TRIGGERnometry - The Reality of Sex & Gender, Evolutionary History & Free Will - Richard Dawkins

Episode Date: August 25, 2024

Richard Dawkins is a British evolutionary biologist and author. His 1976 book The Selfish Gene popularised the gene-centered view of evolution, as well as coining the term meme. Dawkins is a vocal atheist and is often referred to as one of the four horsemen of the New Atheism movement which began to gain traction in the mid-2000s, catalysed in large part by Dawkin's 2006 book, The God Delusion. Richard’s latest book, The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie, is available to pre-order now: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300278098/ Join our Premium Membership for early access, extended and ad-free content: https://triggernometry.supercast.com OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube: @xentricapc  Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/#mailinglist Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.

We had this big controversy with two boxes in the Olympics. What do you make of all of this? I think it's both unfair and actually dangerous. You believe that the question I'm asking you now and the answer you're giving me now is predetermined. I'm afraid I do, and I find that very hard to stomach, but yes, free will is an illusion, but it's a very, very powerful illusion.

We all feel as if we've got free will. You keep asking me the same question. Yes, but that's because you haven't answered it. It's quite a contradiction. I will not answer it, and nor will anybody else in any satisfactory way. It's a philosophically difficult problem. Professor Richard Dawkins, such a pleasure to have you back. I can't wait to talk about your new book, your tour of America.

Before we get into that, as is obligatory now, you're a biologist and the scientists. We have to ask you a bunch of stupid questions because society seems to be stupid as well. We had this big controversy with two boxes in the Olympics. Some people who were paying attention were saying they're male. Other people saying, no, they're women. They should be able to compete. What do you make of all of this? It's fairly clear that they're genetically male.

They have a Y chromosome. On the other hand, they seem to be phenotypically female in the sense that they probably have female genitals, and they'd no doubt to sincerely think they're female. So although genetically male, they're at least partly phenotypically female. The question is which part of the phenotype is relevant to boxing? Genitals aren't, but things like reach and punching strength are. and pretty clear that they are male in that respect.

And so it does seem to me that they should not have been allowed to compete in the Olympics in the female event. It's unfortunate for them. It's sad for them because they seem to believe they're genuinely female. But I think it's both unfair and actually dangerous for women to be fighting against genetic males who have male boxing abilities. and strength and reach. Well, quite. And I guess the question would be,

why do you think that position wasn't taken by all the different authorities involved? You'd have to ask them, but what they say is that these boxers have female on their passport, and they took that as being evidence, but of course it isn't. I mean, the correct evidence is,

I think, genetic evidence, coupled with an examiner. of whether the, I think that's probably sufficient, actually. I mean, they are genetic males. It's really interesting that we're talking about this. Why do you think that this issue has suddenly come to prominence? Because if you look at your career, I mean, we were talking about far more interesting things 20, 30, 40 years ago.

Doesn't it feel to you like we've regressed somewhat? Yes, it does. I mean, I think the reason it's come to prominence is the trans lobby. These two boxes are not trans. As a matter of fact, I mean, they've always thought of themselves as female. But I think that's why it came to prominence, and that's probably why the Olympic controllers went by passport rather than by actual biology.

Quite. I mean, do you get frustrated with the lay of the land now, where words that we knew what they meant now no longer mean what they used to mean? Yes, intensely frustrated. I'm very annoyed with, I regard it as a subversion of language as well as a subversion of science. And I mean, words are our servants, not our masters, but nevertheless there are limits. And if you're going to argue that, for example, you could say, I redefine flat as meaning round, therefore the world is flat. I mean, you could say that.

I mean, you're entitled to redefine words if you want, but don't expect anybody else to come along. with you and suddenly redefine female as male or male as female is going too far with messing around the language in my view. And do you regard all of this as a kind of minor irritant that people are paying perhaps too much attention to? Or do you think this is something that's impactful on things like science, you know, the ability of researchers to do proper research and so on? Well, it's an irritant, it's not a minor, it's a major irritant and it's a major irritant.

And it's, I mean, partly athletic events where males are entering female. Nothing worth the other way around, of course, for obvious reasons. Yes, I mean, I think it does have an impact on science. And some of the leading scientific journals like Scientific American, for example, are fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. Richard, you use the term subversion of science. And look, there's a lot of people who listen to this podcast, regular people who will be like, well, that sounds really bad.

What do you mean by that and what are the implications of that? Well, if we take the particular issue of sex and the reality of sex, the male-female divide is a deeply significant divide that runs right through the whole animal in plant kingdoms. And at the base of it is gamete size. There are two kinds of gametes, big ones and small ones. There's a hugely different bit between them. There's no overlap between them, sperms and eggs.

And those individuals who are equipped to produce sperms are male, and those who equip to produce eggs are female. Not all of them actually do, of course. I mean, worker bees, for example, are sterile. They don't produce eggs, mostly they don't. But they're still female because they have the potential to produce eggs. If you feed them differently, they will become queens. So the divide between male and female is fundamental in biology. It's an absolute binary.

