1. Comment #211035 by ClemIsMe on July 15, 2008 at 12:51 pm

What do we do?

Love the internet.

Why do we do it?

See above article.

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2. Comment #211040 by PrexicKehdaki on July 15, 2008 at 12:59 pm

May the race to see who can get it on youtube first begin!

If only my d/l speed was better..

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3. Comment #211042 by admin on July 15, 2008 at 1:01 pm

I'm uploading it to youtube... so you don't have to do that! - Josh

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4. Comment #211043 by PrexicKehdaki on July 15, 2008 at 1:02 pm

Aw :[

shoot

I was only at 11% anyways.. lol

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5. Comment #211053 by sane1 on July 15, 2008 at 1:12 pm

THANKS, JOSH!

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6. Comment #211055 by Am I Evil? on July 15, 2008 at 1:16 pm

Great stuff! It's things like this that make me happy! :D

Thanks to all involved, keep up the good work.

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7. Comment #211080 by doglived on July 15, 2008 at 1:40 pm

First off thanks! These videos are going to be great. I'm sure someone has requested this before but richarddawkins.net needs to use bittorrent to share these videos. I'm downloading this at 208 bbs (kilo-bits per second/not kilo-Bytes) which is really quite sad for a site that is all about science. Well, we scientists of computers respectfully ask for more bandwidth and are willing to use our bandwidth to provide it.

If copyrights allow it (and these are being shared on you tube and are freely available here), why not upload a torrent to a one of the popular trackers or host your own tracker.

Perhaps I overestimate the demand for bittorrent and it's simply too much trouble to upload 3 versions of the files (rd.net, youtube, torrent).

Anyone else want to download these files and get them asap? Just as many people here share their cpu cycles for seti and folding@home we would (I'm assuming) also share our bandwidth using bittorrent to share these files, reducing the obviously strained server the videos are hosted on (assuming it has a fixed bandwidth of 10mbs, which if 40 people download a video they each get 250kbs).

Just a thought and thanks again for the great videos!

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8. Comment #211092 by Matt H. on July 15, 2008 at 1:45 pm

There is only one file available to download, you'll have to buy the DVD to see the rest.

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9. Comment #211098 by admin on July 15, 2008 at 1:50 pm

doglived,
We have an unmetered media server with a 20mbps pipe, but at times like this we could obviously use more. We're just getting hit all at once, unfortunately. I just finished uploading the RD/SW discussion to youtube, so I'll try and get the bittorrent going as well. Hopefully others on here can do the same.

Josh

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10. Comment #211099 by Thurston on July 15, 2008 at 1:52 pm

This is the closest to Heaven an atheist can get!

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11. Comment #211114 by varu2005 on July 15, 2008 at 2:03 pm

a torrent file would solve the problem :D

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12. Comment #211120 by robotaholic on July 15, 2008 at 2:05 pm

Thank you so much for putting this up and thanks for putting up youtube as well as quicktime versions- this website is great!

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13. Comment #211132 by HourglassMemory on July 15, 2008 at 2:14 pm

Forgive my ignorance of how these things work, but isn't it wrong to upload it to Youtube, when you have DVD's available for purchase.
Doesn't the RDFRS loose money because of this?
If not, why ask money for it on the website? Where does the money from people's purchases go?
Into producing more things like this?
Into spreading more science?
But ... if we're spreading science and knowledge and can get the current view of the universe from the experts, and if this is also available for free, who is going to pay for this knowledge?


Oh, and another thing.
MORE!!!!!
I love this sort of talks. It keeps me up till very early in the morning and I don't mind that.
I learn a lot and think a lot.
I also like the ones that are unedited.

The only thing that I have connected to this whole movement of atheism is Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" that I got in 2006. The rest is ALL from the Internet. I have to say that I get a lot of knowledge from the "illegal" practices of a few.

Please, you guys, don't take this sort of stuff from the Internet. It's knowledge and science! It's not porn or super effective medicine.

I don't know how much time and money it would take for me to get the same knowledge and revereance for Science if I limited myself to only books and tv and school.
The internet sped that up insanely.

PS: The DVD cover is awsome. Imagine a whole shelf that goes to Episode 100. With thousands of hours of talks about Science and Reason and so on.
I drool!!!

PPS: I just noticed, while just starting to listen to Weinberg and Dawkins, that I was actually listening to two old men sitting in classical chairs with a fireplace and thunder in the backround having a scientific discussion.
How many people my age would find this boring, and yet I find myself excited about clicking play and listening to every word and thinking both men are COOL.

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14. Comment #211197 by Kristopher on July 15, 2008 at 2:57 pm

Judaism does things to honor a tradition? Judaism is a monotheism: This doctrine expresses the belief in one indivisible God. I am sorry to be rude, but I can not listen to people who don't even know the facts; they look foolish. I can't listen; seriously, it is filled with fallacies. We know Richard; business as usual. We don't want any information that would not fit the agenda; right.

