1. Comment #377974 by Layla Nasreddin on May 17, 2009 at 1:20 pm

I was there -- it was a fascinating discussion. I'm pleased it's up so that everybody can enjoy it.

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2. Comment #377996 by AllahsBoyfriend on May 17, 2009 at 1:56 pm

hawaiian shirts are not cool

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3. Comment #377999 by Planeswalker on May 17, 2009 at 2:07 pm

You're kidding? Hawaiian shirts are awesome. They are, in fact, bigger than Jesus.

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4. Comment #378018 by Steve Zara on May 17, 2009 at 3:06 pm

What a delightful and informative discussion. The following stood out for me:

A possible (albeit probably unlikely) link between the lack of evidence of aliens (so far) and the kind of mechanisms of abiogenesis we should be considering.

A great explanation of why Lamarkism won't work for complex organs.

Why proteins were almost certainly not the original replicators.

This really shows what a great producer of ideas Richard is.

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5. Comment #378026 by Alex Smith on May 17, 2009 at 3:49 pm

I wish the discussion would have lasted longer.

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6. Comment #378027 by cwells on May 17, 2009 at 3:51 pm

I am on a limited highspeed so watching videos on my computer can be a bit trying. Can I purchase a dvd of the discussions between Dawkins, Davies, Greene, Pinker et al?

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7. Comment #378028 by Sally Luxmoore on May 17, 2009 at 3:52 pm

Very interesting. I'm really glad that it's possible nowadays to 'experience' these events over the internet. Thanks.

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8. Comment #378031 by dochmbi on May 17, 2009 at 4:00 pm

@1: I wish I will be able to see Dawkins live during my lifetime. I need to go to England soon.

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9. Comment #378049 by sbooder on May 17, 2009 at 4:53 pm

That had me totally captivated, one of the best pieces I have seen on the site.

I hope RD will wet our appetites soon by putting the first chapter of the Greatest Show on Earth on the website?

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10. Comment #378054 by gurkuda on May 17, 2009 at 5:16 pm

If you had the chance to attend one of these discussions and got lucky enough to grab the mic, what would you ask Richard Dawkins? I can think of a few questions. I will add them later.

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11. Comment #378063 by j.mills on May 17, 2009 at 5:59 pm

Great to see all the other stuff from that symposium that is available on the TSN site. My cup runneth over!

I do find that a delightfully impish argument that Richard's touting these days, that we may need to look for a wildly implausible hypothesis for the origin of life!

On the intelligence thing: RD points out that eyes have evolved 40 times, intelligence only once. But then, whoever's the first intelligence on the planet is clearly only going to see one instance of intelligence around them. And the long-term effect of humanity on the planet is probably gonna prevent intelligence arising in other species, just by our generally being in the way. So even if intelligence is a relatively discoverable trick, I reckon that on any planet it's first come first served. (Unless perhaps it arose separately on isolated continents in a shortish timescale without seafaring...)

Conclusion: you can't draw any conclusions. Big news. :)

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12. Comment #378066 by Ned Flanders on May 17, 2009 at 6:08 pm

Couldn't they have got a small side-table for the drinks?

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13. Comment #378068 by Genemachine1 on May 17, 2009 at 6:17 pm

Would love to hear a discussion between Richard and another evolutionary biologist sometime, maybe with opposing views on the subject.

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14. Comment #378072 by yyy on May 17, 2009 at 6:22 pm

On earth, we only observe 1 instance of evolved sophisticated (human equivalent) language/intelligence, yet many instances of convergently evolved sight/hearing/flight/etc. However, maybe the former is a phenomenon that tends to happen late in a planets evolutionary history and we humans just happen to live in a time when only one has recently happened so far. Sight/hearing/senses deal with a brain processing information so maybe they're building blocks necessary to bootstrap more sophisticated intelligence at a later time (so perhaps we have a sort of time bias in observing its rate of occurance).

