Information, Evolution, and intelligent Design - With Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett explores the first steps towards a unified theory of information, through common threads in the convergence of evolution, learning, and engineering.
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The concept of information is fundamental to all areas of science, and ubiquitous in daily life in the Internet Age. However, it is still not well understood despite being recognised for more than 40 years. In this talk, Daniel Dennett explores steps towards a unified theory of information, through common threads in evolution, learning, and engineering.
This event was the first in a series on the theme of 'Convergence', exploring the links between neuroscience, philosophy and artificial intelligence. If you're in London, look out for more events later in the year: rigb.org/whats-on
We are grateful for the help of the Real Time Club in organising this event.
Daniel Dennett is known as one the most important philosophers of our time, with controversial and thought-provoking arguments about human consciousness, free will, and human evolution.
He is also a writer and cognitive scientist, using neuroscience, linguistics, artificial intelligence, computer science, and psychology to inform his philosophy, particularly his philosophies relating to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.
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[@NuntiusLegis]

I think it was about time that Darwin himself explains his theory on KZbin.

[@ianjuarez7864]

Sure. I will ask the furies to retrieve Kronos so he could turn back time. Or lord hades has darwins soul stuck somewhere

[@RuminatingWizard]

Dr James Tour debate

[@allenbrininstool7558]

I agree.

[@utah133]

We have a better handle on it now than he did. He discovered it. We've fleshed it out. Dude didn't even know about DNA.

[@archangecamilien1879]

Haha...

[@matsbjur2535]

A Dan Dennet lecture will always broaden your understanding of the world and humanity. One of our greatest philosophers. What makes him great is the he grounds his philosophy in the sciences and is very articulate. I hope he gets to keep his health for many more years.

[@ralphmacchiato3761]

So do I

[@InfinityBlue4321]

😂

[@satishsilawat8481]

@@ralphmacchiato3761 687iii8⁸i⁸76887

[@GreatBehoover]

You can't be serious!🤣🤣🤣 This man CAN'T SUPORT ANYTHING about the termites evolution! He ASSUMES the "evolution" that DNA CODE has easily debunked now! Ignorance of the latest evidence that your MYTHOLOGY OF NATURALISM remains securely MYTHOLOGY.... is no excuse for you! He literally ASSUMES that the termite castle was not programmed...but rather a feature of evolution. But NOTICE how he CAN'T BACK UP his claims using UNASSUMED OBSERVATIONAL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE which has already DISPROVEN his assumptions! There is ZERO EVIDENCE that this behavior was LEARNED by "evolution"! The castle is specifically made for a specific purpose that helps them survive and thrive. There is no PROCESS that shows their learned behavior in building them from a history of NO PREVIOUS BEHAVIOR of not building them! He ASSUMES the evolution!🤣🤣🤣🤣 How do people not "get" this fact? Take a LOGIC CLASS! You don't look at an object and make a statement about the pathway of it's origin with ZERO EVIDENCE of that pathway...other than your silly words proclaiming "that's how it happened"😂😂😂😂😂

[@Knowledgebrief128]

An incredible example of someone with such clarity of mind. I can't tell you how important Daniel Dennett has been in the "evolution" of my thinking. RIP Mr Dennett, your calm reasoning leaves this world, just when we may need it the most.

[@paxdriver]

Title threw me off to be honest but very pleasantly surprised. Excellent thanks for the upload

[@nyanpraterjr1819]

The idea that "the system runs itself" is always so comforting to me. I feel this point after each Daniel Dennett talk I watch. I have a deep need to give, give, give, help, help, help, to the point it makes me break down and want to "exit the scene/picture." When Dennett reminds me that I am one of many bets that the hive makes (is making) to expand/survive, not an important or key part of anything, it makes me relax and "pull back."

[@Chris.4345]

Hang in there, man.

[@cyraxtor5687]

You don't have to be a drone always

[@iwanttocomplain]

If it’s comforting that your actions have no consequence or your input is irrelevant you are neglecting your duty as a member of a society.

[@smithkarine9678]

so the system runs itself? listenning to a dumb doesn t help you to think.....

