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  • They completely ignore the idea that maybe fears need a jump start like language is both learned and innate. I once read a study that showed how monkey could be taught to fear snakes very easily although they didn't fear snakes at birth. The same methods tried to make the monkeys fear flowers but were unable to.

  • i dont know why but evolutionary psychology sounds really stupid to me.

  • @esraretin

    It makes you feel uncomfortable, reality cares little for what makes you comfortable.

  • @CharlesNauck no, it sounds some sort of philosophy to me.like some freud's ideas or like ideas of nietzsche.

  • haha please sit down guys but dawkins loves to talk in this way

  • por favor...traduscan al español!!!!

  • While it's pretty satisfying to watch a brilliant person like Dawkins destroy blithering idiots like Wendy Wright, it is a far greater experience to listen to a pair of great minds, Dawkins and Pinker in this case, actually exchanging ideas that enrich us.

  • In the second 2/3 of this interview, Dawkins and Pinker start talking about the subjective experience of suffering and why it's there as opposed to a mere strong motivation to avoid things that would cause pain, and they propose that this would prevent debugging. I think that's an incorrect, Occam-violating hypothesis. More likely, it's just a byproduct of adaptations... Evolution doesn't think, "I want these organisms to be tamper-proof." and act accordingly. It just makes adaptations appear.

  • @KurosenvsGrither It's simply a machine without an override button I'd say. It never got installed in the first place. Installing this evolutionary upgrade could easily be a risk, the new machine would perform worse, thus not be naturally selected. Hence the override upgrade does not happen. We may not like suffering. But that's kind of the point. It is the alarm, with its nasty red light and terrible siren. If it'd be a nice soft blue light with bach music, we wouldn't act :).

  • @sorsocksfake The idea that suffering IS the red light is what I was saying. Dawkins and Pinker were taking a David Chalmers-style view that there must be some kind of "inherent" thing about the ability to suffer (Chalmers called this "qualia"), but it's not like that at all. Evolution just selected for whatever replicated itself best. Done. There was no plan, no Evolution Fairy saying "Music or suffering? Suffering would work better. I'll use that." Just selection by consequences.

  • Tinha que ter a tradução dessa porra!

  • Why does he have a brain randomly lying around?

  • @technofern muahahahaha...

  • That is so informative and lucid- the qualities ever-present in Pinker's writings. The criterion for adaptation astonished even Dawkins himself. Beautiful interview - all in all!

  • where i can find this with sub in spanish? sorry my english suck!

  • you can cut intelligence with a knife.

  • well, darwin was wrong, 34 people here just can't evolve =)

  • Incredibly informative stuff. Steven Pinker is always a treat to listen to and to read.

  • After watching this and Peter Singer interview I am really excited to see others!!

  • 14;22: "One can make predictions about features of human emotion that hadn't been observed before; bring people into the lab, test them and show that people do have those treats". Do anyone have a reference for that?

  • @ikmig That people show greater fear of hight, than of high speed in a car would be an example of a feature of human emotion that can not be explained by other theory of emotions than the evolutionary theory of emotions. Mechanisms in our brain triggers fear in certain conditions that threatens our survival and reproduction, but more easaly in those situations that our brain can recognize from our evironment of evolutionary adaption, than of those new to the human race today (cars).

  • Steven comes of as a einstein type character to me. FUCKING genious

  • @Hermoor The thing about him too, is he's a very likable man. He comes off as intelligent, informational, and very likable.

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  • Wait, so was Darwin's theory about bearing the canines correct? It seems to fit with our understanding of human facial expression as a function of emotive communication.

  • @PurpleHoneyBear It's difficult to say, but there could be something in that. Sometimes I think this goes too far . On a tv show a psychologist was looking at body language & he said one man was displaying a hostile attitude because he yawned "which displays the teeth, a hostile gesture." But a yawn may just simply be about cooling down the brain. I think at times evolutionary psychology is a bit of a soft science & evolutionary psychology’s evidentiary standards are often too low.

  • Simply beautiful!

    Thanks a lot for sharing.

  • These gentlemen are a gift. They are themselves life enhancing for others who focus on their words.