On earth, in the present at least, we can see genes for human equivalent brains are successful given their wide replication in the bodies of earth dominating humans. And given that whatever replicators happen to be most successful tend to thrive and dominate replication, perhaps we can expect convergent human equivalent intelligence to be a norm on other planets, given enough time (just an idea/speculation).

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15. Comment #378097 by Alternative Carpark on May 17, 2009 at 7:43 pm

Very enjoyable indeed.

That inappropriate first question from the crowd for some reason reminded me that this whole religion debate really is nothing more than a distraction from the far more interesting, and, of course, vitally important, business of science.

After that wonderful talk, I almost groaned at the first questioner's attempt to change the subject, and was glad when they decided to set it aside.

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16. Comment #378100 by Bonzai on May 17, 2009 at 7:58 pm

wlg

Ah, Richard Dawkins debated a templeton foundation guy

Eh..did you watch the clip?

I agree with Alternate Carpark that this is a lot more interesting than talking about religion. Dawkins has a lot more to offer when he talks about interesting science than repeating himself ad nauseum about religion.

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17. Comment #378102 by Godfree Gordon on May 17, 2009 at 8:06 pm

Layla

Completely off topic, but I took the time to read your story. Its a great read and would recommend everyone to where you've come from and how you're travelling. You are quite inspiring.

GG

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18. Comment #378103 by RightWingAtheist on May 17, 2009 at 8:13 pm

"Hawaiian shirts are awesome.
They are, in fact, bigger than Jesus."

Jesus should try tween sizes.

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19. Comment #378104 by root2squared on May 17, 2009 at 8:22 pm

Shirts suck, be they Hawaiian or otherwise. Too many goddamn buttons.

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20. Comment #378106 by Goldy on May 17, 2009 at 8:42 pm

String vests. God enough for Rab C Nesbitt, good enough for me ;-)

Featured topic now resumes...

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21. Comment #378109 by NullInfinity on May 17, 2009 at 8:52 pm

Fascinating discussion!

Part of the talk dealt with the question of whether Lamarckian evolution might work in some alternative environment. Dawkins did not think so.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that it may possible for Lamarckain evolution to take place in a world of robots - where baby robots can be born with the acquired memories of its parent(s). Would that actually be an example of a Lamarckian process, or am I missing something?

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22. Comment #378111 by Layla Nasreddin on May 17, 2009 at 9:15 pm

#18 Godfree Gordon

Completely off topic, but I took the time to read your story. Its a great read and would recommend everyone to where you've come from and how you're travelling. You are quite inspiring.

You mean my very first post on the Forum? Well, thank you, although I must admit I want to die of embarrassment just thinking about it and my life up to that point. But I'm glad you found it inspiring, if nothing else -- maybe it wasn't all a total waste if somebody else got something positive out of it. I take things day by day, and I've gained a LOT more self-confidence since, without Islam, among other things, holding me back.

Back to the topic:

#17 Bonzai

Ah, Richard Dawkins debated a templeton foundation guy

Eh..did you watch the clip?

Well, it was hardly a debate, but it's true that Paul Davies was awarded the Templeton Prize in 1995 (http://cosmos.asu.edu/prize.htm). (Incidentally, I don't know why he decided to come to Arizona State University, of all places, a couple years back! Whenever I hear of famous people or eminent intellectuals coming to my state, I can't help but wonder what they're doing in this dump!)

#14 Genemachine1

Would love to hear a discussion between Richard and another evolutionary biologist sometime, maybe with opposing views on the subject.

Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould debated at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford back in 1988; unfortunately I can't find any more information about it. It must have been quite interesting! I found all of one quote about it, in Thomas Bass's book of interviews with leading scientists, Reinventing the Future (there's one with Dawkins, it's quite good):

Q: You and Stephen Jay Gould recently debated the theory of evolution before an audience of a thousand people in Oxford. What was the nature of the debate?

