Do you know who Edward Osborne Wilson is? Me neither. I had to go to Wikipedia to look him up. Distinguished biologist and a whole long list of other stuff.
One smart dude.
So, why did I care? Well, Jim Posner emailed me about Slate’s MeaningofLife video show. This is remarkable stuff. Edward is interviewed on there. Along with a bunch of other people who’ll raise your IQ by a couple of points just by listening to them.
Scobleizer 
Hmmmmm, have to check it.
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Hmmmmm, have to check it.
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hey i will check it out it seems inteesting come check out my blog u might like it http://dantheman123ya.wordpress.com
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My favorite so far is the Freeman Dyson interview. I’m not a big fan of the interviewer. Freeman sure made him look dumb. It’s a good lesson in interviewing techniques. Best to figure out what makes Freeman tick and then lead the conversation in those directions. Me and Scoble often got into similar trouble in C9 interviews with some giant minds. It’s hard to get right. That said, I want to interview Freeman Dyson for Channel 9! 🙂
C
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My favorite so far is the Freeman Dyson interview. I’m not a big fan of the interviewer. Freeman sure made him look dumb. It’s a good lesson in interviewing techniques. Best to figure out what makes Freeman tick and then lead the conversation in those directions. Me and Scoble often got into similar trouble in C9 interviews with some giant minds. It’s hard to get right. That said, I want to interview Freeman Dyson for Channel 9! 🙂
C
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To entirely sidestep the spiritual side of things, I wholeheartedly recommend that everyone read (skim?) Wilson’s “Sociobiology”. Especially tech geeks. Biological models seem to be in vogue everywhere today. I would expect Wilson’s writing (on biology) to be extremely useful to anyone focused on social computing. If nothing else, it would offer even more analogies to torture. 😉
Ditto for Richard Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene”.
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To entirely sidestep the spiritual side of things, I wholeheartedly recommend that everyone read (skim?) Wilson’s “Sociobiology”. Especially tech geeks. Biological models seem to be in vogue everywhere today. I would expect Wilson’s writing (on biology) to be extremely useful to anyone focused on social computing. If nothing else, it would offer even more analogies to torture. 😉
Ditto for Richard Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene”.
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Robert Wright has more interviews here.
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Robert Wright has more interviews here.
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Smart? This is just microwaved warmed-over evolutionary-biology slams against religion, intellectual psychologististic pseudo-posing, in the religion is an opiate vein, ‘you can still live right without God’…blah, blah, blah. Raise IQ? This is bottom-barrel elitist rot, with downright scary totalitarianish-preachment’s like ‘evil’, is just a “toxic waste of free will”.
Immanuel Kant this is not.
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Smart? This is just microwaved warmed-over evolutionary-biology slams against religion, intellectual psychologististic pseudo-posing, in the religion is an opiate vein, ‘you can still live right without God’…blah, blah, blah. Raise IQ? This is bottom-barrel elitist rot, with downright scary totalitarianish-preachment’s like ‘evil’, is just a “toxic waste of free will”.
Immanuel Kant this is not.
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Christopher you’re right..we should stick with just reading the professional gutter snipes at Valleywag.
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Christopher you’re right..we should stick with just reading the professional gutter snipes at Valleywag.
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Funny — listening to E.O. Wilson will raise your IQ? I thought the whole point of his philosophy was that your genetic makeup pretty much determined your IQ, that your IQ was mostly FIXED at birth, that white people (on average) have better DNA and higher IQs and are thus superior to black people who (on average) have lower IQs.
Or something like that.
In any event Wilson doesn’t have any problem saying nice things about people like Arthur Jensen. Jensen is mostly famous for saying that isn’t possible to raise the IQs of blacks. Because they’re just stupid. Because of their genes.
I bet they never tried making those black kids listen to E.O. Wilson pontificating, though. Maybe that would have raised their IQs. That’s what we need. Less rap music and more biologists telling us we’re inferior. That would smarten us up real quick.
Of course, I might have gotten that all wrong. Evolutionary biology, IQ, race, genetics — or was that eugenics? — it’s complicated stuff! I think you need to be white to understand it completely.
