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Dawkins has always stressed the divide between the way things are and the way they should be from a moral or ethical standpoint. Describing reality for what it

• runarberg 6y ago
  I find these comparisons between the supposed left and right wing ideologies silly at best. The right wing political spectrum is just as guilty (or even more so) of being "out of touch with reality" as the left. Just look at the climate disaster and the supposed right wing solutions to it (if they are even willing to admit its real). Now back to Dawkins, but he is often wrong on both ethical and fundimental grounds. This tweet is an example of that (there is a sibling comment explaining the scientific reason for why he is wrong), as is almost always the case when Dawkins attacks religion. Furthermore, quite often the moral argument can’t simply be detached from a statement. As an example look at the climate disaster again. It is morally wrong to pollute, but also stuff brakes badly if you pollute too much. You can’t put the moral argument out side of the bracket and say: “I’m only arguing that increased carbon emission are good for the economy”, then you are guilty of stacking the rules of the debate into your favor, and Dawkins does this all the time.
  • Udik 6y ago
    > there is a sibling comment explaining the scientific reason for why he is wrong If you're referring to andrewla's comments, I don't agree, his 'scientific' argument is that 'variety is the fuel of evolution'. Which is a pretty vague statement. Any selective pressure is acting on existing variety to squeeze it. Evolution needs variety precisely to select traits- that is, kill off parts of that variety. Dawkins' consideration still holds true: we practiced eugenics on dogs for millennia, and they did evolve in a direction that was desirable to us. Technically, it works. > The right wing political spectrum is just as guilty (or even more so) of being "out of touch with reality" as the left. Regarding climate change, I do think that (while the right is certainly in denial) the left is projecting on the issue of climate change a vast series of ethical issues that it conflates with the reality of climate change. The issues of poverty and inequality, of capitalism vs collective good, etc. And I think that the right's denial might be in part a reaction to this confusion between a scientific fact and the way it was framed by the left. Why I don't see climate rallies asking for the construction of hundreds of new nuclear plants? That would help in solving climate change much more than everything we did so far.
    • andrewla 6y ago
      I'm not going to touch the right/left stuff, just want to jump in on the variety/evolution thing. The "killing off parts of that variety" is a mechanic that is not universally accepted; genetic drift has been documented to happen for non-red-in-tooth-and-claw situations. That's not to say it's discredited or anything, but it's just one mechanism. The thing shared by all mechanics of evolution is that they need a population with enough internal variation to be able to move the needle at all. A population that needs to evolve itself out of a corner (say a dramatic change in environment) needs time in proportion to variety, not in proportion to mutation rate. And no population survives without producing almost entirely viable offspring. We did not practice eugenics on dogs for millenia -- we selectively bred dogs. We bred different breeds for different purposes, and the more narrow the breed is, the less robust it is (I don't think anyone would question this if they had ever read anything about pedigreed breeds). The reason why dogs are robust as a species is largely because we didn't focus on one particular trait across the entire species, so with cross-breeding (and even breeding with wild dog-like animals) we can retain some level of robustness.
      • Udik 6y ago
        > The thing shared by all mechanics of evolution is that they need a population with enough internal variation to be able to move the needle at all. A population that needs to evolve itself out of a corner... True. In a sense, your metaphor of variation as the fuel of evolution is very apt. Variation is indeed the fuel of evolution, in the sense that evolution consumes it. In order to make your car move, you need the fuel and you need to consume it. When "a population evolves itself out of a corner" it does so by consuming part of its variation. The population survives, the single individuals might be selected out (or single traits, through differential reproduction rates). > We did not practice eugenics on dogs for millenia -- we selectively bred dogs. It seems to me that any form of selective breeding when applied to human beings falls entirely into the definition of eugenics. The Merriam Webster defines eugenics as: "the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the population's genetic composition". > the more narrow the breed is, the less robust it is Absolutely true, but dog breeds are (especially in recent times) are really extreme and cruel forms of selection. Commercial breeders (and their customers) are following absurdly strict appearance canons. On the other hand, the slightest form of imposed human breeding, however transversal to the bulk of human variation (say, for example, discouraging from reproducing people who are more than 2 standard deviations taller than the rest of their country average or reference ethnicity) is already an ethically unacceptable form of eugenics, independently from its practical impact on the genetic variation of humanity.