  • thanks for the video!

  • @1:06:22

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  • 34 people are creationists

  • @henriquemirenda 35 and counting

  • Steve Pinker: banana, portrait, sponge, volume, boobies.

    Richard Dawkins: So what you mean to say is that the roots of language might have been a direct result of variation in breathing due to emotional influences?

    Steve Pinker: Yes

    Richard Dawkins: That's fascinating.

  • @LauraandMoreLaura lol... got ur point

  • Steve Pinker just wanders the halls of Harvard carrying a brain in a jar, showing it to anyone who passes by...."I have a brain right here, it's just another organ!"

  • I love how creative and imaginitive the thinking of scientists can be, where as science might have a cleche as being boring, and religion on the other hand is very unimaginitive, and discretics creative thinking.

  • who are the knuckle-draggers that disliked this?

  • why don't they sit the fuck down?

  • @Logic1916 Doing an interview standing up does seem so much more unnatural as if you can tell that they are uncomfortable themselves. I always see Dawkins standing, if he isn't at a podium, like taking a cautious stance as if he might be in a brawl any second

  • @Logic1916

    they don´t sit down because it happened to them as it happens to many people in the office or in university: you meet by chance in the library or on the corridor and think "oh, hey buddy, let us have a short chat for 5 minutes and then we go back to work"

  • I have notice that "time" is common word

  • Theory of homosexuality:

    The human body is the vessel the mind/soul/spirit chooses to reside within as it is the reflection of what exists within, once the mind/soul/spirit chooses to leave the vessel, the vessel parishes to exist unless it generates DNA to leave behind.

    The mind/soul/spirit survives through the positive/negative memories within others over time. When the mind/soul/spirit chooses to move beyond the human form it ends its DNA line and its memories fade over time.

  • @GlobalMagik that's not even close to a theory. Scientists already have an idea of how homosexuality happens WITHOUT the mind/soul/spirit

  • Richard, the function of hydrogen working inside of life forms means there is a Maker because all lesser functions have a maker and no lesser function is comparable to the function that hydrogen has inside of us, running motors that turn shafts that manufacture ATP so we can live, for example. It also means the entire universe made of hydrogen and derivatives has the same Maker that we have.

    watch?v=fE8VO6z4tcg

    You cannot say anything without accounting for the origin of the layers of strata.

  • @JungleJargon

    what function of hydrogen? "means there is a maker"? lol...why? because you say so? who made the maker?

    where's the evidence for tha maker? how come hydrogen functions aren't evidence for Unicorns or Invisible magical pigs?

    "turn shafts"? there isn't one single molecular biology book mentioning that. what are your sources?

    so what you are saying is that oxygen exists in order to sustains us... but what is the function of oxygen in a planet 2 light years from here?

  • @transtlantic You don't know about the function that hydrogen has inside of us and you don't know about the billions of pumps, motors and spinning shafts inside of us so there is nothing you can say.

  • @JungleJargon

    where is one single science textbook that talks about "hydrogen function" and "motors" or "spinning shafts inside us"?

    all i notice is that i am easily exposing that you are writing made up bullshit.

  • @transtlantic It is hard to believe that you did not put ATP sythesis in your browser or search window yet.

  • @JungleJargon

    moron...i am a physician. i know perfectly well what is ATP.

    and i see NO book saying that ATP has a "maker". lol

    or spinning shafts or motors in order to be created! lolol

    that's why i am asking: WHAT ARE YOUR SOURCES???? lolol

    so easy to prove that you are making crap up.

  • @transtlantic Put "ATP synthesis" into your browser window and press enter.

  • @JungleJargon

    ATP synthesis...

    nope... no god, maker, shafts or motors mentioned.

    what are your sources?

    it's obvious you are making crap up. easy to spot your bullshit.

  • @transtlantic Yes, there are pumps, motors, shafts and machines that fabricate 3 ATP molecules per revolution. Put some those words in your search bar and press enter.

