew weary of banging the same old drum, and decided to bang it only when necessary, for example when this moronic article came out. As for “focusing on cats”, you be the judge. Sure, I write about them, but they’re by no means in every post I put up.

And, god help me, we have the last one:

5.) Richard Dawkins

The creator himself turned out to be the worst cause of his creation’s demise.

Richard Dawkins was the most prominent figure, a YouTube celebrity and tireless preacher. After “elevatorgate,” however, he became a target of internal criticism.

His downfall, however, came with social media—especially Twitter. Without editorial filtering, the zoologist revealed aspects of himself that had previously remained hidden.

With nearly a million followers, his sexist and racist remarks, his defense of “mild pedophilia”, encouragement of infidelity, and criticism of mothers who give birth to children with Down syndrome did not go unnoticed.

For years he has become a mockery online, especially after opposing the transgender movement.

According to Vice, “he has dishonored atheism”. His books have flopped, and even his most important scientific theory, the “selfish gene”, has been challenged by physiologist Denis Noble.

Yes, people have found plenty of “reasons” to go after Richard Dawkins, and he’s become the lightning rod for believers who hate atheism.  But nowhere in those criticisms, or in this very piece, do we see any refutation of Richard’s main reason to be an atheist: lack of evidence.  One would think that a genuine reason for rejecting atheism is that new evidence for a personal god has appeared. It hasn’t, and even a new line of anti-atheistic arguments, Intelligent Design, has come to nothing.

As for Dawkins’s books flopping, I’d suggest the authors look up the sales of The God Delusion, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Blind Watchmaker, and others. All of them were bestsellers, and all gave arguments against religious belief.

Here’s the summary of the piece:

Primatologist Frans De Waal accused the “new atheists” of being “obsessed with the non-existence of God, going on media campaigns, wearing T-shirts proclaiming their lack of faith, and calling for militant atheism.”

But he also asked: “What does atheism have to offer that is worth fighting for in this way?”

This is the question that remains. Defining oneself as “anti-” allows only limited survival; without offering meaningful answers to life’s meaning, failure is inevitable.

Philosopher Philippe Nemo wrote a remarkable epitaph for “New Atheism,” which we reproduce in full:

“Despite attempts to eradicate Christianity, atheism has died a natural death; it was not killed, since the modern world has given—and continues to give—it every opportunity to defend its cause and offer humanity new reasons for living. Opportunities wasted, because it failed to keep its promises, did not fulfill the intellectual programs that constituted its only attraction, and did not succeed in showing that man is less miserable without God than with God.”1.

This is ridiculous, of course. First, nobody, including the Great Satan Richard Dawkins—thinks of atheism as something that gives their life meaning.  It is simply a lack of belief in gods: an abandonment of religious superstition.

And what were the “promises” that New Atheism made? None, as far as I can tell. They maintained only that if you accept things based on evidence, you’re not going to embrace religion. And as the power of science grows (it’s one reason people give for leaving religions), so the grip of belief loosens.

The rise of nonbelief in America is documented in the two plots below, one from Pew and the other from Gallup. The plots (summaried in The Baptist News!) show the rise of the “nones”—people who don’t embrace an established church—as well as the fall of the ‘not-nones,” that is, people who do adhere to an established church.

Yeah, nonbelief has really fallen in America since the first New Atheist book (by Sam Harris) in 2004. NOT!

One question for readers:

Why are so many people eager to proclaim the death of New Atheism?

This is a Gallup plot:

And a Pew plot:

Ghost the octopus died

March 26, 2026 • 9:30 am

This morning I woke up to this email from the Aquarium of the Pacific (I suppose I’d signed up for communications a while back) announcing the death of Ghost, the universe’s best-known and most loved Giant Pacific Octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini):

The Aquarium is saddened by the loss of Ghost, the giant Pacific octopus who was beloved by staff, guests, and those who learned about her online. Ghost died on March 24 after entering senescence, the natural end-of-life process after laying eggs. The Aquarium announced Ghost’s senescence online in September 2025. Ghost was resting behind the scenes while animal care and veterinary staff provided her with extra support and care during her senescence.

Digital image and b-roll of Ghost can be downloaded here through the Aquarium’s Media Library.

For interviews, please call 562-833-1455 or reply to this email.

Best wishes,

Marilyn Padilla / Chelsea Quezada / Andreas Miguel

(562) 951-1684 / (562) 951-3197 / (562) 951-1678

Public Relations

Aquarium of the Pacific

AoP Logo with Organization.png

20250606AOP_JB10065.jpg

I’ve posted about Ghost several times before, and when she went into senescence, after producing a batch of infertile eggs (there was no male in her tank), they took her off display. I kept watching for a death announcement, but in the absence of one, I assumed she’d crossed the Rainbow Bridge and they were going to keep her death quiet.  So I was taken aback by the announcement above because I didn’t think it possible for an octopus to senesce for seven months.  But I guess it is possible.  I looked it up on Wikipedia, which said this (my bolding):

After reproduction, they enter senescence, which involves obvious changes in behavior and appearance, including a reduced appetite, retraction of skin around the eyes giving them a more pronounced appearance, increased activity in uncoordinated patterns, and white lesions all over the body. While the duration of this stage is variable, it typically lasts about one to two months. Despite active senescence primarily occurring over this period immediately following reproduction, research has shown that changes related to senescence may begin as early as the onset of reproductive behavior. In early stages of senescence, which begins as the octopus enters the stage of reproduction, hyper-sensitivity is noted where individuals overreact to both noxious and non-noxious touch. As they enter late senescence, insensitivity is observed along with the dramatic physical changes described above. Changes in sensitivity to touch are attributed to decreasing cellular density in nerve and epithelial cells as the nervous system degrades.  Death is typically attributed to starvation, as the females have stopped hunting in order to protect their eggs; males often spend more time in the open, making them more likely to be preyed upon.