A: I advocate the gene as the level at which natural selection acts, while he advocates a variety of higher levels. Gould wants to be catholic in his approach, while I want to be rigorous. Natural selection has to work on something that's self-replicating, and your individual organism is not a unit of selection. The debate was cordial. It was hard-hitting. But we both went away feeling just the way we did when we came in. (p. 127)

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23. Comment #378113 by windweaver on May 17, 2009 at 9:31 pm

A great talk by Richard. His knowledge and understanding of evolution is second to none. BTW one of the best examples of epigenetics was the Dutch famine of WW2:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongerwinter

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24. Comment #378120 by Steve Zara on May 17, 2009 at 10:38 pm

Comment #378109 by NullInfinity

That sounds a bit like culture!

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25. Comment #378122 by Steve Zara on May 17, 2009 at 10:42 pm

Comment #378063 by j.mills

It may be worth pointing out again that the assumption that eyes evolved really independently 40 or so times could well be wrong. Most types eyes, no matter what their structure, have the same genes controlling their development. It may well be that eyes have only evolved independently a few times.

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26. Comment #378123 by Bonzai on May 17, 2009 at 10:44 pm

Let's see if I understand Lamarckian process correctly. Is it like, if the parents become coffee addicts their babies will demand coffee instead of milk,--or coffee with milk?

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27. Comment #378125 by Brian English on May 17, 2009 at 11:09 pm

Something like that Bonz, though I thought it magically selected good traits. Not sure caffeine addiction gets a gurnsey. I think the paradigm was that an ancestral leaf eating quadruped spent all it's life straining its neck to get higher and higher to reach the best leaves. In this process, it somehow came to have a slightly longer neck. Which its offspring duly inherited. This process repeated through the generations until you end up with a giraffe. All by inheriting traits aquired during an animals lifetime.

Perhaps Arnorld Swartznegger's kiddies will have big muscles because their dad aquired them and so they inherit them a la Lamark? ;)

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28. Comment #378131 by Michael Gray on May 18, 2009 at 12:00 am

Both delightfully informative and informal. :)

Just a minute on "Darwin". No hesitation, repetition, or deviation.

Bzzzzt!
(Kenneth Ham doing camp Kenneth Williams impersonation) "Deviation!"
(Nicholas Parsons) "He did *not* deviate, Mr Ham"
(KH) "I meant that he IS a deviation!"
(NP) "Get off my show, you creationist cretin."

(Sorry 'bout that chief...)

Other Comments by Michael Gray

29. Comment #378146 by NullInfinity on May 18, 2009 at 1:55 am

Comment #378120 by Steve Zara

You're right, and it could be argued that "culture" is a better example - since cultures actually exist!

It turns out that the Wikipeadia article about "Lamarckism" mentions that Lamarckism may be applicable to cultural evolution (and to some extent meme theory).

Elsewhere, I found proposals for interpreting "software evolution" in "neo-Lamarckian" terms. That seems close enough to the original robot-world example.

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30. Comment #378150 by bendigeidfran on May 18, 2009 at 2:11 am

A mohel told me Lamarckism doesn't cut it.

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31. Comment #378154 by sbooder on May 18, 2009 at 2:31 am

Firstly, shirts are fine if you never undo the buttons, I just pull shirts off over my head and they get washed so, also I never iron anything.


Secondly on the point of intelligence and language. I think what RD was trying to say was that we have no evidence for intelligence or language appearing on the earth before or since us, and to hypothesise such would be a mistake. You may have noticed that he was uncomfortable on a couple of occasions when asked to hypothesise.

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32. Comment #378175 by JAMCAM87 on May 18, 2009 at 3:47 am

Comment #377974 by Layla Nasreddin

I take it that was you screaming when Richard came on.

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33. Comment #378186 by hfaber on May 18, 2009 at 4:32 am

A giraffe doesn't stretch its vertebrae when stretching its neck. Simple biomechanics show that the muscles in the neck execute pressure on the joints and bones, not a tendency to elongate. This is another example of what Richard put forward that an organ isn't neccessarily improved by using it.