  • I find that music has to do also with sexual selection at least in prehistoric times human used music as a form of peackoking (people still do it though not all musicians are motivated to easy access to sex)

  • @Entropy56 It's true that evolutionary psychology is one of those fields that has a hard time definitively proving things, but don't think the scientific process goes out the window. Scientific process will always be better than religious dogma, so don't be disingenuous with your comparisons. One is adaptable and constantly attempting to break from its bias, while the other relishes in its evolutionary bias. Two totally different approaches.

  • In the discussion of the appreciation of music as merely an adaptionist byproduct, both Pinker and Dawkins decline to invoke sexual selection and Geoffrey Miller's compelling theories much to their own mutual diminishment.

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  • Much prefer Dawkins discussing intelligent ideas w/ intelligent people than wandering about demonstrating the ignorance of "creationists".

    As Dr. Feinman once said of the famous atheist Dr. Gell-Mann :

    "There is NO GOD, and Gell-Mann is HIS PROPHET."

  • @charleneaponte1 Richard Feynman never said that. The quote is attributed to Werner Heisenberg about *Paul Dirac*. Heisenberg: ``There is no God and Paul Dirac is His prophet.''

  • Many linguists disagree with pinker and chomsky...

  • just incredible the depth of mind of these two.

    such a joy to ride along through all those mental peaks and valleys.

    THANKS, richarddawkinsdotnet for all your hard work

  • I have just come from visiting some biased stupid racist posts here on youtube, both from black and white (yes, there is black racism).

    THose two men are such great scholars. it is such a relief to listen to them after that dumb crap before. Thanks, for posting.

  • @ulizinho stfu the mere fact that you would have "explain" that blacks can be "racist" is telling. ya think?

  • @strong8action

    What ?

  • language in the "mental image" could exist somewhat from the energies which the surrounding movement lays onto memory. so, as long as it can formulate an object and its use, without the intrinsic use of "speech acts", there are other types that animals are aware of with humans such as body movements, they know when you are going to pick them up, or shushing them for barking from a movement or a tone, so this disassociated realm of emotional, logical, pyschomotor organizations gets rerendered

  • @gen6k at the foot of the either physically proximative and organized into the mental faculty for later use, or transfered over from nonlocality by another animal for general use

  • the music part was sick

  • Novel about an alternative view of evolution see video book trailer

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  • "Atheism" is repugnant to logic. Logic dictates that the human brain is finite in its capacity & therefor, as logic dictates, incapable of fathoming the infinite. For this reason folks of Hitchens' persuasion rely on the ignorance & immaturity of their congregation, who are invariably unread & inexperienced in implementing the tried and true methodologies of deductive reasoning, to sell their illogical suppositions to the sexually-frustrated librarians who run our tax-funded public libraries.

  • @YourUTubeMonitor Great job on using big words which in the end mean nothing. It's easy to make simple things uselessly complex, way harder to bring complex things to a simpler form. Next time you risk an insult or critic try backing it up instead. But thanks for the laugh... Invariably inexperienced LOL How can someone be constantly inexperienced in something he does, this defies the very definition of experience. Your comment is a big rack of junk

  • U.S. soldiers are occupying & waging war in the nations of Iraq, Afghanistan, Qatar, Pakistan & God knows where else. No declarations of war have been made as prescribed by the United States Constitution. ALL participants are guilty of treason. The "I-was-just-following-orders" defense didn't work at the Nuremberg show-trials of 1946-7 and it won't work now. U.S. commanders have routinely violated the Yamashita/Medina Standard in regards to hierarchical accountability in cases of war crimes.

  • Let our sentiments reflect race-hatred as we hold all white men responsible for the actions of a few. Meanwhile, let us utilize white man's technology as we lament tearfully about how wonderful things were in the woods amongst the naked savages prior to Colombus's arrival on Cat Island in A.D. 1492. Little guys are always beating up big guys.

  • Mary Tamm leads us.

  • Well,I just read that gardens represents escapism,like religions,as they say "everything is connected". Thank Goodness that we have science,its our best way to understand our surrondings.

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  • Why don´t people like these 2 intelligent men rule the world?

  • steven pinker has great 70's shag hair!