[@GreatBehoover]

😂😂😂😂 Hilarious!!! You can't be serious!🤣🤣🤣 This man CAN'T SUPORT ANYTHING about the termites evolution! He ASSUMES the "evolution" that DNA CODE has easily debunked now! Ignorance of the latest evidence that your MYTHOLOGY OF NATURALISM remains securely MYTHOLOGY.... is no excuse for you! He literally ASSUMES that the termite castle was not programmed...but rather a feature of evolution. But NOTICE how he CAN'T BACK UP his claims using UNASSUMED OBSERVATIONAL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE which has already DISPROVEN his assumptions! There is ZERO EVIDENCE that this behavior was LEARNED by "evolution"! The castle is specifically made for a specific purpose that helps them survive and thrive. There is no PROCESS that shows their learned behavior in building them from a history of NO PREVIOUS BEHAVIOR of not building them! He ASSUMES the evolution!🤣🤣🤣🤣 How do people not "get" this fact? Take a LOGIC CLASS! You don't look at an object and make a statement about the pathway of it's origin with ZERO EVIDENCE of that pathway...other than your silly words proclaiming "that's how it happened"😂😂😂😂😂

[@entyropy3262]

One of the few people who can really think and explain complex coherences with words in a way, so that everyone is able to understand them. Daniel Dennett is one of my few heroes.

[@MagnumInnominandum]

A Gem of the 20th century.

[@InfinityBlue4321]

😅

[@GreatBehoover]

He's completely bluffing....and THAT is your hero?🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@CesarClouds]

He's a great intellectual.

[@matswessling6600]

@@GreatBehooverbluffing? in what way?

[@gardenladyjimenez1257]

Cued at 7:00, Dennett's "Long Answer" - cultural evolution, thinking tools, novel brain structures, evolved "virtual" machines, wetware of our glial cells... - evolution of evolution? A + B - bumped into each other and became an AB? 10 minutes into this talk, I have listened to a linguistic nightmare of endless gibberish. Multi-syllable words strung together in meaningless "Just So" stories without one shred of scientific explanation of every the smallest details of "evolution." I'd love for him to produce a detailed transcript of this talk for everyone to print out and redline. Using his vast vocabulary, he never comes down to earth to explain one element of science convincingly from any discipline related to our existence and that of the world - cosmology, biology, chemistry, paleontology, physics. It is amazing that this presentation is seen as an intelligent analysis of the creation of the world we know.

[@schmetterling4477]

More lonely kid here. ;-)

[@leonecho1979]

Damn, Dennett, back at it again with the dimensional analysis! :D

[@prependedprepended6606]

31:00" What bothers me about the memes and software, is that they *are* dependent upon the physical brain and hardware, respectively. So to say that memes or software are not physical is only partially true because with out a medium, such as neural cells or silicon, they cannot exist.

[@drsaikiranc]

software is purely physical

[@jimmyross2388]

Damn Daniel!!!! Back at it again with the wisdom. Couldn't resist, sorry.

[@InfinityBlue4321]

😅

[@acernera]

Where is the Q&A from this session??? That question looked awesome at the end

[@TheRoyalInstitution]

+Anthony C. Here it is: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mJaudJJtp9GHq9k - Enjoy!

[@acernera]

Thanks! Awesome :)

[@michelegoremg]

+The Royal Institution . Yes. Thanks

[@donaldclifford5763]

It's a separate video.: Q&A THEORY OF INFORMATION.

[@kenfisher5092]

Anthony C. 1

[@MarkLucasProductions]

I find Dennett to be often a very engaging presenter - primarily for his content. This talk was absolutely riveting for me. It seems that he and I are on very similar wavelengths.

[@handris99]

Same here.

[@-receptor4803]

Dark Light difficult but not impossible, right?

[@PETERGIMLE]

I suppose you'd have to sapiosexual

[@vladim73]

It's said that you can't "see" the other, overwhelmingly present and contrary waves! Maybe it's time to dispose off the same old, broken record and seek for the latest scientific evidence. Like this one: kzbin.info/www/bejne/l3KQd5akgdh5Z8k

[@GreatBehoover]

😂😂😂 You can't be serious!🤣🤣🤣 This man CAN'T SUPORT ANYTHING about the termites evolution! He ASSUMES the "evolution" that DNA CODE has easily debunked now! Ignorance of the latest evidence that your MYTHOLOGY OF NATURALISM remains securely MYTHOLOGY.... is no excuse for you! He literally ASSUMES that the termite castle was not programmed...but rather a feature of evolution. But NOTICE how he CAN'T BACK UP his claims using UNASSUMED OBSERVATIONAL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE which has already DISPROVEN his assumptions! There is ZERO EVIDENCE that this behavior was LEARNED by "evolution"! The castle is specifically made for a specific purpose that helps them survive and thrive. There is no PROCESS that shows their learned behavior in building them from a history of NO PREVIOUS BEHAVIOR of not building them! He ASSUMES the evolution!🤣🤣🤣🤣 How do people not "get" this fact? Take a LOGIC CLASS! You don't look at an object and make a statement about the pathway of it's origin with ZERO EVIDENCE of that pathway...other than your silly words proclaiming "that's how it happened"😂😂😂😂😂

[@seankelley1987]

Dennett is an incredibly fun orator. I love how he uses voice inflection to elucidate his points and keep the audience attentive.