Ghost lived more than three times that long, probably because she was lovingly cared for by the Aquarium staff, as recounted in this story from ABC Eyewitness News 7.,which also confirms the demise of the beloved mollusc:

A beloved octopus at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach has died, officials announced Wednesday.

The giant Pacific octopus named Ghost died on Tuesday.

Back in September, aquarium officials announced that Ghost laid eggs and entered the last phase of her life cycle, known as senescence. She had been resting behind the scenes while being taken care of by aquarium staff during her senescence.

Ghost the octopus is spending her final days at the Aquarium of the Pacific caring for her eggs – even though they will never hatch.

“We are going to miss her. Ghost left a big impression on us and on so many people, even those beyond our Aquarium,” Nate Jaros, Aquarium of the Pacific vice president of animal care, said in a press release announcing her death. “She was spirited and very charismatic and loved to interact with our animal care staff. She was very engaged with the mazes and puzzles our staff created just for her. Ghost had a preference for interacting with her aquarist caregiver, sometimes preferring these interactions over eating. She was especially inquisitive when our staff members would dive in the habitat for maintenance.”

In her last days, care for Ghost included hand-prepped quality seafood, curated enrichment activities for her mind, and state-of-the art veterinary care.

Although senescence is part of the natural life cycle of a female octopus, aquarium officials noted her passing was a sad time for all.

“We hope part of her legacy is raising awareness about octopuses and inspiring people to care for and protect the ocean,” said Jaros.

Ghost arrived at Aquarium of the Pacific in May 2024 and only weighed about three pounds at the time. She grew to be over 50 pounds and was estimated to have been between two and four years old when she died.

In the wild, giant Pacific octopuses live up to five years. They spend their whole lives alone and only come together briefly to reproduce.

Here’s Ghost being weighed (a hefty 40 pounds) in happier days:

@aquariumpacific

Ghost’s weigh-in 🏋️‍♀️🐙⚖️ #animalcare #octopus #aquariumofthepacific

♬ Jazz Bossa Nova – TOKYO Lonesome Blue

As a thought exercise, and maybe in a comment, think about why it’s adaptive for a female to waste away unto death when she could start eating and perhaps produce a second brood. Why would evolution favor senescence in a case like this? Notice in the announcement above that she was indeed eating as she approached death, but senescence involves more than just food deprivation: humans senescence and die too, even when they’re eating.

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 26, 2026 • 8:15 am

In the absence of much of a backlog, I’ve stolen some gorgeous photos from reader Scott Ritchie of Cairns, Australia (his FB page is here).  Scott’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Recently I visited my friends, Karen and David Young in the Crater Lake cabins near Lake Eacham, Atherton Tablelands, west of Cairns. This area is a mega for birds and they did not disappoint. In particular, we got great up close and personal views of our local bird of paradise, bird of prayer, paradise, the Victoria rifle bird.

The male of the species has jet black feathers. However, in just the right light you get a lovely iridescent reflection. The other thing these birds do is dance. It’s an amazing shuffling of the wings while top of stump while throwing their head out and flashing your lovely iridescent blue throat. The immature riflebird is a beautiful brown/rufous color, and they can’t help to practice their dance moves. And of course dad’s gotta come along and join in the festivities.

Also, here’s a few photos of some other creatures that I saw on my little five hour trip to the table lands. I hope you enjoy them.

Male Victoria’s Riflebird (Ptiloris victoriae),in full dance pose. Note the jet black feathers:

Swishes wings sideways, like a flying saucer. Peering above the wings:

But in the right light, iridescent rainbows appear:

I love the cooper and purple sheen on his back:

Meanwhile, youngster, an immature male, practices his dance moves. He leans back, showing off his wild yellow throat:

“Peek-a-boo”
Stands up, and swishes his wings back and forth, hiding his head behind them:

Then stands proud:

And then the adult male shows up. I’ll show you who’s boss:

Has he lost his mind?

I’m definitely King of the Stump:

Off youngster goes, only to be replaced by another male!:

And a few other local birds made an appearance. Pacific Emerald Dove (Chalcophaps longirostris):

Macleay’s Honeyeater (Xanthotis macleayanus):

Grey-headed Robin (Heteromyias cinereifrons):

And the musky rat-kangaroo (Hypsiprymnodon moschatus), our smallest proper roo!:

And the Boyd’s Forest Dragon (Lophosaurus boydii) appeared for the lizard and snake lovers:

Thursday: Hili dialogue

March 26, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, March 26, 2026, and National Nougat Day, a genus that apparently includes Nutella. Remember that the first two ingredients in Nutella are sugar (50–55%) and palm oil (~20%), so be careful out there!