  • The cause {singular} of cancer has been known and authenticated through extensive clinical trials. Professor John Beard's Trophoblast Thesis concerns itself with malignancies {neoplasms} & fetal cells being one-and-the-same. Your children will contract cancer if their diets are deficient in vitamin B17.”

  • @YourUTubeMonitor about the seed stuff i dont know but since most medications come from nature i am sure there is some validity to it.

    But that does not make learning our past and how we evolve any less important! knowing how our bodies work how the genome works how our and all animals dna works is important for all of us not just humans but all animals.

    With that knowledge we can not only make cures we can prevent diseases from even happening, no more genetic defects a perfect human being.

  •  Darwin's religion is an iron-curtainesque dogmatic perversion. It's utterly resistant to logic & deduction. It culls tax dollars as it humiliates its unrepresented sponsors. Mutations & adaptations amongst animalcules don't reflect the monumental transmogrifications that Darwin's Sumerian postulations hinge upon.

  • Evolutive processes: chemic, biologic, epidemiologic, symbiotic, are all racing toward their uncharted, random, purposeless ends. 

  • @YourUTubeMonitor bloody hell u'r stupid!

    Not charles darwin nor richard dawkins ever EVER says that natural selection require us to kill ANYONE it only says that in NATURE the strong will always be the victor the most adapted will always survive to carry its genome into the gene pool thus creating more with the same adaptation.

    No where does survival of the fittest apply to modern human society we have Medicine,laws,technology etc to

    prevent nature from working its course and controlling us

  • @YourUTubeMonitor thats quite a foolish statement. U have proven ur own lack of knowledge and as the commenter below me said, using big words does not help ur argument.

  • @YourUTubeMonitor using big words doesn't make anything you've said true.

  • Someone subtitle this in spanish, please. I can get the overall idea, but it's still hard to understand it all.

  • 1:06:23 ho ho ho ho ho EPIC WIN

  • He is using the word "seminal". I like that. 0:00:37

    Bangkok Johnny

    Royaum de Thailand

  • Eugenicist and plagiarist Charles Darwin preached elitism, in that those who rise to the top economically, are there due to superior intellect. Darwin's commandment concerning the strong destroying the weak demands that society's elite class thin the herd within the lower classes of those who are infirmed, aged and sick through sterilization, abortion, contraceptives, poisoned inoculations, war, pestilence and willful neglect.

  • @YourUTubeMonitor you got it exactly wrong

  • Darwinism has evolved, as has the cancer industry. Both have their porcine snouts buried deeply in the trough of tax-funded grants.

  • It's time for gays to adopt straightness—to put aside their gayness—to embrace appropriate gaiety—to live, to love & to laugh, & to joust, with pronghorns directed frontward.

  • Is there a problem in conveying religious dogmas/allegories or metaphors to inspire people? Like what Martin Luther King did? answer would be nice

  • @cnestudy1

    dogmas, yes there is a problem. allegories? No, but people should understand they are just that

  • lol pinker just happened to have a random brain to show

  • I just have one question. Why do we smile. Every other animal including our most genetically similar apes shows their teeth when they are angry.

  • @SmileWidePro Not so. Our genetic relatives (the ape, bonobo, etc.) express smiling like behavior as well. Look at this video. watch?v=Rh8gfIcjQNY. Also, you can search various other videos of the primates playing and being ticklish, which express these similar emotions.

  • @SmileWidePro Chimps smile too.

  • I can't believe they can stand so long.

  • @serbwithblade and there is a table with chairs RIGHT BEHIND them too!

  • @serbwithblade Yeah, standing is hard.

  • @serbwithblade Yeah, standing is hard.

  • I noticed this too.  I've never seen this approach before.

  • @serbwithblade I was just thinking about 17 minutes through, "Their legs must be on fire right now" haha lol

  • @serbwithblade evolution

  • @Paseosinperro lol yeah haha

  • @serbwithblade I can't believe the cameraman can stand for so long, switching back and forth between the two of them.

  • @serbwithblade

    Dawkins and Pinker can stand so long. But think about the cameraman having to listen to this stuff he doesn't understand for an hour with the camera in his hand.

  • It didn't learn that much new information through this talk, but i think the 1 on 1 format is really good.