[@RobertASmith-yy7ge]

Sean Kelley that’s called smug cockiness which he needs because he can’t use logic, reasoning or intellectual honestly to make a single point.

[@jtorelli7341]

@@RobertASmith-yy7ge oh, really? You mean smug cockiness like leaving an insulting comment filled with vague, ambiguous vapid remarks? Hypocrisy, thy name is you.

[@cheygrimes]

@@jtorelli7341 doesn’t make what he said false 🤡

[@jtorelli7341]

@@cheygrimes you don't understand irony, do you? That's okay, neither did the guy I was replying to.

[@cheygrimes]

@@jtorelli7341 oh I understand irony perfectly. You’re comment was jus as smug therefore jus as ironic 🤡 my comment was only to reiterate that you’re slaty that mr smith spoke the truth 😂😂

[@Rico-Suave_]

I loved Dr. Daniel Dennett, very sad to hear about his passing, I've would have loved to meet him, he was my absolute favorite, an intellectual giant, a legend, true sage, heard he was also very kind gentle person, huge loss to civilization, I will watch tons of his lectures in the next few days in his memory 1:00:53

[@Rico-Suave_]

Watched all of it, brilliant lecture

[@THEANPHROPY]

I consider 43:49 to be wrong in order to validate this: consider the quantum building blocks of reality; ergo energy is information, as is its associated quantum material

[@hazalozturk440]

*entropy

[@locouk]

A great talk, I was riveted all the way through. Thank you.

[@GreatBehoover]

inly a NONTHINKER would say this to such silly fallacies this man relies upon!!!

[@CesarClouds]

@GreatBehoover What fallacies? He was lecturing in some parts and not making arguments. Point out where he actually made an argument, state the fallacy, and map out his reasoning.

[@arkadebsengupta7702]

​@@CesarCloudsSave your breath, the person is replying to every comment with something cynical.

[@CesarClouds]

@@arkadebsengupta7702 Thanks.

[@dumpsky]

actually, gaudi made an upside-down model of the sagrada made of strings and hanging weights. so in a way, he let nature (gravity) co-design it.

[@MagnumInnominandum]

Gravity is always a codesigner, particularly in any structural space. When it is not we call it poor design.

[@kennethgarcia25]

"Extrinsic property of location" 36.17 : but what if they choose the location based on a set of conditions they found advantageous. Then the choice is an intrinsic condition in terms of information (ie a strategy) which means this strategy or meme can be a source of advantage to which the individual may be have a selection advantage. Neuron positions are highly precise.

[@lotfibouhedjeur]

I am completely mesmerized by this great mind.

[@jeffe2222]

I got a good laugh out of this. Thanks Mr. Daniel!

[@donaldclifford5763]

You're a Silly Billy.

[@jessewallace12able]

The jump from 'replicators' with quasi-Darwinian properties, to bacteria was way too brief and will be attacked I'm guessing.

[@AmericanBrain]

Read the darn book to see a detailed exposition!

[@captainstinkyvonpoopberg4925]

I could listen to Daniel Dennett all day.

[@kennethgarcia25]

Other mammals and even birds have the capacity for language and tool making. It is the capacity to instantiate a node with meaning that is to associate something with something that it was not "intended" to be or do. Humans represent the highest point in this development! This is the event! It is conditioning at it's highest level: a multidimensional representation recognized for one of its dimensions which can be applied to a purpose it had not previously been applied to. Whether it be tools, or sounds, or a behavior...

[@le-manu298]

1) Why do you think termites are clueless when the outcome of what they built is the actual outcome/purpose they have hoped for which is a shelter? For example, the termites were building a home, and a home was the result they got and a beautiful one haha I may say looking at the image you disclosed. Why didn't they end up build a simple hole just to fall in it and rest or sleep?

[@PongoXBongo]

Perhaps the same reason humans switched from caves to skyscrapers: maximally efficient use of resources.

[@paulashla]

I think he means that the process is not top-down, like when an architect designs a structure. Instead the process happens without conscious thought. It is the product of instinct tuned over millions of years of optimization.

[@MichaelHarrisIreland]

He did apologise to all termite lovers and that included all lovers of every form of life. But to say anything about anything a person has to be subjective. He means they appear to work mindlessly, even if the outcome is a cathedral. While we plan a cathedral even if it never gets built. Termites are bottom up builders, we are top down builders.

[@SawdEndymon]

Had the honor of hearing Dennett speak once at my university. A true intellectual

[@AnAdequateViolinist]

Don’t insult him by calling him an intellectual

[@InfinityBlue4321]

😂

[@DeleuzeGuattari]

The term information is convoluted for me. The content from Sir dennet had taught me alot about, perhaps any of you help me out in recommending some great books on information kind of philosophical reflection on information.