And suddenly, in one species, Homo sapiens, it's become fashionable to sweep that away and say, right, no, sex is not a binary, it's a spectrum. It's a complete, I called it subversion. I think that's the correct word to use because it goes against the whole of the rest of biology, the whole of the rest of evolution. And what are the implication for things like medicine, for things like scientific discovery, for things like innovation? Well, I would hope that in the case of medicine, a doctor who examines a patient would not need

to ask them whether they're male or female. But I think I read somewhere that the American Medical Association has given advice to doctors that they ought to ask people what their sex is. You think a doctor wouldn't need to do that after they've examined somebody. So I think it's probably fair to say that doctors in practice go by the real biological sex of somebody when they're treating them rather than by what they think they are. Richard, let me apologize to you for the fact that we're even asking you these questions. I feel like it's a massive waste of time, honestly, talking about all this stuff. But then again, as you say, it's not a minor it actually has consequences. So I'm glad we've talked about it.

Let's move on, though, and not focus too much on this stuff, even though, as we both talked about it, it has impact. One of the things you've been instrumental of your entire career is the popularization of evolutionary theory, giving people answers. to questions they might have once had about evolution, etc. How far have we moved over your lifetime over the course of your work in terms of understanding human evolution and evolution of other animals of the entire animal kingdom? How far have I moved?

No, we as a society, how far is our understanding moved? Are there still unanswered questions, for example? Yes. And what are they? Well, for example, the origin of the whole thing, how did it get started, the origin of life? That's a big unanswered question. It may never be answered definitively. We don't know that.

I suppose the biggest change in my lifetime has been the rise of molecular biology where it's become, ever since 1953, it's become clear that genetics is digital, profoundly digital. It's like a branch of computer science. It's quaternary rather than binary.

But this is something that really illuminates, in a very big way. With hindsight, I think it's probably we could say that it had to be digital, otherwise it wouldn't have worked. But anyway, it's extremely interesting that the difference between animals can actually be quantified,

the genetics of it can be quantified. It's rather like taking two texts of, say, biblical books, two texts of the book of Jeremiah, say, which are, you can align them up and you can say this is different there, there, there and there, actually take two animals, say a mole and a shrew, and you can say, line up their DNA, line up their genes and look at exactly where each letter is different.

And in case of a mole and a shrew, there wouldn't be very many differences. In the case of a mole and an ardvark, there'd be a large number of differences, but you can still do it. You can still take the same genes from different animals. We're even quite spaced out animals, quite rem, I mean, a muller. Lardvark are really quite far apart. You can actually locate the same gene in these different animals, and you can compare letter for letter for letter for letter, exactly where they differ.

This is precise detective work, and it's mind-blowing, actually, that you can do that because in Darwin's time all you could do is look at the gross anatomy and say, well, they look pretty much the same in this bone and that bone, but now you can do it, letter for letter, you can actually quantify it, and that is wonderful. But you say wonderful, well, why is it significant, Richard? Explain to the ordinary person why this really matters. Because it's precise. You can actually, every animal in the world today has the same DNA code

and many of the same genes you can actually identify. Therefore, in principle, since the sequencing of DNA is now so cheap and quick, in principle, you could take any two animals you like and sequence their DNA and calculate how closely related they are and with some more assumptions calculate how long ago their common ancestor lived. Was it 100 million years ago, 500 million years ago? There's a lot of possible error there, but in principle it can be done. And if you could sequence the, and you can, just a matter of time and spent doing it,

sequence the DNA of every animal in existence, you could actually plot a gigantic tree of life, an actual family tree of all animals. It's so interesting that you said it, because I was reading the book over the weekend, absolutely loved it, by the way. And there was so many fascinating little tip bits in it. For example, one of the hippos' closest relatives in this genetic tree of life is the whale. When you look at it on a surface level, you would presume it'd be the rhino, for example. It's remarkable.

This has now been known for some decades, but when it was first discovered, it really hit me a blow. It's an astonishing fact. I suppose the reason is that the common ancestor would not have been a hippo, by the way. It would have been something quite different from either of them. The common ancestor then one branch took to the water. And eventually took to the water completely, left the land altogether and even reproduced in water. And once you've done that, you're emancipated from the need, from the demands of gravity.

And so the reason why it's possible for the closest relative of hippos to be whales, and yet look so incredibly different, is that whales are emancipated from, well, the tyranny of gravity, really. They no longer have to bother about gravity. They don't walk and run and things like that. Therefore, they were free to evolve in a radically different direction and become unrecognizably related to hipposom. But there they are the molecular evidence is unequivocal.

It definitely shows it. And it's so interesting as well, because in the book, so going back to my own school days, and I thought it was, well, I was, as I was taught in a pretty rudimentary fashion, that there were animals that lived in the water, they came onto the land, they adapted to the land, and then they became, you know, tigers, baboons, whatever they may be, I didn't realize, and you explained in the book very eloquently how there were some animals who came from the water to the land and decided, nah, not for me, and then went back into the water again.

Quite a lot of them. I mean, there are, in addition to whales and there are dugongs and manatees, there are, well, seals and seal-lands, less radically turtles. Turtles, by the way, turned around back again and came back out again. And so modern tortoises, land tortoises, there are. actually animals that were in the sea when they were fish, came out on land, went back into the sea as turtles, then came back onto the land again. And there's a whole section of the genetic book of the dead that has that story. But yes, it is remarkable that so many animals

went into reverse having come out onto the land. And is that quite a natural process that, where they will come onto the land and then back and forth and so on? Or is that the exception rather than the rule? Well, I'm not sure it's, you know, it's, it's sort of exception, but it's pretty common. I mean, I mentioned quite a lot of vertebrates that do it, a lot of invertebrates that do it as well. So I suppose it's a fairly common exception, put it in that way. And Richard, it's been quite a kind of meme, I don't know if it's true, that water is essential for the evolution of life. We just saw, I don't know if you saw the news that there's been some water discovered on Mars.