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34. Comment #378193 by hfaber on May 18, 2009 at 4:53 am

I think epigenetics only adds to the variation part of the evolutionary algorithm. The real explanatory part, natural selection, is still the only thing that can explain adaptation. So, as Richard said, it is interesting, but not that interesting.

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35. Comment #378223 by Layla Nasreddin on May 18, 2009 at 6:59 am

#33 JAMCAM87

I take it that was you screaming when Richard came on.

Nooo, I don't scream, ever. I clapped politely like everybody else.

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36. Comment #378231 by Steve Zara on May 18, 2009 at 7:21 am

Comment #378186 by hfaber

This brings to mind other reasons why Lamarkism won't generally work:

Evolution works well when there is a range of variation to select from. Random mutation is helpful because it allows selection in any direction, and of multiple factors in each generation. Lamarkism doesn't give this flexibility.

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37. Comment #378235 by MarcCountry on May 18, 2009 at 7:35 am

Ok, I wasn't going to say anything, but come on, guys... they're called "aloha shirts".

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38. Comment #378248 by infinitum17 on May 18, 2009 at 8:59 am

We do have another weak piece of evidence that pertains to the question of the commonality of life: Life seems to have arisen very early in Earth's history, almost as soon as the conditions made it possible (as soon as it had cooled down enough), suggesting that the origin of life was more likely than some people would claim. This argument was first brought to my attention by Stephen Hawking, at TED a few years ago.

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39. Comment #378259 by Anvil on May 18, 2009 at 9:31 am

39. Comment #378248 by infinitum17:

I agree. The moment it could arise, it did. Thank fuck, eh!

Anvil.

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40. Comment #378262 by WereGryphon on May 18, 2009 at 9:37 am

Otherwise quite amusing (I definitely agree with wlg on Dawkins' atheism vs Davies' deism), but I was struck by Richard's utter ignorance on several subjects.

First, about the bacterial cleverness, general principles. Apparently Richard has never heard about cellular cognition, genome system architechture, repetitive DNA (the claim about eyes evolving 40 times independently is outdated and demontrably false) or natural genetic engineering. And YET, they have appeared in scientific journals for several years now.
http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/index3.html?content=bacteria.html
http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/index3.html?content=genome.html
The truth is that we are finding more regulations all the time and evolution DOES have FAR more general principles than just natural selection.
I just don't understand why someone as pro-science intellect as Richard is still crawling with the simplifying assumptions of the time when Modern Synthesis was formulated. Cells are NOT passive about their genetic ghange, but actively restructure their DNA when there is a critical need for it and do all in their might to suppress random sources of change. However elegant concept the 'random walk through adaptive space' ever is, it is demonstrably wrong.

On our understanding of abiogenesis. Jack Szostak's experimentally supported model has already been public for at least a year and the goal of producing a protocell in laboratory is starting to be well within reach. Given that Richard seems to be ignorant about this, has he lost his interest on the subject or something?
http://exploringorigins.org/

There is no single common ancestor for the biodiversity on this planet. Protocells probably arose MORE THAN ONCE and the first two to three billion years or so happened an immense number of genomic transfers. The WEB of life is and remains a tree only for eukariotes.

Evidently, since Richard is only interested in the elegance of simple explanations and not in actual reality, I simply have to disregard him as a reliable source of information when it comes to evolution.

Perhaps the strangest thing of all is that I'm saying the latter as just about as outspoken 6,5-atheist as Richard himself.

EDIT: Sorry. I had to add this little apology for sounding a bit shrill here when discussing. I just happen to have been trying to debate an idiocy-advocating anti-science evangelist on a Finnish science forum and am now just particularly pissed off.

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41. Comment #378269 by Anvil on May 18, 2009 at 10:04 am

42. Comment #378262 by WereGryphon:

Thanks for the links, mate, that's another few days of my life that'll disappear in front of this bloody machine!!

Anvil.

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42. Comment #378274 by huzonfurst on May 18, 2009 at 10:38 am

I am eagerly anticipating the responses to WereGryphon's comments!