[@RezaRob3]

A truly remarkable lecture that explains the origins of life correctly!!

[@bersl2]

"meme evolution creates adaptations that enhance the fitness of *memes* independently of whether it enhances our fitness." I dedicate these words to thee, 4chan.

[@ChannelMath]

actually, human computers were also often like the unknowing termites, and it took another human designer (or layers of such) to arrange them into patterns that do useful, comprehensible work

[@suckmecok]

Richard Feynman talked about using this exact process with interns at Los Alamos to calculate data sets and it was faster than their computers.

[@JohnStephenWeck]

Your right, it's just a matter of where the controlling software is coming from. Software means information stored in a memory system. Software gives intelligence, and all minds are software systems. There is no intelligent behavior without software. In this case, each termite's mind is a small piece of software stored in their brains. So they can slightly (by our standard) understand what they are doing, and slightly control themselves. We understand our world much better, because we have much more software stored in our cortex. In addition, the termite genome software adds intelligence as well (albeit a very different flavor of it), and is managing the construction and maintenance of the termite biological hardware. This is indirectly specifying their species internal processes, and external behaviors (like "find mate" or" build home"). Taken together, this is informationally how termites construct their high level structures.

[@ChannelMath]

cIn general, I'm skeptical of these attempts (this deep need, really) to put our supposed "conscious understanding" on a pedestal. How does he know that neither the lion nor the gazelle "understand" the purpose of stotting (let alone what the means). I am also skeptical of the "Chinese room" argument in this way. In what sense, fundametally, are the neurons of the architect Gaudi, different from the colony of termites. It seems his issue is that the termites can't "explain the purpose" of what they are doing, but what does this mean? Just that they can't explain it in OUR terms, I guess. I can't dismiss the subjective argument entirely, that I know, at least for myself, that there is some singular "consciousness" about me, but I also am not sure that is even true. Some psychologists think of the mind as having multiple parts that may or may not work together. Heck, even our genes are not altogether cooperating with each other! We are a mess of competing interests, temporarily and uneasily banded together in one blob of flesh.

[@debries1553]

watch these video's at 1.5x speed. It saves a lot of time and the pace is quite pleasant.

[@VolvoGonzo]

Evolution through natural selection makes complete sense as long as you don't think about it too much.

Looking at the thumbnail I expected to see Grandmaester Pycelle, was kinda disappointed, but the presentation turns out to be riveting. I count this as a win.

[@MagnumInnominandum]

I had to look that name up. Hilarious!

[@cristophera5653]

That was very funny Mr. Dennett... thank you for the good time :)

[@GreatBehoover]

Too bad he simply stated a bunch of UNBACKED OPINIONS instead of peer reviewed scientific paper DEVOID OF FAITH STATEMENTS AND CIRCULAR REASONING! Oh...right... because NONE exist to prove what he said. They ONLY prove the OPPOSITE of his silly FAITH in the MYTHOLOGY of naturalism! Feel free to show me your UNASSUMED OBSERVATIONAL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that novel proteins emerge via evolution.... go ahead....embarrass yourself further by TRYING.... I'll wait....🤔🤔🤔🤔😳🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@bfkc111]

I honour Freeman Dyson's Vacuum Cleaner and Superstructure around Suns-genius. Truly both great achievements.

[@spiralsun1]

BFKC 😂 yup! Or maybe it’s vacuum cleaners orbiting suns in massive clouds having been overproduced by AI factories... there’s your Dyson dark-matter theory!

[@fredwage]

This is a fascinating and revealing lecture, but there is NOTHING within it that came by chance. There is raging delusion to think all this came by way of chance.

[@Superhyperaktive]

How did each failed generation of proteins, cells, or first life improve the next one, by which means did they keep a record of the right process?

[@cyan1294]

Possibly a combination and cooperation of cells coupled with adaptations to the environment over a very long period of time eventually being inscribed into the cell's genetic information for future cells to obtain and replicate.

[@Superhyperaktive]

@@cyan1294 What type of any "positive" mutations in the genome produce this type of "evolution"?

[@scienceexplains302]

Please read more on evolution. “Positive” is relative to the species in its environment. A mutation for thicker hair could be very good in a cold climate and very bad in a warm environment. The process copies itself, generally, but not perfectly

[@quinnjin2]

they survived

[@stevenwiederholt7000]

Why not mention upper case Intelligent Design?

[@stevenwiederholt7000]

@RustyBlackhaw86 And you say this because...............?

[@stevenwiederholt7000]

@RustyBlackhaw86 And you base this on actually reading their books/papers and watching their talks? Mathematical Challenges to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution with Berlinski, Meyer, and Gelernter (or as I would title it A Christian an Atheist and a Jew walk into a studio) kzbin.info/www/bejne/pKDNZaOegrlshac Or maybe you're basing your comment on a talk by a particle physicist working at CERN On the Origin and Design of the Universe kzbin.info/www/bejne/jJm4mYCfeaZ_eZI Think is way too many people comment on ID based on what their opponents say with looking for themselves.