  • I think Pinker's hypothesis about music has some weight to it. Imagine the first forms of 'music'. I think it would be something like Tribal African music using just drums.

    I can imagine humans back then enjoying the rhythm of it and they enjoy it perhaps evolution built humans to react to certain harmonic changes and the sounds of drum beating just pushes those buttons.

  • It is a fascinating concept of the the human mind having initial patterns to it from conception to enable it to survive as opposed to the blank slate. I think a great analogy to this would be that a child's mind contains what is effective a computer like bios or base instructions and develops from this its 'operating systems' through the youth until adulthood. I really enjoy this concept thank you for these video interviews.

  • You CAN'T have this kind of argument on a religious level. Why? cause religion discussion is based on fairy tales and how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. :S

  • These Dawkins interviews are filmed & paced like RPG conversation cutscenes. If my CHA is high enough, hopefully Pinker will join my party.

  • @gmanrpg lol yeah

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  • why is richard so red in this video?

  • @saburoemon he's white.

  • Darwin was just an agent of human knowledge. I do not think that he would have liked closed minded scientists.

  • @Batamon1997 Darwin was very careful to accumulate evidence to support or reject his hypotheses. I'd bet that he would have liked any scientist who did the same.

  • The best thing about this interview is how they can discuss such complicated topics on a level that non scientists can understand & how they can maintain it for over an hour. You can see them struggle with it from time to time but they pull it off. That's how you know you're dealing with truly great minds.

  • 1:06:23

    thats hot

  • Homie just picked up a brain, like, "I got a brain right here".

  • @rockyraccoon what?  you don't have brains laying around your room too?

  • These men stand tall as they discuss their common respect for Charles Darwin and how evolutionary biology apply to our psychology. These are academic warriors of observation and concepts that are fascinating.

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  • Did Charles Darwin reject his own theory of evolution before he died ?

  • @Lanixpop No. Death bed conversions are also lies, for the most part. If an atheist ever has a death bed conversion, it's very likely that he or she has an altered rational because of the medication they're propped up on to keep them alive and the deceptiveness of illusory perception in that stage of consciousness. This myth did not come about until 1915, 33 years after his death.

    Evolutionary theory is impervious to Darwin's personal beliefs, so I cringe a bit when people get caught up in it.

  • @Lanixpop

    No that was just a rumor that was popular amongst creationists. However, even if he did reject evolution, so what? Evolution is a proven fact, no personal opinion is going to change that.

    What if Newton rejected his theory of gravity before he died? Would that change the demonstrable fact that gravity exists?

  • This was amazing. one of the best videos I've ever watched. Anyone who sees this, mind you, it is entirely worth it to watch the whole thing.

  • How fortunate we are for the opportunity to be flies on the wall listening to these two scholars converse.

  • In case anyone is wondering, traveling at 80mph and crashing into a wall (47 minutes in) would be the equivalent of a fall of approximately 214ft. That's somewhere between 15 and 20 stories up (1 story is between 10ft and 14ft)

    a = (Vf - Vi) / t

    9.807m/s^2 = (35.7632m/s - 0) / t

    t = 3.6467s

    d = 1/2 (Vf - Vi) * t

    d = .5 * 35.7632m/s * 3.6467s

    d = 65.2088m

    d = 213.9400ft

  • aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh. I´m atheist myself and i strongly admire both of them, but why do they always have this obsession with darwin?

  • @Steidemeister56 Because Darwin really developed the intricacies of evolution, and evolution, as dawkins puts it, is "the greatest show on earth" (amazing book, btw). Also, evolution, when understood correctly, can explain almost everything in our world, and besides the creation of the universe (except for the multiverse theory, also related to evolution) it can completely debunk god.

  • @TumescenTurtle i know i understand evolution very well, but it´s not because i don´t think darwin was a great man (because i do) it´s because they seem to be forming some kind of sect where they are literally worshipping darwin. Darwin didn´t even come up with the idea of evolution he just offered a mechanism and didn´t say anything about stellar evolution because he was a friggin biologist and not astronomer. But again, i´m already an atheist so you don´t have to convince me of anything.

