Dawkins + kitteh = awesome

November 14, 2010 • 8:54 pm

Okay, this new Dawkins Foundation video presents an optimal combination: Richard (answering Reddit readers’ questions) and a kitteh.  (Keep your eye peeled at 11:49.)

But even if you’re cat-averse, there’s lots of good stuff here.  Dawkins discusses Sam Harris’s new book, singles out his “most scientifically unsubstantiated personal belief,” suggests how the internet may be the best way to spread atheism, and describes the three most important unanswered questions in biology (guess before you listen).

In the last four minutes, Dawkins, channeling Olivier, reads some of his hate mail, not omitting the scatological terms. It’s hilarious!

h/t: Peter

46 thoughts on “Dawkins + kitteh = awesome”

  1. What a gorgeous, sexy voice Dawkins has! I could listen to him read the dictionary. And teh kitteh wuz veree kyoot!

    1. I have just one problem with that pronunciation–the long “e” in evolution. Too much like ‘evil.’

      1. How about “a-MY-noh” acid? Also notice, a difference in the pronunciation of “Is-soo” versus American “Is-SHOO”?

  4. His book dispenses with teleology in favor of teleonomy- no planned outcomes as the atelic argument notes,in his treatment of natural selection versus the design argument,and per that argument we naturalists can extend that point to any argument containing intent.

  6. With all the curtain activity, I half expected the cute kitteh to appear sooner (or the curtains come crashing down.) Wonderful video-thanks.

  9. I really don’t understand why Christians are so mean to Dawkins. After all, he agrees with them that Mohammed is a false prophet, and that Hinduism is nonsense. Why are they so insistent on alienating an ally?

    Signed,

    Uncle Karl

  10. In my yoga class today during meditation we were asked to think of a ‘great soul’ to envision, someone to think of whose qualities we would like to emulate. Our teacher suggested the Dalai Llama or Mother Teresa, so I thought of Richard Dawkins! Made me smile.

  12. Kinda surprised by his third “great unanswered biology question.” Thought we had enough data/hypotheses to make a pretty good case for sex.

    Had the first 2 in mind before hearing them. 🙂

    1. Naaah, we’re far away from understanding the evolutionary advantage of sex. There are plenty of hypotheses, of course, but as far as I know none of them is a clear front-runner. The problem is that there is a profound evolutionary disadvantage to reproducing sexually: by so doing you lose half your genes compared to reproducing asexually. This is the famous “twofold cost of sex” that can be overcome only by a profound advantage of sex—and we haven’t found a general one so far.

      1. Only on the internet can an undistinguished member of the masses make an apparently dated comment about a big issue and receive a response from one of the biggest enchiladas in the field! 🙂 (recent culinary posts having infected my brain…)

        This same undistinguished nobody wonders if the very much greater (she wants to say, exponentially greater, but these are real scientists, here, and that might not be precisely correct) amount of variation (upon which selection can act) achieved by meiosis + fertilization, as compared to variation arising by successful mutation, doesn’t tip the balance? But then, she fears entering the no-man’s-land of dispute as to the actual unit of evolution…(i.e.–not only the gene or even the individual, but possibly, sometimes, maybe, the gasp population?!)

        1. The dispute about whether recombination can provide a sufficiently large advantage to sexuality, by combining advantageous mutations into even more advantageous genotypes, wasn’t ever resolved–there was no huge advantage under modelling. Other recent suggestions incorporate rapidly fluctuating environments, like coevolved parasites, to give an advantage to sexuality, and they can under certain conditions, but remember that sexuality is nearly universal among metazoans, and so whatever conditions favor it should also be universal. Or, it could simply be group selected; that is, those lineages that became sexual tend to be those that persist. But these, too, are vulnerable to back-mutations to asexual forms, which would rapidly take over.

          Really, the whole problem is unresolved, and I think that’s why Richard highlighted it in his answer.

          1. to further comment on what Jerry said here:

            “wasn’t ever resolved–there was no huge advantage under modelling. Other recent suggestions incorporate rapidly fluctuating environments, like coevolved parasites, to give an advantage to sexuality,”

            I would add a reference to the Red Queen hypothesis:

            http://www.indiana.edu/~curtweb/Research/Red_Queen%20hyp.html

            not exactly a new idea, but the one that still gets consistent support, especially when thinking about the evolution of sex.