[@vid.education9696]

Good speech, highly recommended!

[@georgebond7777]

VID.education if youre into science fiction.

[@nathanokun8801]

There were more than two. Once the first primitive eukaryot formed, other prokaryots were were absorbed too, hence the very complex Eukaryota internal structure. For some reason, mitochondria kept a significant portion of their own original DNA, perhaps due to some special features that would interfere with nuclear DNA (or vice versa).

[@DM-ql6ps]

Chlorophyll have original DNA as well

[@Thisismetman]

Once the first primitive eukaryot formed IS the problem. Living organisms cannot form on their own.

[@morttipelovaara]

That man is a storyteller. Experimental science is needed to show the truth.

[@patrickthomas2119]

Science does not deal in "Truth" but in facts and utilizing data to gather and analyze evidence. "Truth" is derived from the human reason ability to understand and comprehend the context of those facts and evidence. Science becomes corrupted and religious like in practice when people look to it to find "truth". Statements like "The scientific consensus says" or "i trust the science" is examples of this corruption. Truth (religion) and Science (evidence) must remain separate domains so they don't poison one another. an analogy; this would be the equivalent of a historian tearing apart all the historical inaccuracies of Hamlet.

[@GreatBehoover]

exactly. unfortunately for silly naturalists. UNASSUMED OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE shows the OPPOSITE of this snake oil salesman's ASSUMPTIONS!!!🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@varpuhaavisto3174]

Sounds like a nice fairytale. Boom!...and impossible things just happen!

[@GreatBehoover]

@@varpuhaavisto3174 That's what naturalism is....a fairytale with the personification of nature ... the natural selection fairy... as the star of the show.

[@whirled_peas]

Perhaps worth mentioning that he didn't mention that the first symbiosis event would very likely have occurred billions/trillions of times unsuccessfully beforehand. People tend to have an issue with the probability of this symbiosis occurring but if you consider the sheer amount of these events it would seem almost inevitable that successful symbiosis would be occur.

[@nunyabizz3610]

How does a thousand billion interactions per particle per second for the supposed life of the universe sound for sheer amounts of events? Here is a calculation of random generation of a 100 component system. Astro-physicists estimate that there are no more than 10^80 infinitesimal "particles" in the universe, and that the age of the universe in its present form is no greater than 10^18 seconds (30 billion years). Assuming each particle can participate in a thousand billion (10^12) different events every second (this is impossibly high, of course), then the greatest number of events that could ever happen (or trials that could ever be made) in all the universe throughout its entire history is only 10^80 x 10^18 x 10^12, or 10^110 (most authorities would make this figure much lower, about 10^50). Any event with a probability of less than one chance in 10^110, therefore, cannot occur. Its probability becomes zero, at least in our known universe. Thus, the above-suggested ordered arrangement of 100 components has a zero probability. It could never happen by chance. Since every single living cell is infinitely more complex and ordered than this, it is impossible that even the simplest form of life could ever have originated by chance. Even the simplest replicating protein molecule that could be imagined has been shown by Golay1 to have a probability of one in 10^450. Salisbury2 calculates the probability of a typical DNA chain to be one in 10^600. Abiogenesis probably never happens. Its like trying to convince someone you won the lottery before the winning numbers are drawn.

[@nunyabizz3610]

greg b The calculation is for any 100 component system to self organize by chance. Not for a specific sequence of known entities to organize. It does not care if life is the result of the organization or not. The problem is that chance does not know what it is looking for. Its as likely to disassemble any prior arrangement as is to add to it. Even if you somehow overcome these odds, you are still no where close to even the simplest known life forms complexities. Then you have to keep beating the odds to get any meaningful vertical evolution. Natural selection cannot act on random mutation until the mutation arises.

[@nunyabizz3610]

greg b All of that is why the odds where calculated for a component system and not molecules or atoms or proteins. Sure there are natural laws that assemble structures but they do not assemble components into systems. Evolution has not discovered any natural laws that guide the process it assumes. The math has been adjusted over the years to account for the objections to the probability. But it still does not matter because known life is infinity more complex than this example of probability.

[@nunyabizz3610]

greg b That pretty much the lessons I was taught. The problem I have is when I started looking into it more, its not at all clear that evolution is possible much less responsible for the complexities seen in life. All that aside. The problem I have with evolution from a Biblical standpoint are death before the fall, no original sin, and no need for salvation through Christ, who preached a literal interpretation of Genesis. How did your professor deal with these issues?