Coulter, I think you were a little harsh… sure Wilson’s an atheist and thinks anyone who believes in God is a moron (or maybe just black), but he has said some really eloquent and profound things, like:
“So the universe that made itself after it got started, however it got started, is a first class universe.”
“The universe that made itself after it got started.” [author inhales deeply on “cigarette,” holds breath] [author exhales] Wow. You can’t say stuff like that without being a genius, man. [author offers “cigarette” to Coulter]
I bet you that Immanuel Kant guy never taught at Berkeley….
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Funny — listening to E.O. Wilson will raise your IQ? I thought the whole point of his philosophy was that your genetic makeup pretty much determined your IQ, that your IQ was mostly FIXED at birth, that white people (on average) have better DNA and higher IQs and are thus superior to black people who (on average) have lower IQs.
Or something like that.
In any event Wilson doesn’t have any problem saying nice things about people like Arthur Jensen. Jensen is mostly famous for saying that isn’t possible to raise the IQs of blacks. Because they’re just stupid. Because of their genes.
I bet they never tried making those black kids listen to E.O. Wilson pontificating, though. Maybe that would have raised their IQs. That’s what we need. Less rap music and more biologists telling us we’re inferior. That would smarten us up real quick.
Of course, I might have gotten that all wrong. Evolutionary biology, IQ, race, genetics — or was that eugenics? — it’s complicated stuff! I think you need to be white to understand it completely.
Coulter, I think you were a little harsh… sure Wilson’s an atheist and thinks anyone who believes in God is a moron (or maybe just black), but he has said some really eloquent and profound things, like:
“So the universe that made itself after it got started, however it got started, is a first class universe.”
“The universe that made itself after it got started.” [author inhales deeply on “cigarette,” holds breath] [author exhales] Wow. You can’t say stuff like that without being a genius, man. [author offers “cigarette” to Coulter]
I bet you that Immanuel Kant guy never taught at Berkeley….
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whole point of his philosophy was that your genetic makeup pretty much determined your IQ
I know, I know. But drive-by bloggers, drink not deep into philosophy, hey, if it’s on video and smarty, why golly gee whiz. It’s Calvin’s ‘Elect’ as applied to IQ, never mind that ‘enslaved theory of salvation’, just replace it with scientific reductionism, man as but a complex machine, preprogrammed by genetics at that, operating but on sociogenomic ‘patterns’.
Funny how if you toss some technology at it and wrap it up in Biological man-as-machine, biological-determinism sciencey-fun clothes, suddenly ‘The Final Solution’, Aryan master race ideology somehow becomes palatable to liberal San Frann’ers. Oh dear me, that eugenics be such a harsh word, change it to ‘sociobiology’.
All an illusion, eh? Scary stuff, in wrong hands…
“…morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends…ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed on us by our genes to get us to cooperate.”
And Kant never even ventured outside of Königsberg, member? 🙂
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whole point of his philosophy was that your genetic makeup pretty much determined your IQ
I know, I know. But drive-by bloggers, drink not deep into philosophy, hey, if it’s on video and smarty, why golly gee whiz. It’s Calvin’s ‘Elect’ as applied to IQ, never mind that ‘enslaved theory of salvation’, just replace it with scientific reductionism, man as but a complex machine, preprogrammed by genetics at that, operating but on sociogenomic ‘patterns’.
Funny how if you toss some technology at it and wrap it up in Biological man-as-machine, biological-determinism sciencey-fun clothes, suddenly ‘The Final Solution’, Aryan master race ideology somehow becomes palatable to liberal San Frann’ers. Oh dear me, that eugenics be such a harsh word, change it to ‘sociobiology’.
All an illusion, eh? Scary stuff, in wrong hands…
“…morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends…ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed on us by our genes to get us to cooperate.”
And Kant never even ventured outside of Königsberg, member? 🙂
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Chris- I suggest that you listen to maybe the Daniel Dennett or the Owen Gingerich interviews and remember
Daniel Boorstin:
“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance — it is the illusion of knowledge.”
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Chris- I suggest that you listen to maybe the Daniel Dennett or the Owen Gingerich interviews and remember
Daniel Boorstin:
“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance — it is the illusion of knowledge.”