Is that significant? Is that important? Well, water is certainly essential for our kind of life and very probably essential for any kind of life. One of the things that's so-called exobiologists, people who are interested in studying the possibility of life on other planets, One of the things they look for is water as liquid water, because of course water can be either solid or gaseous. And liquid water is not diagnostic of life, but it's pretty good prerequisite. You're kind of looking for it if you're interested in finding life elsewhere. So did you think that the discovery on Mars was significant in any way?

Well, I mean, I don't think there is life. on Mars, but if you were studying planets more widely, I think one of the first things you would look for, if you're interested in looking for life, would be water. That's really interesting, because a lot of people are reading a lot of significance into this particular discovery, and they want to see it as the opportunity that we can then go on and colonize Mars. Elon Musk, I'm sure, is salivating at the thought of water being on Mars. Do you think that's a likely goal for human beings to want to achieve that? Or do you think that's almost in the realm of science fiction?

Oh, I think it's perfectly possible. I mean, Mars is not very far away when you think about it compared to the stars. And Elon Musk's rationale is the, you mustn't have all your eggs in one basket, which is fair enough. You know, the projectile that killed the dinosaurs was a big one, but an even bigger one could come along and probably one day will. I wouldn't get worried about it. It won't happen tomorrow. And a catastrophe like that would not happen to two planets at the same time. And so putting a colony on Mars is an interesting thing to do.

I wouldn't volunteer. I suppose I might volunteer if I had terminal cancer or something, because I wouldn't be quite curious. I don't know if people with terminal cancer make good colonises. But I see what you mean. But do you think that would even be viable to have a colony on Mars? Yes, I think it's viable. It wouldn't be much fun, I think. I mean, it would be, it's a very, it's nothing but desert, of course, and you would have to start

greening the place. I mean, start with big, great big greenhouses and then try to introduce plants. And it's actually pretty difficult to get a balanced ecosystem going. But it's an interesting project. And I don't think it's silly. I think it's quite,

it's part of this sort of the outward urge, the spirit of humanity, discovering new worlds. I don't know if you get this. Actually, I presume you do in a far more in-depth way, should we put it, than I ever could, which is the moment when I read about Mars, because I'm quite interested in space travel,

and I learn about the planet, what it really does is fill me with a sense of wonder and appreciation for our own planet. I mean, this, when you take a step back and look at this planet that we live in, It's a complete, it's a miracle that it exists, isn't it? It's wonderful. Of course, the fact that it's so well suited to us is no accident.

That's why, because we evolved here. If we'd evolved somewhere else, we would think that was a miracle. And in many ways it is wonderful. I mean, there are aspects of it that are not. But I think it, you know, I keep saying, I think it's a great privilege to be alive and on such a wonderful planet, yes. And you also talk, and one of the ideas that you talk about in the book that I found very interesting is you said that nature is conservative. What do you mean by that with nature

being conservative? Well, the context of that was the genetic book of the dead is saying that animals are programmed. Well, first of all, this thesis is that, the animal is a book which is a description of ancestral worlds. And that is another way of putting that is to say that it embodies the genes and it embody a prediction of what the future is going to be like. And so every animal is born with a prediction. You will be born in genetic predictions as you will be born in a swamp or in a desert or in a river or in the sea or up a mountain. And to the extent that that prediction is correct, you'll survive.

And fortunately, the world is a conservative place. It doesn't jump around all the time. If it's been a desert for the past 10,000 years, the chance that it's going to be a desert for the next 10 years, the next however long the animal lives. So an animal that's born in a desert is predicting that it's going to be born in a desert, and the prediction is correct, and that's because the world is a conservative place. A contrast would be a world that was capriciously jumping around it in a sort of random way. If that were true, then you couldn't become, you couldn't survive because no bet that you make as to where you're going to live would be correct.

That's all I meant by saying the world is a conservative place. Yeah, and it's a very, because it really, it then leads quite nicely to my next question, which is the human beings' relationship with technology. Because you say the world is a conservative place and the natural world, world is. But if you look at all the technology, we're now surrounded by the rapid growth of technology, the change of technology, there's a lot of people we've had on the show who says the technology that we've created effectively hacks our biology. So I guess my question to you is, is the human body becoming less and less adapted to being in this world with all this

technology and all these screens? This is a worry because when I say the world as a conservative place, you're quite right that in the human world where technology advances so quickly. It's much less of a conservative place. It's still fairly conservative. But it is changing more rapidly, and many people do worry that the pace of change is such that we are no longer well adapted to live in it. And much of the mental illness that afflicts people may be because we are in a constantly changing,

unpredictable environment in a way that our ancestors were not. So that is a worry. Actually, I think it's amazing how resilient we are. We do seem to most of us manage to cope pretty well with the astonishing rate of change. In my lifetime, well, I suppose the internet is one of the biggest changes. It's a huge change, gigantic change. If you imagine a science fiction plot in which, say, some sort of magnetic storm from the sun or something wipes out wipes out the internet, we'd be lost. We've become adapted to it with astonishing rapidity.