[@nunyabizz3610]

greg b I have attached a link to a paper that indicates it is an overwhelming stretch to construe speciation with adaptation to environment. bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2010.4 hit the PDF link. As for the dogs it shows that even selective selection cannot produce anything but more dogs.

[@gabotrial]

Please explain how dna and rna came to be, how chance provides information?

[@wood_croft]

12:15 What does he mean by "actually more"? What other type of DNA do we have besides nuclear and mitochondrial?

[@eskileriksson4457]

Wood Croft Viral DNA. Mostly harmless strings that has accumulated over time in the genomes of all species.

[@twicecookedporkins6915]

Eskil Eriksson Also RNA can be considered a seperate code, generally. While it can interact with DNA, it also does work entirely on its own accord.

[@MaggotDiggo1]

I literally saw "TAE CAT".

[@minimax9452]

When is he talking about information?

[@KevinUchihaOG]

during the whole talk? The talk isn't split up into 3 categories, the talk is about the relation between Information, Evolution, and intelligent Design. Me providing you with timestamps for each sentence that he spefically say "information" won't give you enough context for you to understand what he means, so you will have to listen to the whole talk if you wanna know what he has to say about information.

[@BattleBunny1979]

44:00 and onwards

[@MysticCaravan]

Was following him very well until 22:59, consciousness is not an effect of creation, it is the cause. For reasons that he didn't understand. Imagine approaching a manifold boundary zone, a grand attractor, as you approach that attractor you first have the lower cellular animals, as you get closer, you get higher animals, then forms like reptiles, fish, amphibians, etc, then mammals, and hominids. The distance away from that attractor we measure in time. But, if you can think of time as distance away from the attractor, measured in temporal terms, you have a similar but different understanding. That grand attractor is some aspect of unified consciousness that we do not yet understand.

[@Sohail25A]

What a lovely,funny,poetic,philosophical,manly,intellectual and all in one persona !

[@SteveGouldinSpain]

His boat analogy illustrates what I've always misunderstood about evolution in that it only makes sense in times of extinction events or other life threatening scenarios. (Would be) beneficial and detrimental mutations are being passed on all the time but they are only demonstrated to be beneficial or detrimental when tested.

[@PongoXBongo]

Mutations are neither beneficial or detrimental _until_ tested by natural selection.

[@GreatBehoover]

You can't be serious!🤣🤣🤣 This man CAN'T SUPORT ANYTHING about the termites evolution! He ASSUMES the "evolution" that DNA CODE has easily debunked now! Ignorance of the latest evidence that your MYTHOLOGY OF NATURALISM remains securely MYTHOLOGY.... is no excuse for you! He literally ASSUMES that the termite castle was not programmed...but rather a feature of evolution. But NOTICE how he CAN'T BACK UP his claims using UNASSUMED OBSERVATIONAL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE which has already DISPROVEN his assumptions! There is ZERO EVIDENCE that this behavior was LEARNED by "evolution"! The castle is specifically made for a specific purpose that helps them survive and thrive. There is no PROCESS that shows their learned behavior in building them from a history of NO PREVIOUS BEHAVIOR of not building them! He ASSUMES the evolution!🤣🤣🤣🤣 How do people not "get" this fact? Take a LOGIC CLASS! You don't look at an object and make a statement about the pathway of it's origin with ZERO EVIDENCE of that pathway...other than your silly words proclaiming "that's how it happened"😂😂😂😂😂

[@GreatBehoover]

​@@PongoXBongo Mutations DAMAGE and ruin. Try coding and then tell me how mistakes yield success.🙄🙄🙄

[@PongoXBongo]

@@GreatBehooverMachine learning is all about mutations improving performance.

[@GreatBehoover]