It’s also National Spinach Day, Spinach Festival Day (aren’t they the same?), and Science Appreciation Day (science helps explain children’s aversion to spinach):

Spinach happens to be one of the few vegetables I like, and never bridled at being served it as a kid. (I think kids don’t like it because they perceive it as bitter, and we have evolved to avoid bitter plants since they often contain toxins—though spinach doesn’t). Here’s a compendium of Popeye cartoons in which he gains strength from spinach. The first one is from 1933: the first time Popeye ate spinach on the screen.

Reader Will reminded me, along with someone else, that it’s National Science Appreciation Day, and sent a photo with this caption:

Attached is a picture of my wife Sara and me at the March for Science in 2017 with our Keeping It Real Since AD 1021 sign.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 26 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*A summary of yesterday’s war news from It’s Noon in Israel:

  • Iran has set an extremely high bar for ceasefire negotiations. The IRGC’s demands include the closure of all U.S. bases in the Gulf, reparations for strikes on Iran, a Hormuz transit fee arrangement, an end to strikes on Hezbollah, the lifting of all sanctions, and the preservation of its missile program. A U.S. official called the demands “ridiculous and unrealistic.” The two sides are not in direct contact—messages are passing through Arab intermediaries.
  • Yesterday, Lebanon declared Iran’s ambassador persona non grata, ordering him to leave by March 29 and canceling his diplomatic status over interference in Lebanese internal affairs. The Lebanese government also recalled its own ambassador from Tehran for consultations. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s leadership and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri personally asked the Iranian ambassador to stay.
  • The Times reported last night that the British Navy will lead the “Hormuz Coalition” to reopen the straits. Britain will also deploy mine‑clearing capabilities alongside the United States and France.
  • According to The New York Times, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has urged Trump in recent days to press on with the war against Iran, calling it a “historic opportunity” to reshape the Middle East. In a series of conversations over the past week, bin Salman pushed for accelerating military action—including strikes on energy infrastructure and possible ground operations—arguing that only regime change could eliminate the “long-term threat” to the Gulf.
  • After pressure from Washington to take action on the issue, the government will approve the establishment of a unit in the Ministry of Defense to deal with the hilltop youth, with a budget of 130 million shekels for the next three years.

Now, on to the details. (Their bolding.):

When Netanyahu walked into Donald Trump’s office for the first time during the former’s second term, he brought a small gift: a golden beeper embedded in a piece of cedar, dedicated to “our great friend and greatest ally.” Trump was delighted. What followed was a warm meeting, described by the Israeli delegation as “beyond our expectations and dreams.” The lesson? Trump likes gifts.

Of all the Israeli lessons, and Israel has taught them many, Iran seems to have taken this one to heart. Trump revealed yesterday that Iran had sent him a gift—and that he liked it. They know their recipient, he said, because “it’s worth a lot of money,” and is supposedly related to oil and gas. But here is the most important part: the gift, he suggested, showed him that he is “talking to the right people.” Unless that box contained the comatose body of Mojtaba Khamenei, I’m skeptical.

Given Trump’s vacillation on the war, as with everything else, who knows that’s going on, and whether his intend to the the war is serious. At any rate, the next piece shows that Iran won’t end the war except on its own terms.

*The WSJ reports that Iran is playing “hardball” with the U.S. as a lot of countries are trying to broker an end to the war.

Mediators from Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan are pushing for a meeting between U.S. and Iranian officials, but Tehran has displayed defiance over the possibility of diplomacy and both sides remain far apart.

The U.S. sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war, which centers largely on previous Trump administration demands of Tehran. Iran’s state-run Press TV broadcaster said Tehran had rejected the U.S. proposal and set out its own conditions for a deal, including reparations and recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.

Gulf Arab states are growing alarmed by Trump’s eagerness to do a deal. The leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are lobbying Trump to stick with the war until Iran is sufficiently weakened that it won’t pose a threat.

Separately, authorities suspect Iran recruited individuals online for terror attacks in Europe, and set up a bogus terror group to claim responsibility for attacks on Jewish schools, synagogues and companies linked to Israel.

Here’s their summary of Trump’s 15 point plan:

The document, sent through intermediaries, calls on Iran to dismantle its three main nuclear sites and end any enrichment on Iranian soil, suspend its ballistic-missile work, curb support for proxies and fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, according to the officials.

In return, Iran would have nuclear-related sanctions lifted, the officials said, and the U.S. would assist—while monitoring—the country’s civilian nuclear program. The plan broadly reflects the U.S. proposal discussed with Iran before the war started Feb. 28, when President Trump accused Tehran of not negotiating in good faith. Iran’s new, harder-line leadership says it now has higher demands of Washington, such as seeking reparations for weeks of attacks.

And here’s Iran’s demands:

Iran is demanding an end to attacks by the U.S. and Israel as well as concrete guarantees preventing the recurrence of the war, Press TV quoted the official as saying. The country also wants recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and financial compensation for damages caused by the weekslong conflict. Tehran also wants Israel and the U.S. to stop attacks on its allies across the region, the official said.

Those two demands are so far apart you could drive a gazillion trucks through them. Iran’s demands are even stronger than the demands that Trump rejected before the U.S. and Israel started their attack.

Note that the Saudis and UAE leaders don’t want a deal; they want the Iranian regime destroyed. for they know what that a revived theocracy will not only expoort terror, but perhaps keep striking targets in countries like those two.  I think the U.S. terms are too easy, and I don’t want this war to end without surrender and regime changes. Is that unrealistic? Maybe, but it’s a just ending to a just war.