Does it worry you because you'd say we'd be lost and I quite agree with you. I'm going to put myself, I mean, without electricity, I wouldn't be able to do my job. All of these things, my knowledge of hunting would be zero. I mean, imagine me in the forest of a spear. I mean, it'd be funny, but that's about it. Probably injure yourself now. Yeah, and injure myself rather than any other animal. Do you think as human beings that we've become too disconnected from the natural world? Well, we're okay at the moment because things aren't changing too rapidly,

but you're quite right, of course, if we lost electricity, if we suddenly lost the technology we're used to, we couldn't begin. I mean, you need to, who knows how to make a battery? And who knows how to make a knife, all the sort of things you might need. We're so used to having things served up on the plate because we are interdependent. We have a specialist to make all the things that we need. And for the moment, it seems to be working. Yeah, well, quite.

And it's funny, you mentioned I saw a video the other day of a guy. He set out to make a toaster by himself from scratch. And it took him like a year and $32,000 to do it. Because you had to dig up the metal, right, the ore and all of that. So that specialisation is a huge evolutionary adaptation of human psychology. I wouldn't call it evolution. Well, it's analogous to evolution. Yeah.

But it's a different kind. It's not genetic evolution. No, it's not. Well, that's what I was going to ask you. I mean, is it fair to say that human beings are no longer really evolving genetically nearly as much as we would have done in the past? But what we are doing is evolving in this part of ourselves. Relatively speaking, I wouldn't wish to go on record as saying we're not evolving genetically,

but certainly the rate at which we're evolving genetically is minuscule compared to the rate at which we're evolving non-genetically, culturally. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile, the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

Up front payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. Seeful terms at mintmobile.com. Yeah. And the changing tack a little bit, Richard, one of the things I actually, I don't think we've talked to you about before is we live at a time where many, many people are concerned about what we call the state of the planet. but what they mean is the changing temperature and the changing environments for both animals and human beings.

What are your views on those environmental concerns? I'm not a specialist. I worry about it because people that I respect worry about it. I think it probably is a dangerous problem and one that needs to be sorted, but you'd have to ask somebody else who is an expert on it. So, yeah, I mean, which is absolutely fair enough. I mean, when I was reading your book, what I was thinking about a great deal is extinction.

And every time that I read, because I have a passion for the natural world, I read about these huge amounts of animals that are going extinct. How much of extinction is perfectly natural, and that's just the way it works, and how much of it is caused by human beings? Richard Leakey wrote a book called The Sixth Extinction, which suggested, looked at the other extinctions like the one that killed the dinosaurs and then the Permian one earlier on, and said that man-made extinction is the sixth one and is just as bad as the others. I think it's tragic. Some people say, well, it's the way of nature, it's happened before, it'll happen again, and it sort of clears the decks for new evolution and things. But I think it's, It would be very, very sad to lose tigers and rhinos and elephants because they've been

evolving for so long and they've built up their evolution in such a detailed way for so long. I mean, I think it's tragic that the dinosaurs went, but of course we are our existence to the fact that they went. And I would love to see extinct animals brought back if it could be done. And there are people working on bringing back woolly mammoths and thylacines and things. And good luck to them. I hope they succeed. Really? So you would be fully supportive of somebody bringing back a saber-toothed tiger, for example? Absolutely, yes, yes.

Richard would like to see Jurassic Park play out on the streets and London before his time is up. I mean, yeah, it'd be fun. But what would you say to those people go, well, look, these animals went extinct for a reason. These are humans playing God. Well, yes. I mean, the playing God doesn't bother me at all. Went extinct for a reason. That doesn't mean we shouldn't bring them back.

I mean, saber-toothes were not all. I mean, they were no doubt frightening, but no more frightening than a tiger or a lion. Actually, a little bit smaller than a tiger or a lion. And why is it a lot of the time that these animals go extinct? Is it for the reasons that we think that they're not suited to their environment? Or is there a multitude of different reasons? Multiple of different reasons. Sometimes it's a major catastrophe like in the case of the dinosaurs.

Sometimes it's their climate for other things, change their environment, they change their habitat so they can't exist there anymore. Sometimes their main food goes extinct, so they go extinct. They're all thoughts of different reasons. sometimes it's a plague. And what are the interesting you actually talked about in your book, which I don't think gets spoken about enough,

and we see it in London with the grey squirrel and the parakeets as invasive species? Yes, the red squirrel is being driven extinct in Britain by the grey squirrel, which is introduced from America by a 19th century Duke of Bedford at a time when people didn't really think about those things,

and he thought it would be rather fun to introduce this little grey creature, and he not only, introduced the grey squirrel into his own estate, but he presented grey squirrels to other aristocratic friends around the country. And they're driving the red squirrel extinct, partly by competition, partly because there's a disease called squirrel pox, which they're relatively immune to, having been spent thousands of years in America getting immune to it, and the red squirrel is not. And so Red Squirrids are now confined to a few places in the north and even they're being

encroached upon there. Just kind of reverse colonization by the way you've described. Yes. Richard, you alluded a couple of times to the extinction of the dinosaurs. I thought actually just for a lot of young people, and it would be interesting to hear Richard Dawkins explained why the dinosaurs died out. Can you talk us through that? Well, it's pretty clear now that a huge meteorite or comet hit the earth at a gigantic relative speed, I mean, colossal relative speed, tens of thousands of miles per hour. And an enormous amount of energy was released, tidal waves, great clouds of dust blocked out

the sun for a large number of years. And so a great majority of species went extinct, including all the dinosaurs except birds, which are dinosaurs. And much else besides, and mammals survived, a few mammals survived, probably because they were perhaps hibernating underground, something like that. And so they came out and then started to blossom into all the different species that know today. So that was a major catastrophe, but it isn't always a major catastrophe, it can be slower

than that. And the impact crater, am I really thinking that's what the Caribbean basin is basically? It's the impact crater of that meteor around. It seems to have hit in the Yucatan in the Isthmus between North and South America. There's good evidence for that, and the evidence for it is very strong. The geological evidence is very strong. And why did birds survive? I don't know why, I mean, the ancestors of birds survived.