​@PongoXBongo 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 No it isn't! It's ALL ABOUT INTELLIGENT PREPROGRAMMING that allows the machine to do this. You OBVIOUSLY DON'T CODE!🤣🤣🤣🤣 Mutations in CODE DESTROY! ONLY PROGRAMMING WITHOUT MUTATIONS causes the machine to make corrections! You LITERALLY SAID THE OPPOSITE of what "MACHINE LEARNING" is!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Mutations have NOTHING to do with MACHINE LEARNING... It must first figure out...BY PRIOR HIGH LEVEL UNMUTATED INTELLIGENT PROGRAMMING... Howto address NEW scenarios based on past scenarios. Mutations are ALWAYS MISTAKES! This shows what SUCKERS naturalists are! You literally DON'T UNDERSTAND why the whole "mutations lead to betterment" is a LIE! Add mutations to code... death and disease ensue... ALWAYS. TRY IT! Code something and add some random garbage code...and watch! DESTRUCTION is the norm...chaos as demanded from 2nd law of thermodynamics! The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of a system either increases or remains constant in any spontaneous process; it never decreases. So so are IMAGININING what NEVER HAPPENS in the real universe!🤣🤣🤣 Order NEVER comes from disorder when no electrochemical attraction is available to make it! There is NO ELECTROCHEMICAL REACTION CAUSING ORDER in DNA OR RNA CODE silly boy! FURTHER...The IMPOSSIBILITY of this order being produced without FIRST HAVING INTELLIGENT PREPROGRAMMING is literally an IMPOSSIBILITY! Only a sucker BELIEVES this behavior is CAUSED by "evolution "! 🤣🤣🤣 It is only ASSUMED to be the result ... with no evidence to support it!😉 it's like Dawkins declaring the human eye evolved... while DENYING the UNASSUMED OBSERVATIONAL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that scientific method shows that it CAN'T AND WON'T!🤣🤣🤣🤣 Feel free to show us in a lab how evolution makes these creatures be able to create such complex structures!🤣🤣🤣 You would be the FIRST evolutionist EVER to back their MYTHOLOGY with SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY!😳😳😳 In fact, the only thing MISSING with naturalism is the UNASSUMED OBSERVATIONAL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE...but the FAITH IS EVERYWHERE in the halls of BIASED SCIENTISTS!😉🤣🤣🤣

[@orggrog4013]

when we find termites consuming food, that's just what there're doing -- eating. But when they build what we call a castle, then they are "mindlessly acting." how so?

[@valhalla-tupiniquim]

Very interesting!

[@CristalMediumBlue]

this is brilliant

[@THEANPHROPY]

Really interesting talk.

[@rafetalizada2518]

A number of points invalidate the endosymbiosis hypothesis: 1- If chloroplasts, in particular, were once independent cells, then there could only have been one outcome if one were swallowed by a larger cell: namely, it would have been digested by the parent cell and used as food. This must be so, because even if we assume that the parent cell in question took such a cell into itself from the outside by mistake, instead of intentionally ingesting it as food, nevertheless, the digestive enzymes in the parent cell would have destroyed it. Of course, some evolutionists have gotten around this obstacle by saying, "The digestive enzymes had disappeared." But this is a clear contradiction, because if the cell's digestive enzymes had disappeared, then the cell would have died from lack of nutrition. 2- Again, let us assume that all the impossible happened and that the cell which is claimed to have been the ancestor of the chloroplast was swallowed by the parent cell. In this case we are faced with another problem: The blueprints of all the organelles inside the cell are encoded in the DNA. If the parent cell were going to use other cells it swallowed as organelles, then it would be necessary for all of the information about them to be already present and encoded in its DNA. The DNA of the swallowed cells would have to possess information belonging to the parent cell. Not only is such a situation impossible, the two complements of DNA belonging to the parent cell and the swallowed cell would also have to become compatible with each other afterwards, which is also clearly impossible. 3- There is great harmony within the cell which random mutations cannot account for. There are more than just one chloroplast and one mitochondrion in a cell. Their number rises or falls according to the activity level of the cell, just like with other organelles. The existence of DNA in the bodies of these organelles is also of use in reproduction. As the cell divides, all of the numerous chloroplasts divide too, and the cell division happens in a shorter time and more regularly. 4- Chloroplasts are energy generators of absolutely vital importance to the plant cell. If these organelles did not produce energy, many of the cell's functions would not work, which would mean that the cell could not live. These functions, which are so important to the cell, take place with proteins synthesized in the chloroplasts. But the chloroplasts' own DNA is not enough to synthesize these proteins. The greater part of the proteins are synthesized using the parent DNA in the cell nucleus.

[@RobertASmith-yy7ge]

Rafet Alizada thank you. Great stuff.

[@Cl0ckcl0ck]

Engelbart did not invent the mouse. "On 2 October 1968, just a few months before Engelbart released his demo on 9 December 1968, a mouse device named Rollkugel (German for "rolling ball") was released that had been developed and published by the German company Telefunken. As the name suggests and unlike Engelbart's mouse, the Telefunken model already had a ball. It was based on an earlier trackball-like device (also named Rollkugel) that was embedded into radar flight control desks. This had been developed around 1965 by a team led by Rainer Mallebrein at Telefunken Konstanz for the German Bundesanstalt für Flugsicherung as part of their TR 86 process computer system with its SIG 100-86[17] vector graphics terminal."

[@Ludifant]

I´d say cutting sound into phonemes would be "quantization" not "digitization". Since there is more that 2 phonemes. Otherwise, I agree with just about everything he said. The other thing I find iffy, but not really important is: If you can do evolution on a computer (and you can) is evolution still smarter then you? Because I have some experience with deep learning and genetic algorithms in art and I find that guiding this evolution process is a whole new ball-game. But it requires me to be humble only at the right moments and completely arrogant at others. So Orgel law doesn´t seem to apply then. It´s just a question of scale, not of better or smarter. But it´s mostly semantics..