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15. Comment #211198 by ficklefiend on July 15, 2008 at 2:58 pm

..but HourglassMemory, free is the currency of the net!

People donate to the charity and buy the DVDs to fund the percentage of that content that gets distributed for free. It's that free content that's really going to reach people, the DVDs are for the ones already on side.

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16. Comment #211224 by Synchronium on July 15, 2008 at 4:03 pm

Any torrent seeders? Shipping from America costs a king's ransom. :-(

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17. Comment #211235 by Yadsmood on July 15, 2008 at 4:22 pm

The discussion with Weinberg is fascinating. Before this I'd never seen Dawkins talk to anyone who's so clearly his intellectual superior.

By the way, when are the rest of the videos going to be posted?

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18. Comment #211243 by Vinelectric on July 15, 2008 at 4:32 pm

I'm really embarrased as I was unable to understand a lot of what Weinberg was saying and would apprecaite some help. Dawkins appeared to follow comfortably when I failed completely to grasp some of the concepts being discussed!


1. What does the term multiverse mean exactly?

The chaotic inflation model postulates that our bang is one possible event out of many outcomes of random fluctuations of some primordial field. "Successful" outcomes lead to rapid inflations and failed ones go nowhere. Thus a bang is one of mutually exclusive outcomes of the fluctuations of that source field.

Thus one would understand a multiverse to be a term referring to the set of all possible universes not many universes "in parallell" as some cosmologists such as Max Tegmark suggest.

http://www.wintersteel.com/files/ShanaArticles/multiverse.pdf

2. What persuades Weinberg that dark matter is fine tuned?

He said that theoretically derived values for the vaccum energy are much larger than observed ones. I understand that the non-measured contributions must be equally impressive and comparable in magnitude in order to cancel the predicted excess and leave us with the tiny observed value.

However that difference can not be explained by contributions from the field energy at shorter wave length. You'd expect that calculating at smaller lengths, for the same field, would yield a more accurate answer. Not come up with a an answer of similar magnitude but negative value sufficient to "cancel" out your first prediction.

What exactly is cancelling the theoretical values?

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19. Comment #211250 by james1v on July 15, 2008 at 4:48 pm

Light only hits solid objects, planets, dust physical things. This is a beautiful concept and as such is simple. It reminds me of some Jewish philosophy of the light within and the mystical follow ones like cabala, all are basic sun worship. As all religions started. What do we owe those great people who first studied the stars/light and knew when to plant crops? This class of thought was corrupted by organised religion/light worship and became the thoughts of the condemners(if you do not agree with my thoughts we will sacrifice you to our god/light.

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20. Comment #211255 by Vinelectric on July 15, 2008 at 4:52 pm

And forgot to say, whilst the English are fond of the rhetorical trick of empahsizing a subject by deliberately mentioning it in a disparaging manner e.g I was a bit confused (meaning very confused) or He was a bit rude (well if that were true then it wouldn't have bothered you at wall, wouldn't it?). Dawkins sometimes achieves the exact opposite when being dismissive of a subject by acknowleding its importance in a very limited way.

As an example, Weinberg states how disappointing that the Muslims have abandoned science starting around the 12th century given their role in...(I assume he means their positive role in advancing science).

Dawkins interrupts to do two things: first he states a fact "their role in preserving Greek science". The other thing is that, by intervening to end the coversation there and then he is effectively excluding any other interpretation of what Weinberg ought to say: their additional role in actually contributing to that science as well (which is also a fact!).

Maybe I'm being a bit paranoid but some people are so measured in their speech and so carefull with their choice of words it makes you wonder whether the Prof was making a statement by making an under-statement!

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21. Comment #211262 by LaTomate on July 15, 2008 at 5:09 pm

As always, any discussion with Professor Dawkins is enlightening.

And Professor Steven Weinberg !! Great stuff.

I can't wait to listen to the other discussions too. Thanks for posting this.

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22. Comment #211273 by Dhamma on July 15, 2008 at 5:23 pm

Is everything up, or do you have to buy the rest of it?

If people want to buy it, then by all means! I may do so myself.

However, I most definitely feel these discussions should be free. It's far more important the discussions are seen by many, than the few buying it. Especially, the ones we'd like to convert will only come across them if it's free.

Rabbi Schmuley thinks his words are so important he apparently want people to pay for it on his webpage. Had his videos been free, I'd probably watch a few of them.

So, I hope all these videos are free.

I'd have to say I find these videos far more interesting than the ones being moderated, as I know Richard elaborates on in the discussion with professor Krauss. I assume it's easier when the debater agrees with you in the first place, though.