*Two authors at the WaPo (Karen Kramer, deputy director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, and Esfandiar Aban, the center’s director of research) tell us what we need to know: “Iran is already ramping up its next war. Guess who the ‘enemy’ is.” Surprise: it’s the Iranian people themselves!

The bombs are still falling, and the Islamic Republic’s future is uncertain, but one thing is already clear: The Iranian regime is preparing for its next war — against its own citizens.

In the past few days, three young men arrested for participating in the January protests have already been executed — a chilling signal of what may lie ahead.

The danger to the Iranian people cannot be overstated. Confronted not only with external conflict but also with a population that has repeatedly taken to the streets in defiance, the regime is determined to settle scores with its domestic critics and extinguish any internal challenge to its rule.

Its willingness to inflict violence upon its own people has been demonstrated time and again over the past 47 years. But never has it been more intense than during the nationwide protests in January, when security forces gunned down thousands in the streets over a matter of days. Now facing an existential threat, the regime is angry and armed and sees enemies all around.

That’s correct: the regime has said more than once in the last several weeks that any protestors will be summarily shot in the streets. More:

The warning signs are unmistakable. Armed Basij patrol neighborhoods. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has sent text messages to citizens warning that “a blow even stronger than that of January 8” awaits those who protest. Hundreds of arrests have taken place across the country since the current conflict began, according to research by the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). The detained include not only January protesters tracked down by the authorities but also activists, students, members of religious and ethnic minorities, and ordinary citizens. Sources inside Iran report checkpoints in Tehran, Mashhad and other cities, where security forces stop individuals, confiscate their phones and search for “suspicious” content.

Iranian judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi has made the regime’s position explicit: “Individuals who collaborate with the enemy in any manner are considered part of the enemy’s forces and will be dealt with accordingly.” In practice, the regime defines “collaboration” so broadly as to encompass any form of dissent — activists, lawyers defending political prisoners, doctors who treated wounded protesters, members of religious or ethnic minorities, or simply individuals whose private messages or social media posts run afoul of the state.

For many, the outcome is grimly predictable: They will be arrested, most likely tortured and quickly tried without independent lawyers or due process in special revolutionary courts by handpicked hard-line judges. Many will face espionage or national security charges, which can carry the death penalty.

In this environment, the risk of mass arbitrary detention is acute. Even more alarming is the prospect of mass executions, especially as those arrested face a high likelihood of forced “confessions” extracted under torture. Hundreds of such confessions were broadcast over state TV after the January protests.

*In contrast to the rest of the article in the NYT, Bret Stephens has an optimistic take on the US and Israel vs. Iran. It’s given in his column, “The war is going better than you think” (archived here). And that’s because what you “think” about the war is largely conditioned by the liberal mainstream media, like the anti-Israel NYT! He gives a lot of comparisons:

As Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told NBC’s Kristen Welker over the weekend, “We’ve never seen this level of incompetence in war-making in this country’s history.”

Really? Let’s take a tour of some of the recent history.

  • During the 1991 Operation Desert Storm against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, a campaign that is widely considered a brilliant military success, the U.S.-led coalition lost 75 aircraft, 42 of them in combat. In this conflict, four manned aircraft have been destroyed, three to friendly fire and one in an accident. Not a single manned plane has yet been lost over Iran.

  • The U.S. air and land campaign in that operation lasted a full six weeks. Today it’s remembered as a lightning-fast war. The current conflict with Iran is less than four weeks old.

  • In the 1989-90 invasion of Panama, whose military phase lasted a few days, the United States lost 23 soldiers, with 325 more wounded. So far in this war, U.S. losses are 13 dead. Among the more than 230 wounded, most have swiftly returned to duty.

  • During the Persian Gulf crisis that began with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the U.S. economy went into recession and the Dow fell by about 13 percent before the allied air war began. Since conflict with Iran began last June with Operation Midnight Hammer, the Dow is up by 9 percent as of Tuesday morning.

  • At the outset of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States made a failed decapitation strike against Saddam Hussein and his senior leadership, some of whom became leaders of the insurgency. In this war, much of Iran’s top leadership was killed on the first day and there is still no proof of life from the new supreme leader. Yousef Pezeshkian, the son of the current president, has written that if Iran can’t prevent the continued assassination of its leaders, “we will lose the war.”

  • Between 1987 and 1988, in the final stages of the so-called tanker war, the Reagan administration reflagged Kuwaiti tankers and had the U.S. Navy escort them out of the Strait of Hormuz. An Iranian mine nearly sank an American frigate. The conflict wound down after the United States sank a handful of Iranian navy ships. This time around, we have destroyed almost all of Iran’s navy with no naval losses of our own.

  • In 1991, Iraq fired roughly 40 missiles toward Israel. Hardly any were intercepted despite the deployment of Patriot batteries there. In this war, Israel is registering an interception rate of 92 percent against more than 400 missiles. Iran’s overall rate of fire has dropped from 438 ballistic missiles on the first day of the war to 21 on Monday. Drone fire has also declined from 345 to 75 for the same dates.