I don't know. I mean, maybe just something didn't happen to be the ancestors of birds. There may have been a particular reason why they did. I guess what you're describing, I mean, the reason I ask is just the layman's is you're describing giant tsunamis and nuclear winter effectively. How would a bird survive? I have no idea. They wouldn't have been exactly what you call birds. Yes.

But yes, I don't know. That's really interesting. Because what, so birds are a dinosaur. Now, excuse me, this may seem like an ignorant question. I've heard time and time again that crocodiles are very closely related to dinosaurs. Is that accurate? Well, not that, no, not that close. I mean, they are reptiles.

in the same sort of region of the reptiles, but birds are much closer in the sense that there are animals that you would call dinosaurs, definitely you would call dinosaurs, which are closer cousins to birds that they are to other things that you would call dinosaurs. And so what that means is that birds spring from the middle of the dinosaurs rather than being on the outside of the dinosaurs. Crocodiles you could push it on the outside of the dinosaurs.

Okay, so the birds are coming from the middle. And are there any type of... Which bird do you know is a closest relation to that middle of the dinosaurs? They're all the same. All the same? Yes, because they're all descended from a common ancestor, which would have been called a bird. Ah, and do we have a name for this particular common ancestor?

No, we don't know. I mean, there is a famous fossil archaeopteryx, which is thought to be close to that to the common ancestor, but it probably isn't actually the common ancestor. So, and they all sprang from the common ancestor? And at what point did they then, at what point was the main branch where one became a predator, one became a prey? Is that how it works?

Or does it work in a different way when it goes into its own separate branches? Not quite sure what you're asking. Do you don't mean specifically with respect to birds? Do you mean in general? No, no, in respect to the birds, in respect to birds. So how does it, I guess my layman's question is, I'll rephrase that. How does it then split off into the, the, the, the, you know, the, vast variety of bird life that we see today. Oh, okay. I mean, that's a general question about all

animals. Yes. Well, something happens to separate a species into two different subpopulations. Probably a geographical accident of some sort. It could be something like a river changes course. And so the populations are stranded on either side. And so they're no longer interbreed with each other because they can't, because they never meet each other. That means they're free to evolve in different directions, and they do, and eventually they evolve so far apart that when eventually they come together again by some other accident, they can't interbreed. So some sort of geographical accident of that sort is one way for it to happen.

It could be that, not that a river changes course, but there already is, say, an island off the mainland and a bird or a, yes, maybe a bird gets blown off course and lands on the island and just makes it there and then settles and reproduces and starts a population there. So now we have a population on the island and a population on the mainland and they don't meet. So again, they have the opportunity to evolve in different directions, perhaps because conditions on the island are different, even if it's not. I mean, just by random rift, they can evolve in different directions. And then, when much later they happen to come together again,

they've evolved sufficiently apart that they can no longer interbreed, and they are now separate species. So that explains, for instance, why the lemur can only be found on the island of Madagascar. Well, lemas evolved in Madagascar. There were early primates in Madagascar, early primates in Africa when Madagascar split off. And not surprisingly, the ones in Madagascar evolved in a different way from the ones in Africa. So the ones in Africa became monkeys, the ones in Madagascar became lemurs,

and they became lots of different sorts of lemurs. They branched and branched and branched, probably because they was isolated within Madagascar, different valleys, different forests, cultivated evolution in different directions within Madagascar. So there are lots of different species of Lima in Madagascar. So how long would this process take to get from a common ancestor to then spring into monkeys, to then go to lemas, and then to go from a common ancestor of a lemma into the various different ring-tailed lemas, in nature? Well, to just to diverge into two different reproductively isolated populations that can no longer interbreed with each other,

that could take only a few tens of thousands of years or even less. and once they're separated, they then can go on in different directions and branch and branch and branch and branch and branch. So each separate branch may take only a few thousand years, but when you ask about the production of all the different lemurs, that took millions of years. That's really interesting, because what it then speaks to as well is when you think about unintended consequences,

is introduction, for instance, of invasive species like rats. it talks about unintended consequences, for instance, with the grey squirrel, introduced into this country and decimated the red squirrel. Does that worry you as a scientist, the fact that we're looking at gene technology now and thinking to yourself, well, we're doing all of these things and we're doing these experiments and these types of therapies, but we don't know what the consequences may be further down the line. Well, as I said, the 19th century Duke of Bedford didn't even think about the consequences and I think it's up to us to think about the consequences of what we're

doing and to try to guess, look ahead and guess what might be the consequences of things that we're doing because it could be that we haven't a clue what's going to happen. And there is the precautionary principle which says we should be very cautious and careful about what we do. So we don't fall into the same error as the Duke of Bedford. Are we being sufficiently cautious, Richard? I mean one example, people might instantly jump to is we still are not entirely sure about the origins of COVID, and there are some people who quite credibly argue may have been a gain of function research caused error.