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23. Comment #211301 by Cluebot on July 15, 2008 at 6:03 pm

There must be significant production costs involved in creating these videos, not to mention hosting costs for distributing the "free" edition. I think it's fair if there's some incentive for buying, though crippling the content is obviously not wise.

Also, I'll add my support for bittorrent distribution. A dedicated tracker linked to the user accounts here would encourage community members to help bear the costs of digital distribution.

Edit: The current torrent file seems to transfer with the wrong MIME type set. It was necessary to save as and edit the filename extension on my system (Vista x64.)

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24. Comment #211312 by Drool on July 15, 2008 at 6:27 pm

The torrent seemed to be dead so I grabbed the web copy and started seeding with it...

However, it appears to be a tracker-less torrent using DHT (Distributed Hash Table) and I can only see Azureus clients. As far as I know, Azureus' DHT is incompatible with the mainline DHT, which the 'other' most popular BT client, utorrent uses.

So I fired up utorrent to seed and lo, the rest of the peers are there - utorrent, BitComet etc.. Basically, the peer to peer network is split and the two halves aren't peering with each other.

A dedicated tracker would certainly be useful. I'm guessing though, bandwidth only becomes a major issue for RD.net when something is first put up - during peak periods when different parts of the world wake up and decide to tuck in all at once. BitTorrent is ideal for these moments.

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25. Comment #211321 by jackdavis on July 15, 2008 at 6:50 pm

I always enjoy listening to Dr.Weinberg, a great scientist and a brilliant man. I read one of his books a few months ago, but unfortunately the title escapes me. He also has a great contribution to the "Portable Atheist."

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26. Comment #211328 by AlecsDeLarge on July 15, 2008 at 7:00 pm

It should be said that Weinberg in an extremist in the reductionism community along the lines of Newtonian and Laplacian physics. His ideas are summed up in his famous line, "all arrows point downward." We know that these ideas are no longer tenable in so far as Laplace made the assertion that given all velocities and orientations of all molecules in the universe an omniscient monster could predict all events of the universe. These are ideas Stuart Kauffman discusses in one of my favorites books "Reinventing the Sacred."

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27. Comment #211338 by Neuro on July 15, 2008 at 7:49 pm

Ah, so, you can only watch the interview with Weinberg & Krauss? Do you have to buy the second DVD to see Buss and Myers, then?

The interviews with Weinberg & Krauss are excellent.

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28. Comment #211347 by admin on July 15, 2008 at 8:55 pm

I'll post the David Buss and PZ Myers discussions soon, so don't worry, they will all be available online eventually.
Josh

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29. Comment #211349 by philos on July 15, 2008 at 9:17 pm

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

Pity he and others just happen to overlook the contrary: "but for bad people to do good things, that takes religion"

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30. Comment #211351 by Luther on July 15, 2008 at 9:31 pm

Outstanding.

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31. Comment #211353 by Louis Perry on July 15, 2008 at 9:38 pm

Magnificent!

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32. Comment #211361 by Laverty on July 15, 2008 at 10:08 pm

Excellent discussion! The multiverse theory is not something I know much about, and I'm absolutely tickled to hear more!

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33. Comment #211369 by Rawhard Dickins on July 15, 2008 at 10:51 pm

If you want a good insight into the background conditions that gave rise to the big bang you need only to ask your friendly neighbourhood goat-herder.

Preferably one that lived in a time and place that allowed him to be sufficiently disconnected from the rest of the world.

I think you'll find there was an infinite and benevolent, bearded old man that waved a magic wand, after all that's what most of the world believes, so I'll go along with that!

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34. Comment #211406 by THWOTH on July 16, 2008 at 1:07 am

Fascinating! Thanks to all at RDF for helping to start my day in quiet contemplation. Now I'm off to teach 200 8 year-olds! Keep it up PROF. (I wonder what the next book is going to be?)

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35. Comment #211423 by Steve13 on July 16, 2008 at 2:05 am

Just one thing in the heading you call David Buss, Davis Buss

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36. Comment #211424 by Mustard on July 16, 2008 at 2:06 am

For Laverty and others who want to get somewhat an idea of the multi-verse theory have a look at this http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/brian_greene_on_string_theory.html Right, string theory is not quite multi-verse, but for the first time I was able to understand where physicists reckon the other 7 dimensions are hiding.

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37. Comment #211437 by sbooder on July 16, 2008 at 2:51 am

I am a little worried that all Steven Weinberg's calculations may be wrong. Working on the bases (as he stated in part1) that; the answer to everything is 43, when we know it to be 42. That offset by 1 could spell disaster.

On a more serious note, how enjoyable is this interview, it is no wonder many physicist go bonkers, to a layman like myself trying to keep up with Steven Weinberg explaining everything in simple terms is making my head ache.