  • In the months leading up to the second Iraq war, the George W. Bush administration made a case based on erroneous information that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. In the current war, there is no question that some 970 pounds of highly enriched uranium lies stashed and buried in Iran — possibly enough, with further enrichment and conversion into uranium metal, for 11 nuclear bombs. If the outrage of the Iraq war is that Hussein didn’t have W.M.D. capabilities, is it now supposed to be somehow more outrageous that Iran does?

  • One of the worst mistakes of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was the attempt by U.S. administrators to remake societies in both countries — well-intended efforts with some noble results that nonetheless were beyond our grasp. In this war, despite some varying rhetoric from President Trump, the goal has been reasonably clear and consistent: Iran cannot have nuclear weapons or other means to menace its neighbors. As for regime change, we hope the Iranian people use the opportunity of their leadership’s weakness to seize their own destiny. But we won’t do it for them.

There are more, but I’ve left them out. Here’s Stephens’s conclusion:

I am not blind to the Trump administration’s failures in planning, particularly its unwillingness to make a stronger public case for war and get more allies on our side before the campaign began. I am also purposely comparing the war with Iran to past wars of similar scale, rather than our true military fiascos in Vietnam, Korea and the two world wars — in which tens of thousands of Americans died due to poor tactical planning and bad strategy.

Still, if past generations could see how well this war has gone compared with the ones they were compelled to fight at a frightening cost, they would marvel at their posterity’s comparative good fortune. They would marvel, too, at our inability to appreciate the advantages we now possess.

It is good to keep some historical perspective, and that’s pretty much what Stephens does.  What has changed in the last ten years is the anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism of the American Left, which makes people more pessimistic than is warranted. And of course there are those pesky gas prices. . .

*Have you thought about Ukraine lately? Over at the conservative National Review, we hear that “The tide turns for Ukraine” (archived post).

You’ve probably heard cynical observers of the U.S.-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic of Iran insist that the only true victor in this war will be Russia. If this is what victory looks like, though, Russia was better off mired in a stalemated quagmire.

It turns out that Ukraine isn’t bereft of any “cards” to play in this war. In fact, it’s got a full deck at its disposal.

“The biggest thing coming out of Ukraine is the rapid pace of innovation,” said Space Force Lieutenant General Steven Whitney in a recent congressional testimony. Kyiv has developed the capacity to adapt, iterating and fielding both new high-tech weapons and low-cost defensive munitions at a rapid pace. “Their level of innovation is out of this world,” he marveled.

That ingenuity has transformed Ukraine, in the minds of its detractors inside the Trump administration, from a charity case and a drag on U.S. resources into a sought-after partner in the battle against Iranian forces and the creator of weapons systems that the U.S. and its Middle East partners only wish they had at their disposal.

And what about the war?

In February, Elon Musk’s SpaceX implemented a whitelisting system that cut Russian forces off from accessing its Starlink satellite-based internet services. All of a sudden, Russian commanders could no longer access live footage of the battlespace and lost communications with troops in the field. The move coincided with a Ukrainian offensive that is still advancing eastward.

“Since then, Ukraine says it has retaken roughly 150 square miles of territory in the southern Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, where Russian forces had previously been advancing rapidly,” the Wall Street Journal reported last week. Indeed, for the better part of a month, while the world’s eyes were locked on the Persian Gulf, Ukrainian forces have managed to advance on several fronts, retaking contested and strategically valuable territory from Russia’s occupiers.

With the onset of spring, Russia, too, is back on offense. But while Moscow’s soldiers are making “some tactical gains at significant cost,” according to the Institute for the Study of War, its strategic objectives remain out of reach for now. And the “cost” of this offensive is steep.

Kyiv-skeptical elements inside the Trump administration are still trying to force Ukraine into a supplicative posture, and Ukraine is still resisting Washington’s efforts to impose defeat on it. But those who saw Ukraine as little more than a freeloading alms-seeker draining the West’s resources toward no greater strategic end must increasingly rely on baseless prejudices to justify that outlook.

Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine won’t end anytime soon, and there will be more twists of fortune to come in a war that’s been full of them. But anyone who told themselves that Ukraine’s defeat was only a matter of time allowed the wish to father the thought.

I was one of those pessimists, and am glad to hear a more optimistic take.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s inspecting the garden:

Hili: I wonder whether this peach will have any fruit already this year.
Andrzej: I’m not certain, but I can’t exclude it.

In Polish:

Hili: Ciekawe, czy ta brzoskwinia będzie miała już w tym roku jakieś owoce.
Ja: Nie jestem pewien, ale nie mogę tego wykluczyć.

*******************

From Things With Faces, a sad potato:

From Funny and Strange Signs:

From Animal Antics (it should be “lie down”):

And an extra photo from my FB feed, which, sadly, is not real but an AI fake (it is, after all an ad for matzos). But I wish it were real! The ladies, of course, are all Jewish, and Gal Gadot was in the IDF for two years. I didn’t know Pink was Jewish, but that is the case: she had a Jewish mom, ergo by Jewish Roolz say she is one of us. “Pesach” is simply Passover, which this year extends from sundown on the evening of April 1 until Thursday, April 9.

