Richard Dawkins: Evolution, Intelligence, Simulation, and Memes

This episode introduces Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist behind The Selfish Gene and the coiner of the word meme, recorded just before the pandemic, after the usual sponsor segment.

Given some 10^22 stars, Dawkins thinks intelligent life elsewhere is highly likely, and that we would most plausibly detect it by radio — SETI researchers expect something like prime numbers as an obvious signal of intelligence.

then you're committed to the view that the things that happened on this planet are staggeringly improbable. I mean, ludicrously, off the charts improbable.

Alien mathematics would likely resemble ours, and Dawkins sticks his neck out to predict that any life we find will be Darwinian — working by the non-random survival of randomly generated codes, though not necessarily DNA-based.

On intelligent design, he affirms evolution is the only scientific theory for intelligent life; no alternative has ever been suggested, and any future revision would be a refinement like relativity to Newton, not a fundamental break.

Asked whether machines can be engineered to be intelligent or must evolve, Dawkins is committed to the view that it is ultimately possible because the brain is purely physical, though in practice it has come far slower than early pioneers hoped.

Evolution is a paradox: deplorably wasteful and fundamentally based on waste, yet it produces magnificent results like the design of a soaring albatross, alongside botched jobs no engineer would be proud of.