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Ahhh but see, knowledge itself is an illusion, fostered on us by our genes to get us to cooperate in the reproductive cycle.
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IMO, EOW is a great example of these people who make a significant high-quality contribution in one field, then start believing their own PR and try to be broader than they’re really capable of pulling off. (Bobby Fischer is another great pathetic example.)
“Insect Societies” was an awesome book, and has a well-deserved following, but some of his stuff since then feels misguided to me. He seemed to be at his best when recording specific observations and organizing large quantities of information, and when he starts speculating he loses me.
Btw, if you’re into analyzing Wilson’s philosophy, check out “Three Scientists and their Gods” by Robert Wright. Good book, whether you agree or disagree with any of the subjects. (Fredkin and Boulding being the other two.)
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Ahhh but see, knowledge itself is an illusion, fostered on us by our genes to get us to cooperate in the reproductive cycle.
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IMO, EOW is a great example of these people who make a significant high-quality contribution in one field, then start believing their own PR and try to be broader than they’re really capable of pulling off. (Bobby Fischer is another great pathetic example.)
“Insect Societies” was an awesome book, and has a well-deserved following, but some of his stuff since then feels misguided to me. He seemed to be at his best when recording specific observations and organizing large quantities of information, and when he starts speculating he loses me.
Btw, if you’re into analyzing Wilson’s philosophy, check out “Three Scientists and their Gods” by Robert Wright. Good book, whether you agree or disagree with any of the subjects. (Fredkin and Boulding being the other two.)
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Christopher: LOL
Well, I expect the next “Final Solution” to be a lot more “fun” and palatable than the last one, which was rather poorly marketed. Wait until you can get your genome at the drug store for $100… that’s when the fun begins. Come on, get tested, America! Everyone’s doing it! Upload your data to the Internet and share with your friends! Join our social network — why date losers when you can date people who share your superior haplotypes? Try our special energy drink, it’s made for SMART people like YOU with the val/val polymorphism, with amino acids tailored for YOUR superior cerebral glucose metabolism! Now in three great flavors!
Eugenics 2.0 will be fun, and yes, it will test well in the Bay Area.
Perhaps it is only a coincidence that, in the United States, white folks will be worrying more and more about being in the minority, the way they did last century, when President Roosevelt told white people they weren’t f–king enough. There were calls for immigration reform back then, too. 1930 = 2030? Hmmmm…
♫ (Dancin’ at) Your Long Island Jazz Age parties
Waiter, bring us more Bacardis
We’ll order now what they ordered then
‘Cause ev’ry thing old is new again… ♫
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Christopher: LOL
Well, I expect the next “Final Solution” to be a lot more “fun” and palatable than the last one, which was rather poorly marketed. Wait until you can get your genome at the drug store for $100… that’s when the fun begins. Come on, get tested, America! Everyone’s doing it! Upload your data to the Internet and share with your friends! Join our social network — why date losers when you can date people who share your superior haplotypes? Try our special energy drink, it’s made for SMART people like YOU with the val/val polymorphism, with amino acids tailored for YOUR superior cerebral glucose metabolism! Now in three great flavors!
Eugenics 2.0 will be fun, and yes, it will test well in the Bay Area.
Perhaps it is only a coincidence that, in the United States, white folks will be worrying more and more about being in the minority, the way they did last century, when President Roosevelt told white people they weren’t f–king enough. There were calls for immigration reform back then, too. 1930 = 2030? Hmmmm…
♫ (Dancin’ at) Your Long Island Jazz Age parties
Waiter, bring us more Bacardis
We’ll order now what they ordered then
‘Cause ev’ry thing old is new again… ♫
LikeLike
I think what strikes me most about watching many of these videos is the freshing sense of humility (especially John Maynard Smith and Joseph Goldstein)conveyed by the interviewees. The lack of dogmaticism and absolutism is nice reminder that contentious ideas can be contained in civil conversations.
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I think what strikes me most about watching many of these videos is the freshing sense of humility (especially John Maynard Smith and Joseph Goldstein)conveyed by the interviewees. The lack of dogmaticism and absolutism is nice reminder that contentious ideas can be contained in civil conversations.
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