Masih is busy posting against the Iranian regime; she’s clearly in favor of the war against her natal country:

From Luana, not a fan of DEI “ideology” that leads to stuff like this:

Found on Twitter, but not through doomscrolling. People don’t ever think about this comparison:

Two from my feed. First, a kitty who doesn’t want to wet his paws:

Science girl comes through again; this is damn funny:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

. . . and two from Dr. Cobb.  First, beautiful bracelets, nearly five millennia old:

Stunning 4,600 year-old silver bracelets with inlaid semi-precious stones in the shape of butterflies! 🦋🦋🦋🦋They belonged to Egyptian Queen Hetepheres. From her tomb at Giza. Old Kingdom, 4th Dynasty, c. 2613-2494 BC.Grand Egyptian Museum, Cairo📷 by me#Archaeology

— Alison Fisk (@alisonfisk.bsky.social) 2026-03-25T09:45:55.491Z

Of this Matthew comments, “This is edited by Chuck Workman (no, me neither). V good, but not all great films are from the USA! (Yes, there’s Metropolis and some spaghetti westerns in there, but that’s about it).” I’m not quite sure what he means, but how many of these scenes have you seen?

Cinema will find a way. 💕

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) 2025-12-06T15:42:40.642Z

.

 

This just in from Colossal Biosciences: Wolves eat meat!

March 25, 2026 • 12:30 pm

I’ve often criticized Colossal Biosciences for their overblown science, which includes pretending that they’ve resurrected the dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus), when they’ve only created grey wolves (Canis lupus) with a few gene edits that make them white (real dire wolves probably were not white!) and a bit larger. Three of these edited wolves have been released at a secret location, and Colossal has pronounced them to be dire wolves even though they’re they’re not dire wolves. In fact Colossal has admitted they haven’t “de-extincted” dire wolves—and yet they pretend otherwise. It’s a squirrelly business, but they need to keep attracting and keeping donors.

On tap: their promise to “de-extinct” the woolly mammoth, which will in fact not be a wooly mammoth but at best a hairy Asian elephant. And they say that they’ll get a population of these creatures going on the tundra within eight or so years.  I wouldn’t bet on it!

This morning I got an announcement that the three dire wolves in captivity have eaten an animal—a dead deer! Surprise!

Here’s the announcement:

Did you know most wolf hunts end in failure? 
Wolves look like perfect hunters, but in the wild they actually fail nearly 9 out of 10 hunts. So how do they ever get good at it? In our latest video, narrated by Colossal’s Manager of Animal Husbandry Paige McNickle, we explore how wolves actually learn to hunt, and see the dire wolves Romulus and Remus face a messy milestone as they try to figure out how to skin, tear, crunch, and share a whole deer.
Will the young dire wolves be successful? The answer might surprise you.
When I said the whole thing was ridiculous, Matthew (another critic) responded, “Exactly. “Look, Homer, they are just like our pet dog!”
Note the videos showing a bunch of white “dire wolves” chasing buffalo. I don’t think that can be real, as they made only three dire wolve, and they aren’t penned in where the buffalos roam.Note as well that they are showing gray wolves, not dire wolves.  And of course they’ll eat a wolf carcass, for “dire wolves” are just tweaked gray wolves, and they are going to eat a deer carcass if they get it.  This deer was (I hope) killed before presented to these mutants.The YouTube notes.

Narrated by Paige McNickle, Colossal’s Manager of Animal Husbandry, this episode also gives you a close look at the continuing development of our young dire wolves, Romulus and Remus. They’ve already taken down small prey, and they’re continuing to learn the essential behaviors of being wolves. To help them develop more skills, the dire wolves are given a whole deer carcass. This is an important milestone in their development, as they learn how to skin, tear, crunch, and share a full prey animal.

This is undoubtedly meant to keep the public excited and, more important, keeping the donors satisfied and bringing more $$ in.  But what is the purpose showing these gray wolves learning to be gray wolves? They’ll never be released into the wild! I suppose you could say that this shows how gray wolves not born into a pack can learn various behaviors. But that has nothing to do with dire wolves.  To me it’s a big yawn in the service of Mammon.

And where is the third “dire wolf”—Khaleesi? Is she getting dog food somewhere?

DuckCam is up!

March 25, 2026 • 11:00 am

They have finally turned on the DuckCam (or PondCam, if you will) at Botany Pond. There’s a good view of nearly the entire Pond, and you are likely to see Armon there; in fact, he’s should be there now. A few minutes ago there was another pair that I drove off, as we don’t want to couples nesting at about the same time.  Oh, I forgot to add the important note that Vashti has begun incubating her eggs at a secret location (I know where it is), and we should have ducklings in a bit less than four weeks!

Even the channel is visible now, to the right behind the lamppost.

Two obituaries of Robert Trivers

March 25, 2026 • 9:30 am

Although I did call attention to the death of Robert Trivers, age 83, on March 12, and I knew him slightly, I did not have the chops to summarize his many contributions, nor did I know him that well (we overlapped at Harvard). Fortunately, Steve Pinker has produced an absolutely terrific bio of Trivers at Quillette: a piece that summarizes the many contributions to evolutionary biology made as a young man, and then his many eccentricities, quirks and obnoxious or even illegal behaviors that made Trivers somewhat of an apostate. He was a complex and fascinating person, and I hope someone will write his biography (he did write an autobiography, Wild Life: Adventures of an Evolutioanry Biologist, but deserves a thorough, disinterested, and Cobb-like treatment).

Steve’s obituary, which you can access by clicking on the screenshot below or seeing it archived here, is roughly in three sections: Trivers’s contributions to the field, an analysis of why they came so young and so fast (he did almost nothing during the last five decades of his life), and a description of his complex personality and behavior. It’s long for an obituary, but Trivers deserves long, and of course Pinker summarizes his life eloquently.