Are we being sufficiently cautious? You're asking me for a value judgment. Yes, I am. I would be, I only say, I hope we are. I mean, who is we? Because we're just a whole lot of different individuals. Humanity. Yes, but humanity is not a single decision-making.

entity. No. And so there may be plenty of people who are very conscientious and cautious and some people who are not. And it only takes one individual or one group of individuals to be irresponsible and can have terrible consequences. Do you have an opinion on the gain of function being a potential cause of COVID? No, I'd rather not say. I mean, that's a yes. That's very interesting. All right, Well, listen, let me ask you some more esoteric questions. One of the things that I see is happening is Jordan Peterson keeps trying to have a discussion with you. I don't know if it's a debate or a conversation, and you tell us that on your America tour, that's actually going to happen. Well, yes, I've already had a long talk with him, actually.

He came to visit Oxford, and we had a meeting together without an audience, which is a good thing. And that's available. You can listen to it. I don't know what to say. Well, let me ask you a couple of questions just in that more esoteric mindset. Do you think human beings are special? Well, obviously, yes, they are. And what makes them special?

Language, culture, technology, high level of consciousness. I mean, we're hugely special. What does consciousness mean? What does consciousness mean? That's a difficult question. That's why I'm asking you. It's something we all know we have. And we take it on trust that other people have it.

I believe you must have consciousness because I have it, but I can't prove it. Do animals have consciousness? We are animals. Do non-human animals? No, do non-human animals have consciousness? Yes, I bet they do because it would have consciousness. have been something that evolved and we didn't suddenly, light didn't suddenly sort of come on at some moment when Homo sapiens suddenly burst into existence. So it would be extremely

surprising if there were not some consciousness in other mammals, at least. Some consciousness. Do you believe in free will? Do you believe that we have free will? As Christopher Hitchin said, I have no choice. Christopher Hitchens was a very good at avoiding answer in the question in that way. I just avoided it. I hate that question. I think I'm persuaded by people that I've read that free will is an illusion. But it's a very, very powerful illusion.

We all feel as if we've got free will. So you believe that the question I'm asking you now and the answer you're giving me now is predetermined. I'm afraid I do. And that very hard to stomach, but yes. Well, it is the logical conclusion of your beliefs. I think it is, yes. Necessarily.

So do you think that, do you think that to, I guess here's a question, and I don't mean it as some kind of got you, but do you think that to believe that people have free will is unscientific? No, not necessarily. I wouldn't say that. Why not? I think because I don't know enough. I prefer not to say something as dogmatic as that.

Sure. I guess what I'm asking is if we are the sum total of our genetics and our learned behaviors and our life experiences and all of those things, then by definition, if you don't believe something other than that, you wouldn't have, there's no scientific explanation for free will, right? There are people who think that quantum uncertainty is the get-out. Physicists I've talked to say that isn't the case, but I'm not enough of a physicist to judge that. What does quantum uncertainty mean?

Oh, well, Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle, that there is... I'm sure all of yours are very familiar with the reason. Well, I'm not, because I'm not a physicist. Nor are they, it's my point. No, I know, but it's no good asking me. No, I can't explain it. I'm not a physicist, and I'm not sure even they can. It's a very difficult thing.

Well, you've probably heard the sort of joke of... Schrodinger's cat. Yes. And you have a cat and a mechanism which is triggered by a radioactive emission. And so either the cat is dead or not dead. And according to one interpretation of quantum theory, because of the indeterminacy principle, The cat is neither alive nor dead until you open the box and look at it.

Shreddinger posited this thought experiment as a way of saying how absurd the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory actually is. Because surely common sense says the cat must be alive or dead. these are profound deep waters which I am not qualified to wade in. I guess as a very prominent biologist, though, I think the reason I'm asking you about free will is having read your work extensively and now having asked you the question, it seems to me that it inevitably follows from the system of beliefs that you have,

that as you concede, free will can't exist, right? So the reason I asked you whether it's unscientific is not because I was trying to get you to say something provocative or dogmatic. I'm just trying to understand how human beings might have free will within the conventional scientific understanding of human realities and evolution and so on.

To say that something is unscientific, is a pejorative which I wouldn't wish to go into. My private suspicion is that we don't have free will, but I wouldn't wish to condemn somebody who thought the opposite. So if we don't have free will, that sort of takes apart quite a lot of the things that we do in society, like reward and punishment. Not everybody thinks that.

there are some people who claim to be to not believe in free will and yet who do believe that punishment can be justified. I guess what I'm asking is when I go home today to my two-year-old toddler, why would I reward or not reward certain behavior if he has no choice? He's doing what he's doing. I think you'd have to talk to a philosopher about that. I share your puzzlement about this whole matter and I don't understand why it is that those philosophers who call themselves compatibleist and you can look that up would nevertheless dispute the view that for example take punishment of the extreme case that you can't punish people because they blood it was it was the molecules that did it is not my fault well right but the reason I'm

pressing you on this is A, curiosity, because you're one of the brightest minds that our society's produced in a very long time. But B, because I think this is why Jordan wants to continue to have these discussions with you. Well, I don't want to have that discussion. You may be about to find out that you're going to have it nonetheless, I'm afraid. So, I mean, one of the questions that I found really interesting, reading your book, again, as somebody who did an arts degree, it was wonderful, and it made some. science accessible, which I think is a greatest compliment you can pay a scientific book from a

layman's perspective, of course. How much of things like political opinions or viewpoints or aligning to one particular side left or right or the way that you see the world, whether you're more empathetic, whether you're more pragmatic, for instance, how much of that is to do with genetics and your genes? Or do we know, for example? Well, it's an interesting question. Let's look at how you might answer that question. I suppose the favoured way would be to look at partitioning the variance. What that means is you look at variation in anything you like.