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38. Comment #211465 by Synchronium on July 16, 2008 at 3:47 am

Josh: Will there be a torrent of the final article eventually?

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39. Comment #211469 by Isaksson on July 16, 2008 at 3:53 am

This is pure earcandy! I so enjoy listening to this sort of conversations. To broaden ones pespective should always be a drive in life.

Ive always thought, that when presented with a problem, Its like I am standing on a cliff, staring at the unknown, and if I decide to engage the problem in question, I simply just jump off. The problem, to me, isn't a wall you need to hammer down, it's a freefall into the mysteriouse, where you can swirl around, looking out from different views, experiment with total fredom the way you fall. The solution isn't the other side of a wall, It is hitting the bottom. Sometimes you can get clues of how the bottom is layed out by studying what passes you as you fall, sometimes you can even see the bottom. But most often, I would hope, you just hit the bottom with total and utter surprise.

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40. Comment #211521 by Red Dye #2 on July 16, 2008 at 5:27 am

Josh, are there any plans to release these discussions in high definition in the near future? Is there any hope of the RDFRS producing its own blu-rays?

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41. Comment #211628 by utsusemia on July 16, 2008 at 7:56 am

Okay, all these look like very interesting discussions in and of themselves. But I have to say this:

Are the only "leading" scientists whose opinions are worth consulting white males? I mean, surely women and POC scientists have a hard enough time in the field without supposedly enlightened people like Richard Dawkins perpetuating their marginalization?

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42. Comment #211647 by Kristopher on July 16, 2008 at 8:08 am

Does that mean there is lots of universes then? The many worlds appoach to quantum mechanics. To believe this; one must have much faith. Maybe we see Richard looking at the atom in the near future trying to communicate with his other self. "Hello Richard, are you there Richard?" It's so ridiculous; sad realy.Now we can all rest happy; knowing there is a God above!

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43. Comment #211662 by Kristopher on July 16, 2008 at 8:22 am

I humbly say; Richard does have a delusion-it's called grander. It is a mental illness; I sincerly hope he gets help soon.

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44. Comment #211686 by Elli on July 16, 2008 at 8:51 am

Kristopher: "Richard does have a delusion-it's called grander."

Learn to spell, dickrash.

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45. Comment #211690 by Richard Dawkins on July 16, 2008 at 8:53 am

43. Comment #211662 by Kristopher on July 16, 2008 at 8:22 am
I humbly say; Richard does have a delusion-it's called grander. It is a mental illness; I sincerly hope he gets help soon.
Where do I get this uncanny feeling that Kristopher is probably religious? I hope he too gets help: with spelling 'grandeur' and 'sincerely', and with when not to use a hyphen. But that is all trivial. I fear he is probably beyond the serious help he really needs.

Richard

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46. Comment #211695 by Quetzalcoatl on July 16, 2008 at 8:55 am

Kristopher-

Maybe we see Richard looking at the atom in the near future trying to communicate with his other self. "Hello Richard, are you there Richard?" It's so ridiculous;

True, but all the ridicule belongs with you for coming up with this absurd statement.

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47. Comment #211704 by Yadsmood on July 16, 2008 at 8:59 am

Are the only "leading" scientists whose opinions are worth consulting white males? I mean, surely women and POC scientists have a hard enough time in the field without supposedly enlightened people like Richard Dawkins perpetuating their marginalization?

What an utterly outrageous thing to say.

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48. Comment #211716 by Dhamma on July 16, 2008 at 9:09 am

Are the only "leading" scientists whose opinions are worth consulting white males? I mean, surely women and POC scientists have a hard enough time in the field without supposedly enlightened people like Richard Dawkins perpetuating their marginalization?

Sure, there are primarily white males in in this sphere, and it may seem a tad weird, but shouldn't Dawkins and the rest make these discussions because of some equalization rule?

However, there are a few other famous non-white scientists that are in the public light as well, even if they're not as exposed, like Neil deGrasse Tyson. Neal is really intelligent and interesting, so I'm sad he's not more in the public sphere as he should be.

Racism? No idea, hope not.

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49. Comment #211729 by Yadsmood on July 16, 2008 at 9:18 am

Huh, racism? Neil deGrasse Tyson has one of the most powerful public voices in American science. He's much better publicly known than any of the scientists featured in this thread, except perhaps RD himself.

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50. Comment #211743 by Dhamma on July 16, 2008 at 9:26 am

Yadsmood: No, surely he's respected. I just figured, since I don't find him in the public sphere as much as I do many other scientists, there could be some reasons for it. Apparently I don't as I'm not an American then.

I find it hard to believe the lack of famous non-white male scientists are due to white males being superior though. Therefore I assume racism might play a certain role, even if I can think of a number of other reasons as well.

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