          2. Thank you!

            […suppresses comment about at what point do we question the assumptions of our models?…]

          3. A:

            always!

            we always question the assumptions of our models.

            Heck, it’s the only reason field biologists even put up with modellers:

            because they come up with often novel assumptions we get (hopefully) to test in the field.

            🙂

      2. we’re far away from understanding the evolutionary advantage of sex

        “Why would anybody risk paradise?”

    1. Dan Barker has an awesome retort that I’ve used in real-life to absolutely stymie and befuddle the opposition:

      “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” I countered with Matthew 5:22 where Jesus said, “Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hellfire.”

  15. That was really good and funny. I appreciated the answers on the beginning. Regarding the hate mail – does he have some fresh stuff to recite? He must get tons of such crap in his email box every day…

    1. that WAS the fresh stuff.

      🙂

      judging from what I’ve seen, the content of the hate mail is pretty much the same from one day to the next.

      fresh witticism is not the wont of the religiously motivated.

  16. The Internet is one of the best ways to spread atheism? Why did the RDFRS stifle the then-largest pro-atheism forum on the interwebz then, on RD.net?

    Reason? Maybe. Internal consistency? Nope. Regard for the community that had grown up around the wish to diminish the influence of superstition? Sadly lacking.

    1. I noticed that as well. That whole segment was comedy gold. “I hope you get hit by a church van” was my favorite.

  18. That “hate mail” is priceless. I’m so relieved that Prof. Dawkins isn’t rotting fom the outside. What would the neighbors think?

  20. Tried to post this before, but it didn’t work, so I hope this doesn’t end up posting double…

    I really liked his description of the three most important unanswered questions in biology. It made me curious as to what good research is being done in those areas. The most informative book I’ve read on the subjects of life’s origins and the evolutionary utility of sexual reproduction is “The Origins Of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origin of Language” by John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry. I have to admit that parts of it were over my head and I should probably read it again, but I was wondering if anyone here could recommend any books and/or websites that reflect current research and thinking on those subjects, as well as on the origin of consciousness. I’m a layman, so anything too technical would probably be lost on me (though it could be fun to peruse anyway), but I’d love to be challenged by a good book or two. Any suggestions?

    1. funny you should ask!

      there’s a conference on the subject that NASA sponsored just last week!

      http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/nai/ool-www/program

      it really was a great idea for a conference, and the first fully internet only conference I can recall “attending”.

      I think all of the talks are now available for viewing, and there is TONS of great info there on the current researches revolving around early life formation and evolution.

  21. Nice and jolly all around!

    Minor personal downer was that the description of physics sucked. I’m sure Dawkins has talked to many great physicists, but his recount comes out as the usual strawman on a fundamental theory.

    A “Theory of Everything” (ToE) will tell us everything about fundamental physics, but elementary not everything about physics. In the analogous way that genetic theory tells us “everything” about the genome, but not everything about the phenome.

    Another way to recognize this is to realize that emergence hides the material substrate from the effective theory/behavior. (Say, behavior of Ising models hiding the underlying physics: computing free energies may be computationally intractable in some cases.)

    I would not expect the potential of new hierarchies ever stops, for the same reason that there are no walls in evolution.

    Though in practice the amount of mass/entropy to realize it with will, in our visible universe. I guess you will run out of testable theories before you run out of potential theories.

    “most scientifically unsubstantiated personal belief,”

    I dunno, it sounded rather substantiated to me.

    So one can turn the “small steps” continuity requirement around to make darwinian type evolution required; I think I like that. My own layman argument is that change and selection from environment and competition would favor such systems compared to static, virtually forever living, systems.

    But it is not tested as of yet. Let’s hope for life somewhere else in our solar system!

  22. Is anyone else not crazy about Dawkins’ recently invented word “theorum” (04:05)? Not that it will catch on, probably. Too awkward.

      1. I thought you were going to say, “Oops, nevermind, I looked up the word,’theorem.'” 🙂

        Gotta love/hate that schwa.

        (Though I don’t think that was the most accurate word choice in context–but don’t we all do things like that off the cuff?)

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