I was at this symposium, too, sitting in the nosebleed section looking mostly at the tops of speakers' heads. That didn't matter much, but that one day was a real marathon, lasting from 9 am to 6 pm with not enough breaks. If Stephen Hawking had shown up we would have had to attend the evening session too. It was very worthwhile and inspiring, although with maybe too many speakers in not enough time.

It didn't stop me from flying back to San Diego to see Richard again the very next night, though, getting an award at UCSD (him, not me). His talk there was shorter and he was understandably fatigued by then. Some "retirement" he's having.

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43. Comment #378276 by Steve Zara on May 18, 2009 at 10:50 am

Comment #378262 by WereGryphon

I think you make some good points, but perhaps some of what you say is a bit misleading, unless you can provide indications to the contrary.

Cells may not be passive about the amount of genetic change, both in positive and negative directions, but it is still the case that whatever change occurs is random.

As I have written, I was a bit taken aback about the statement of many, many separate evolutions of the eye, and also his early reluctance to speculate about the origin of life which was then followed by discussion of what seems to be the key role of RNA. (I am a huge fan of life originating as RNA - it seems now entirely plausible).

I disagree with Richard on several matters (although usually just on a matter of emphasis), but I think there is no denying his abilities as an originator of new perspectives, and a provider of new insights.

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44. Comment #378280 by WereGryphon on May 18, 2009 at 11:02 am

Comment #378276 by Steve Zara

Sorry, but you've still got it wrong. Please read a couple of the articles from the site I linked. These for instance:

http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/shapiro2002.AnnNYAS.pdf
http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/Shapiro.2005.Gene.pdf
http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/Shapiro2009.AnnNYAcadSciMS.RevisitingCentralDogma.pdf

I particularly emphasize the references of the last one, which has as many as 49 documented and confirmed examples of cells activating some of their NGE systems to make site-specific, adaptive rearrangements in response to environmental stresses. The mutations that evolution relies on are simply not "replication errors" or random at all.

Other Comments by WereGryphon

45. Comment #378282 by Steve Zara on May 18, 2009 at 11:05 am

Comment #378280 by WereGryphon

Sorry, but you've still got it wrong.

I do hope so! That would be very exciting. Thank you for the links. I'll post a response soon.

Other Comments by Steve Zara

46. Comment #378285 by flying goose on May 18, 2009 at 11:07 am

I watched this a few weeks ago following a link from another thread. I really enjoyed it.

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47. Comment #378290 by WereGryphon on May 18, 2009 at 11:13 am

Comment #378282 by Steve Zara

Thanks for you in turn for showing excitement. After reading your comments on Plantinga's response to Dawkins I've regarded you as one of the smartest fellows here.

I actually have an interesting scenario in my mind: if Shapiro arrived to a speech occasion hosted by Richard and introduced all the evidence for this "21'st Century view of Evolution", would Richard respond as his admirable Oxford professor years ago?

48. Coment #378284 by wlg

I know,I know! It isn't the same kind of cognition we have, but it's still a signal-responsiveness.

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48. Comment #378356 by BattoMannen on May 18, 2009 at 1:04 pm

I don't know whether this has been posted before as I haven't read the previous comments but two remarks:

1. I wonder why Richard never mentions the Miller-Urey experiments as a plausible theory.

2. Catch-22 and the 'Chicken and Egg' dilemma are two different things. Richard seems to confuse these two:/

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49. Comment #378481 by rod-the-farmer on May 18, 2009 at 6:44 pm

As for the shirt, anyone who has been to Phoenix would understand why he chose it. I once parked my rental car in the full sun there, and when I returned a couple of hours later, actually burned my hand doing up my metal seatbelt buckle. I had to wait for the air conditioning to come on for a bit before the steering wheel was cool enough to touch.

As for Miller-Urey, I think that is now old hat, and much disparaged by cretinists.

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50. Comment #378490 by j.mills on May 18, 2009 at 6:58 pm

Ah, but by that reasoning, rod, he should have worn a white shirt. The black 'aloha' shirt is not logical, captain.

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