  • @Steidemeister56: :) I would say its OK to be obsessed by Darwin in a program called "The Genius of Charles Darwin" doubtless made during the "Darwin Year".

    But I understand your point.

  • Pinker: “and, and, and... goose bumps might be a throw back to when we were birds and got our feathers up in a plume...”

    Dawkins: “yeah.. That’s cool...

    Pinker: “and, and, and ... bearing our teeth is a throwback when we had vampire-like fangs to scare away threatening adversaries... “

    Dawkins: “yeah... that's cool. Wow, Pinker you are so intelligent.”

  • @Entropy56 I know you're just poking fun, but there is legitimacy behind both of those theories. Regarding the showing of teeth and other aggressive behaviors, we have distinct neural tracts in our hypothalamus that mediate precisely this behavior. Look up affective aggression in the brain. It's all for show to scare off animals in attempt to minimize injury for both parties. Effective aggression is the silent predator going for the kill. Both are regulated by different parts of the hypothalamus

  • « there is legitimacy behind both of those theories. »

    Except of course that we don't have feathered animals in our ancestry. They're a different branch: the lineage leading up to mammals had already split of from the branch leading to feathered dinosaurs and modern birds long before either emerged.

  • @XGralgrathor Then replace feathers with fur then. I don't even remember him mentioning it strictly coming from bird plumage.

  • @draco89123 Can evolution theory explain why the majority of humanity doesn't believe in evolution? If it can, then rejecting evolution is the most natural thing to do. If it can't, then evolution theory fails.

  • @Entropy56

    wtf....fuckin creationists.

  • @Entropy56

    The answer is religion dogma!

  • All I heard was two people looking back on history and speculating about Evolution. They overlay their Darwinian bias into the conversation in the same way as two religious people would do. In other words, most of what they said was not verifiable but spun stories in an attempt to console themselves that their religion is true.

  • @Entropy56 What you've heard were explantions for phenomenoms of human behavior, of course they we're guessing. There's no exact explanation for any of these things, we have no records about this, these things don't fossilize. But we can observe the behavior of other animals and we can make assumptions. Of course if you don't accept evolution and you think our love of music was simply put into us, it's not surprising that this conversation meant nothing to you. I prefer THESE explenations.

  • These are very interesting chaps but I equate much of their ideas to the state of understanding that existed when we thought the earth was the center of the universe. It is an anthrocentric mode of thinking.

  • @madelefant05 Most of evolutionary psychology is anthrocentric. Thanks tips.

  • @madelefant05 Anthropocentric? Thanks for that. 

  • @roxasroks Your point is I dropped the po?

    

  • @madelefant05 No, that evolution psychology that's aimed at understand our minds is, by default, going to be "all about us". In other words, no shit. :D

  • @roxasroks LOL. good point. The point I was making that we were only at the beginning of our understanding. Once upon a time we thought everything rotated around the earth because it was what we were familiar with. Then we learned we rotated around the sun and about the vast universe. I think we are at that point of understanding language in the scope of living beings.

  • @madelefant05 I disagree. However I can't prove that your wrong, so I suppose we will see. :D

  • the best part of this video is when pinker goes "I happen to have one here..." and picks up a jar with a brain rotflmao

  • LOL 1:06:32

  • Damn, Pinker is F'ing smart!

  • Humans and non humans are man-made constructs.  So is religion.

  • anyone here know why diagnoses such as depression or schizophrenia could benefit or serve as a function to the species?

  • I don't really understand how homosexuality can be a product of our genes. Wouldn't those genetic traits die out, since homosexuals don't pass their genes on. Maybe in teh past they had to "pretend" to be strait and have children, but what about know. Know that they don't get kids, will the traits eventually die out? (Is this a stupid question?)

  • @ihatekhomeini That assumes two things 1. Homosexuality is inherited genetically. (Quite possible, but there is still debate about this) 2. Homosexuals don't reproduce through heterosexual sex (which of course they do all the time). Assuming there is a gay gene, someone with that gene could still pass it on by reproducing. This would imply that ironically, the social stigmas and prescriptions against homosexuality throughout history have forced gays to pass on the gay gene.