Trivers’s major contributions as Steve outlines them (Steve’s words are indented, bold headings are mine):

. . . two weeks after the death of Robert Trivers, one of the greatest evolutionary biologists since Charles Darwin, not a single major news source has noticed his passing. This despite Trivers’s singular accomplishment of showing how the endlessly fascinating complexities of human relations are grounded in the wellsprings of complex life. And despite the fact that the man’s life was itself an object of fascination. Trivers was no ordinary academic. He was privileged in upbringing but louche in lifestyle, personally endearing but at times obstreperous and irresponsible, otherworldly brilliant but forehead-slappingly foolish.

I still can’t see an obituary for Trivers in either the NYT or the Washington Post. That lacuna is shameful. On to his contributions (

Contributions:

Parent-offspring conflict:

Trivers’s innovation was to show how the partial overlap of genetic interests between individuals should put them in a partial conflict of psychological interest. The key resource is parental investment: the time, energy, and risk devoted to the fitness of a child. Parents have to apportion their investment across all their children, each equally valuable (all else the same). But although parents share half their genes with each child, the child shares all its genes with itself, so its interest in its own welfare will exceed that of its parents. What the parent tacitly wants—half for Jack, half for Jill—is not what Jack and Jill each want: two thirds for the self, one third for the sib. Trivers called the predicamentparent-offspring conflict.

Sex differences in parental investment:

Trivers explained the contrast by noting that in most species the minimal parental investments of males and females differ. Males can get away with a few seconds of copulation; females are on the hook for metabolically expensive egg-laying or pregnancy, and in mammals for years of nursing. The difference translates into differences in their ultimate evolutionary interests: males, but not females, can multiply their reproductive output with multiple partners. Darwin’s contrast can then be explained by simple market forces. And in species where the males invest more than the minimum (by feeding, protecting, or teaching their offspring), males are more vulnerable than females to infidelity (since they may be investing in another male’s child) and females are more vulnerable to desertion (since they may bear the costs of rearing their mutual offspring alone).

Reciprocal altruism:

In another landmark, Trivers turned to relations among people who are not bound by blood. No one doubts that humans, more than any other species, make sacrifices for nonrelatives. But Trivers recoiled from the romantic notion that people are by nature indiscriminately communal and generous. It’s not true to life, nor is it expected: in evolution as in baseball, nice guys finish last. Instead, he noted, nature provides opportunities for a more discerning form of altruism in the positive-sum exchange of benefits. One animal can help another by grooming, feeding, protecting, or backing him, and is helped in turn when the needs reverse. Everybody wins.

Trivers called it reciprocal altruism, and noted that it can evolve only in a narrow envelope of circumstances.

This to me is Trivers’s most important contribution, explaining not only why we sacrifice for unrelated people, but also making testable (and largely verified) predictions about human behavior, including morality.  Now that humans no longer live in small groups of acquainted people—conditions under which reciprocal altruism presumably evolved—we can expect some of those behaviors to disappear, but civilization is a mere eyeblink compared to the long, long period in which the conditions were right for the evolution of altruism (and deceit; see below).

Asymmetries in human relationships:

. . . in a passage that even fewer readers noticed, Trivers anticipated a major phenomenon later studied in the guise of “partner choice.” Though it pays both sides in a reciprocal partnership to trade favours as long as each one gains more than he loses, people differ in how much advantage they’ll try to squeeze out of an exchange while leaving it just profitable enough for the partner that he won’t walk away. That’s why not everyone evolves into a rapacious scalper: potential partners can shun them, preferring to deal with someone who offers more generous terms. Just as a store with a reputation for fair prices and good service can attract a loyal clientele and earn a bigger profit in the long run than a store that tries to wring every cent out of its customers only to drive them away, a person who is inherently generous can be a more attractive friend, ally, or teammate than one who dribbles out favours only to the extent he expects them to be repaid with a bonus. The advantage in attracting good partners makes up for the disadvantage in forgoing the biggest profit in each transaction.

And since humans are language users—indeed, reciprocity may be a big reason language evolved—any tendency of an individual to reciprocate or cheat, lavish or stint, does not have to be witnessed firsthand but can be passed through the grapevine. This leads to an interest in the reputation of others, and a concern with one’s own reputation.

The evolutionary significance of deceit and self-deception:

Trivers’s fifth blockbuster was laid out not in an academic paper but in a pair of sentences in his foreword to The Selfish Gene:

If (as Dawkins argues) deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray—by the subtle signs of self-knowledge—the deception being practiced. Thus, the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naïve view of mental evolution.

We lie to ourselves the better to lie to others, protecting compromising private knowledge from emotional tells or factual contradictions (as in the Yiddish saying, “A liar must have a good memory.”) In his book Social Evolution(1985), Trivers muses on how this can play out:

Consider an argument between two closely bound people, say, husband and wife. Both parties believe that one is an altruist of long standing, relatively pure in motive, and much abused, while the other is characterized by a pattern of selfishness spread over hundreds of incidents. They only disagree over who is altruistic and who selfish.

The theory of self-deception is deeper (and more enigmatic) than the commonplace that people’s views of themselves are mistuned in their favour. The self, Trivers implied, is divided: one part, seamless with the rest of consciousness, mounts a self-serving PR campaign; another, unconscious but objective, prevents the person from getting dangerously out of touch with reality.