You happen to have chosen political opinion, but you could take height or weight or musical ability or mathematical ability, anything you like. And you can say, we've got this population of people who vary in this quality, which might be intelligence or it might be music, ability, it might be political opinion and so on. And you divide them up into those and say, who call themselves left and those are call themselves right, those are good at music and those are bad at music, those are good at math, and

those are bad at maths? And you say, is there anything about this group of people genetically different from that group of people? Are there some genes that, as it were, labeled that group of people rather than that group of people? And that's analysis of variance in one form or another. And one way of doing it, one rather powerful way of doing it is twin studies. Because we know that monosygotic twins, identical twins, have all the same genes.

Give or take some very, very minor differences. And we know that fraternal twins, non-identical twins, don't. And we know how much they have in common genetically. So if you compare the similarity in political opinion, say, or musical ability of identical twins versus fraternal twins, then if the identical twins are more similar than the fraternal twins, that gives you a clue. You get a stronger clue if you take that minority of identical twins who happen to have been brought up separately. And there are some cases which have been intensively studied. There are people who go around looking around the world looking for identical twins who've been separated at birth for one reason or another. And there are some dozens of cases that have been studied.

And then you say, and you also look at fraternal twins who have been separated, say what, four categories, identical together, identical read apart, fraternal together, fraternal red apart. And you do an analysis of those four categories. And from that you can calculate the proportion of the variance, which can be said to be due to the genes, it's called the heritability, as opposed to the environment. And you can do that for all sorts of different qualities. And I don't know whether that's, it almost certainly has been done for political opinion. It's been done for other things like in IQ and mathematical ability, musical ability. And it varies. But in almost everything, you will find some genetic component.

In some cases, it's a very powerful genetic component. I mean, the question, and it's a slightly controversial one, but I think it's important to ask is, what about sexuality? Is sexuality a genetic component? Because people have spoken about this, but no gene has ever been found. Do you mean sexual preference? Yes, sexual preference, if you're gay. Yeah, if you're straight.

Yes, it's been not. at and there is a strong genetic component to it, yes. Oh, really? So how so? Well, how so? I mean, it's just that twin studies have been done. And there's a strong tendency for if one identical twin is gay, that his twin will be gay, even if they're read apart.

So that, that suggests that there is a, isn't it's not an absolute, it's not, it's not, it's not, I can use the word deterministic. It's, it's, it's a contribution to the, to the variance. and that's all that you can say. Which is interesting. So you're looking at these twins because it then goes back to the point of how much of life is predetermined almost

and how much of it is under our... Not really, because this is just one type of predetermination, namely genetic. You can still believe that everything is predetermined and then ask the sub-question and how much of that is genetic. Because it could be that how you're brought up. I mean, what food you're given, what movies you watch,

all these things could have an effect. I guess the reason we're digging into all of this with you, Richard, is I think it's a very, I don't think I've met anybody who lives their life as if other people don't have free will. No, I agree with you. Right? So we all live our life assuming that other people have free will, even if we don't.

And the same way that we ourselves do as well. Quite. But it's easier to see what other people as most things are, right? So if you behave in a way that is unpleasant for me, I'm going to assume you've made that choice. In the same way that the reason Francis asked you about politics, I assume, is that that is an area where people almost always act as if people that they don't agree with or people that they do agree with politically are making a choice. You know, people who are if I'm left wing, the people who are on the right there, they've made a choice to be evil. And if I'm right wing, then the people on the left have made the choice to be evil or stupid

or whatever the right language would be. So it's interesting to me that I think we live increasingly in a world that is deterministic. People are taught to think about the world in that way and the logical conclusion of their beliefs is that. And yet we don't seem to actually live in that world on a psychological. No, you're quite right. We don't. We don't. And we may philosophically believe that we are deterministic, but yet we behave as though, and

our whole psychology is geared to the assumption that we're not and that we and other people are free. And what do you make of that? Because that's quite a question. You keep asking me the same question. Yes, but that's because you haven't answered it. It's quite a contradiction. I will not answer it, and nor will anybody else in any satisfactory way.

it's a philosophically difficult problem. Because the thing that's interesting, if we look at it, is so we believe that we're in control of our own destiny. But if you look at, for instance, somebody who has schizophrenia, a very profound mental illness, we accept that they are not in control because of the illness. Yes, you're right. It is, in courts of law, insanity is grounds for getting on.

But in a way you could say that anybody who's done a murder has the same grounds for getting off as somebody who does it by reason of insanity. Right. You could make that case. And I don't think that anybody, I don't think lawyers have woken up to that possibility. Because, yeah, because if we can say that one person is profoundly unwell mentally, therefore they're not, they're not accountable for their own actions. For their own actions, absolutely. They cannot be accountable. But nobody is responsible for their actions, what you're saying.

