Richard Dawkins and The Claude Delusion: The great skeptic gets taken in

RRedReign about 4 hours ago 10 commentsRead Article on garymarcus.substack.com

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Peritract•about 3 hours ago

It's been clear for a long time now that Dawkins was never actually very skeptical; he likes taking contrary positions based on spite more than reason, as can be seen from his increasing adoption of the religion he used to rail against [1].

At this point, 'person who is popularly thought to be intelligent thinks AI is conscious' should make you question the first part, not endorse the second.

[1] https://ewtn.co.uk/article-famous-atheist-richard-dawkins-sa...

jhbadger•about 2 hours ago

A "cultural X" is a totally valid position. Many Jewish atheists consider themselves "cultural Jews" and see no problem with celebrating Jewish festivals even if they don't believe in God. Being an atheist doesn't mean you have to reject the culture you grew up in.

Peritract•about 2 hours ago

I would agree with that, but Dawkins made a career of not doing so, and only modulated his position when it gave him new targets to rail against.

jhbadger•about 2 hours ago

He never did such a thing. Most of his career was in evolutionary biology and his atheism was only relevant in that many of his critics were people rejecting evolution on religious grounds. And even his "God Delusion" (which was only published 20 years ago, when his scientific career was winding down) wasn't about why celebrating Christmas or singing carols was bad, only the part about believing in a God.

jrm4•about 1 hour ago

I don't think it's "spite," I just don't think he's that smart -- or wise -- to be precise. He just has "zealotry in the other direction."

downbad_•about 3 hours ago

I'll read this later. I've added it to my favorites. I'm a big fan of Dawkins.

buggy6257•41 minutes ago

Boy are you in for a surprise.

xvxvx•about 3 hours ago

The man has wasted his precious time on earth trying to explain the meaning of life without accepting the existence of the soul. It makes total sense that he can be fooled by AI nonsense.

To be 85 and lack basic wisdom is quite an astonishing achievement.

dgoodell•about 2 hours ago

Are you suggesting 85 year olds typically have more wisdom and are less easily fooled by things?

Slow_Hand•about 2 hours ago

What is a soul, and how does one go about proving it’s existence?

It doesn’t seem obvious to me.

pfannkuchen•about 1 hour ago

I think a coherent framing is to imagine that the soul is a perceptual construct built into the hardware layer of human perception.

Sort of like how the collection of particles you see as a tree doesn’t look like that without being passed through a bunch of brain hardware. If we want to be pedantic we can accurately say that trees don’t exist, but given that physical object and tree are constructs in the human brain it’s pretty convenient to just treat them as “real”, while at the same time understanding that at some granular level they aren’t truly “real” (and at some further granularity we actually have no clue what’s real).

redbluered•about 2 hours ago

Neither existence nor nonexistence is obvious. Ergo, differences of opinion. Militants on both sides are problematic. I strongly dislike Dawkins, in the same way as I do people knocking on my door trying to convert me to any other religion.

At least the zealots who knockon my door. I've had a few good conversations.

Ditto for LLM sentience. We have no evidence either way.

jrm4•about 1 hour ago

Op said "accepting," not proving.

And the older I get, this does make sense to me. Belief in a soul doesn't really require proof for me. I understand that this may not be satisfying in an academic way for some, but "humans have souls and machines probably don't" strikes me as the wisest default position until we have some other very strong proof otherwise.

willmarch•about 1 hour ago

What evidence is there for humans having souls to support your "wisest default"? What would constitute "strong proof otherwise" in the case of machines?

Wouldn't the wise position be that since there is no evidence of souls at all that the default should be that both humans and machines do not contain a soul until proven otherwise?

elch•about 1 hour ago

If humans have souls, do other organisms have them too? Is this a trait unique to Homo sapiens? Did Neanderthals, for example, have souls?

And if the theory of evolution is true, at what point did “humans” begin to possess souls?

downbad_•about 3 hours ago

Wasted?

jrm4•about 1 hour ago

I think so, personally. I wouldn't bank a lot on "the soul" per se, but Dawkins is absolutely one of those "smart but not wise" people.

I imagine people don't dig it because it can be woo and vibey, but the older I get the more I understand the value of the "imprecise" metaphysical/religious/etc whatever you want to call it.

Someone in this space who handles this very well, unlike Dawkins, is Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

luke5441•about 1 hour ago

Wise man Nassim Taleb who voted for Trump to help Palestinians and now Gaza and 10% increasing of the country he was born in is rubble.

Maybe the lesson is that all those public intellectuals are not that wise and we should follow people more that stay in their lane.