Trivers wrote an entire book about this, a book that he intended to co-author with the (in)famous Huey Newton, a founder of the Black Panthers (Newton was murdered before it could be written): The Folly of Fools: the Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life. It’s an uneven book, larded with bizarre personal anecdotes, but it also contains a lot of intriguing food for thought. In other words, it’s pure Trivers.

Why did Trivers make these contributions?  A few of Steve’s thoughts:

. . . Trivers revelled in explaining the contradictions of the human condition, and he himself was a mess of them. Foremost is how he revolutionised the human sciences in a fusillade of ideas he had between the ages of 28 and 33 (I didn’t even mention a sixth one, on how parents should invest in sons versus daughters). But then he did nothing comparable for fifty years. He wrote some good books, but they were reviews of his and others’ contributions, breaking little new ground. How do we explain this shooting star?

Part of the answer is that, as with all intellectual revolutions, the right mind found itself in the right era. In 1971 the gene’s-eye view of evolution was new and counterintuitive, as it remains to this day. People, including scientists, project their moral and political convictions onto the things they study, and the ideal that we should love our neighbours, act for the good of the group, and strive for social betterment is easy to read into nature, even if it flouts the logic of natural selection. And whenever the word “gene” comes up, readers get distracted by hallucinations such as that humans are robots controlled by their genes, that each of their traits is determined by a single gene, that they may be morally excused for selfishness, that they try to have as many babies as possible, that they are impervious to culture, and other non sequiturs.

The young Trivers, mentored at Harvard by the biologists William Drury and Ernst Mayr, immediately grasped the new way of looking at evolution, and never got hung up by these misconceptions. A jaundiced view of animals, not excluding Homo sapiens, came naturally to his rebellious temperament, and many puzzles he observed in his field work (including on ants, lizards, gulls, songbirds, caribou, baboons, and chimps) fell into place when he considered their reproductive interests from their viewpoints.

. . . In the early 1970s, then, Trivers was standing on the shoulders of giants, looking with a gimlet eye over a rich array of poorly explained animal behaviour (not excluding humans, since he had recently binged on novels). In this virgin landscape, the implications of the overlapping conflicts of genetic interests were waiting to be discovered, foreshadowed in scattered passages from Hamilton and Williams. Someone had to see them first, and Trivers was there.

. . . But Trivers rapidly spotted what everyone else missed, and still misses, together with the less biologically obvious concept of self-deception, so there must be another piece to the puzzle. During his junior year at Harvard, Trivers suffered two weeks of mania and then a breakdown that hospitalised him for two months. Bipolar disorder afflicted him throughout his life. I can’t help but wonder whether Trivers’s fecund period was driven by episodes of hypomania, when ideas surge and insights suddenly emerge through clouds of bafflement.

I had never thought of that, though Trivers made no secret of his diagnosis.  Finally, a bit about his behavior:

Though his upbringing was patrician and cosmopolitan (son of a poet and a diplomat, schooled in Europe and then Andover and Harvard), he was afflicted with a strong nostalgie de la boue. This contributed to his adoption of Jamaica, originally the site of his research on lizards, as a second home. Trivers’s life in Jamaica was filled with boozing, brawling, whoring, and of course toking, together with a stint in jail and a narrow escape from death during an armed robbery. His memoir Wild Lifeis peppered with homicidal fantasies and expressions of admiration for thuggish vigilantes, including Huey Newton, co-founder of the radical Black Panther Party. Trivers befriended Newton, made him godfather of his daughter, coauthored a paper with him on the role of self-deception in a fatal plane crash, and became a white Black Panther himself before Newton ushered him out of the organisation for his own safety.

. . . But Trivers’s neuroatypicality shaded into eccentricity and downright boorishness. He might try to drop off a passenger without stopping the car, or miscount the number of dinner guests and force two of them to share a chair. He repaid the colleagues who offered him professional lifelines at their universities with truancy, belligerence, and gross inappropriateness (greeting female students in his underwear when they had been sent to his apartment to fetch him to a late lecture; requesting that straitlaced academic hosts supply him with cannabis). His violent musings could make acquaintances genuinely fear for their safety. His last graduate student, Robert Lynch, spoke for many when he ended his affectionate obituary, “I’ll miss you, Robert. You asshole.”

. . . As for himself, Trivers liked to poke fun at some of his eccentricities and indignities. But he never squarely faced his record of betrayals, hurts, and squandered talent. All this is exactly what Trivers’s greatest theoretical brainchild would predict.

That “greatest theoretical brainchild” must be self-deception, of course, but I think that was perhaps the least important of his contributions.

Trivers’s had an erratic life, but also a rewarding one and a tumultuous ones. It makes me want to paraphrase Nagel: “What was it like to be Robert Trivers?”

There is also a shorter obituary in The Times of London, which you can see by clicking below or reading it archived here. Although author Finkelstein is not a biologist, he does a pretty good job summing up Trivers’s contributions, though he concentrates too much on the deceit and self-deception part, seeing it mirrored in modern politicians like Donald Trump and Liz Truss. If you want a short read it is okay, but given the choice, you should read the longer Pinker obituary. It will also teach you a lot about modern evolutionary psychology—known as “sociobiology” when Trivers and I overlapped at Harvard.