But that's the logical conclusion of the worldview. That's why I'm grilling you on this. It's not because I'm trying to... You're asking the wrong person? No, I don't believe I am, actually. I don't believe I am at all. The reason I'm asking you is that we live in a world in which science has won. Science is what we teach our children in school.

Science is how we think about reality. Science is how we think about... everything. And yet, the point I'm making to you is we all live our lives in a way that is counter to that very belief system quite directly. Is that not evidence, for example, of the fact that if we instinctively all know that other people do have a choice and we have a choice about our own decisions at some level, does that not put into question some of the underlying assumptions of that worldview? I don't think so because the worldview you're talking about, the scientific world view, is looking at the world,

looking at physics, looking at biology, looking at genetics, looking at everything that you can measure about the real world and is not directly talking about this free will question. So it's not undermining the scientific worldview, I don't think. It's... Is it not undermined... So the reason I'm saying this is the scientific worldview, as you concede, leads to a deterministic worldview. Almost certainly. You say that there are some people who have a quantum best, right?

So then if you undermine the deterministic worldview, then you're necessarily undermining the scientific worldview. You just follow the chain backwards. But that doesn't mean that if you're studying, say, the growth of wheat and you're measuring which fertilizer is... True. It doesn't undermine that. You can go on measuring things and go on looking at the effects of experiments. Yes.

The fact that you are philosophically deeply mired in this problem of determinism doesn't alter the fact that you can measure things and count things. Totally agree. And so I don't think it can... No, it doesn't affect your ability to measure how wheat growth. with different types of fertilizer. But I think, I'm not saying you have made this claim, but a lot of people who have advanced that scientific world do have done so in a kind of all-encompassing way.

They would say, well, you know, there's no such thing as God or intuition or this or that. Other ways of knowing, let's, what people might describe, right? So how, how, I guess what I'm getting at is how do we all know, I would use the word no, that we have a choice and other people have a choice because we live our lives that way, as you concede, and at the same time, hold the philosophical belief that that's not true. When you talk about other ways of knowing, that raises alarm bells for people who sort of say things like...

It raises alarm bells for me, but that's why I'm asking. Women's ways of knowing and ethnic ways of knowing and things... No, that's not what I mean. Oh, okay. I don't mean ethnic ways of knowing. What I'm saying is we all live our lives in adherence to a belief that based on our belief system is false. Isn't that quite telling?

It is interesting. It's an interesting point. And I find it telling and worrying. And it doesn't stop me having a scientific worldview of the rest of the world. Yes. The rest of the world, I grant you. I'm not suggesting that that invalidates the theory of evolution. I'm saying what it may invalidate is the idea that all there is to understanding the

is the scientific method. Does that make sense? Not really. It's hard for me to quite follow that. What other view than the scientific worldview might you be erecting as an alternative? Whatever it is that makes us experientially know that we have choice, even though the logical conclusion of our scientific worldview is that we don't. Ah, when you say we know we have choice, I mean, that's a false belief, isn't it?

Is it? Well, that's the, you live your life according to that false belief. That's the premise that we're basing all this, this whole discussion on. The premise is that it is a false belief. It's an illusion. But you don't live your life as if it's an illusion. You live your life as if it's true. You look at somebody who steps on your foot and you think.

Yes. What an asshole. You certainly do. And I don't think I have a problem with that, actually. I don't think I have, I think the fact that it's an illusion, it just is an illusion, and I recognize that it is an illusion. But the entire world operates on what you, including you and me, on that illusion. Isn't that?

When you say the entire world, you mean people, do it? Yes. Yes. That's not the entire world. built on the idea that we have choice. Oh, yes, it is. Absolutely. And...

Don't you think that's revelatory in some way? I think if it could worry anybody, it should worry all of humanity, not specifically science. Sure. But that's why I'm asking you the question. As I say, you're one of the sharpest minds our societies of produce. You are. And I think it's interesting to wrestle with these questions. Well, you could wrestle with a philosopher and you would...

and he would snow you with with jargon and and I'm not do which I'm not equipped to do but talk to a philosopher and ask them about compatibilism okay don't ask me what that means but ask them what okay okay we'll do that and thank you for playing along by the way and exploring this argument with me before we head on over to our supporters where they get to ask their questions to you our final question is always exactly the same what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be. Before Richard answers the final question, when the interview is over, make sure you click the link in the description to see this.

We're kind of seeing a resurgence now of religion. Does that worry you? Joe Rogan recently had Jordan Peterson as a guest, and they discussed you briefly. How do you answer the criticisms that your supposed fear of taking psychedelics is unwarranted? How would you respond to criticism of your beliefs as reducts? materialism. Eliot says, in a world with no God, is there a scientific way of proving objective morality? Well, I'm not sure we're not talking about it.

I mean, I think I always feel that questions that have a kind of eternal significance are the ones we should be talking about. And I'm not saying that we haven't, but many people do get so preoccupied with immediate human concerns They forget that there's a universe out there which is eternal and will go on long after humans and no longer here and did go on long before humans ever came. So, subspecate, I turn itartis, the big questions are the things that I think we should be talking about. And to a large extent, actually today we have. Perfect. Richard Dawkins, thank you so much.

Head on over to check out Richard's answers to your questions. Can you be a scientist and religious or do you think those two? Plenty of people are.