[@RobinFaichney]

Digitisation is not necessarily binary.

[@martinmadsen1199]

What is the evidence that life originated at a single point in time? Given the time scales, it seems more likely it happened multiple times, no?

[@thecondescendinggoomba5552]

I suppose it'd be that all life appears to be related?

[@martinmadsen1199]

@@thecondescendinggoomba5552 excellent reasoning.

[@RuminatingWizard]

When Daniel Dennett has nightmares, it's when he is having to debate James Tour on the origin of life. I really feel for him

[@philiphall4805]

no need for nightmares just answer what he asks

[@drfawadk]

The theory of birth of eukaryotic cells mention here is oversimplification of immensely complicated genome amalgamation. Repairing, maintaining, creating assembly of replication, proofing etc prevents such Hollywood action thriller. And plz keep in mind there are different stages of nuclear material remains in and it is not more absurd to say that Mercedes and BMW one fine day joined into one. I'm amazed people buy such stuff.

[@kennethgarcia25]

Information is structured/patterned material or energy capable of producing work. "Meme" start out in the code of the CNS and undergo transduction into some media which can be translated by the encoding ready CNS of another human being.

[@AristotleDreher]

Santa is real.

[@S2Cents]

+Aristotle Dreher Dennett says when children in public call him Santa Claus he says, "shhh" and whispers in their little ears that everything their parents are teaching them is lies, there is no Santa Claus, no God and people are just robots without souls.

[@donaldclifford5763]

I know Santa is real. I go to bed Christmas Eve and nothing under the tree. I wake up Christmas morning and many presents under the tree, signed: "from Santa". How much proof do you need?

[@c7i6abc]

The subject bothers you huh? Must be something to it, got doubts? :-)

[@trejkaz]

Ho ho ho ho

[@ldinti03]

brinbrin62 62200 - Or your perspective view of what Santa is, is way much primitive than what it actually would be. By the way, Santa refers to The Language of Gods, not just that neologism (Santa Claus).

[@EvanMcCarter]

52:14 your head is full of memes

[@TheTechNiShan]

+Evan McCarter meeeeeme

[@robinkarout4999]

Fascinating! Thanks for uploading.

[@itsame1277]

In the current venacular, "This blew my mind" This really made me think and see completely new ideas.

[@Daveinet]

I think he just took an hour to state that you don't have to understand evolution, but just to believe it. It is interesting that the title suggests a discussion of Intelligent Design, however not once does he answer any of the problems that Intelligent Design asks of Darwinian evolution.

[@anthonyjames5474]

Daveinet They have no answer. There is zero fossil evidence that has not been fabricated.

[@InfinityBlue4321]

Exactly... that is an example of the religious faith of the new atheists, like believing there is no conscious free will and all the other ludicrous dogmas... this type of BS is dificult to bear, but we have to ear them, just for general knowledge and study: how the delusion of hyped mumbo jumbo storytellers can affect the crowd... Ive been reading the comments and it is amazing how layperson can be fooled by self deluded entertainers like Dennet... Dawkings and the alike.

[@mpwest929]

Did you watch the video? At the start he clarified he’s not referring to the creationist idea of Intelligent design. He’s referring to human-led intelligent design.

[@mpcc2022]

Before there were memes Carl Jung called them Archetypes which are much more profound ideas than memes. He said before anyone, "people don't have ideas; ideas have people."

[@julsius]

you're confusing concepts. standup comedy is a meme. but the standup comedian is not an archetype, the joker/jester is. that whole sentence was an idea but not a meme nor archetype. the president of the united states (POTUS) is a meme. the chief is a meme. but the king is the archetype. archetypes are basically a superclass of meme. meanwhile there are ideas that don't become memes cos they don't catch on.

[@808bigisland]

@@julsius Jung was a shill. Archetypes are much older. Read 20 000m under the sea. Meme are a current social construct. They are a couple of lightyears away from an AT. Potus is a job. For you to hold this job you need a majority or not of votes. The price is beeing ceasar for 4 years.

[@julsius]

@@808bigisland i wasnt criticising the POTUS. what i was saying is that that job role is an example of a meme. perhaps it wasnt the best example to give though. a meme is just an evolutionary competing encapsulated idea. communism is a meme. capitalism is a meme. some memes are better than others. another word for a meme could be a representative-concept/idea. but archetypes are super-roles (where a role is something a human actor/agent plays) which are a type of super-meme. so the chief/king archetype is symbolic of the POTUS but also the prime minister or emperor. perhaps the idea of archetypes was already present, such as even in tarot cards since the middle ages, but it wasnt explained in psychology scientific empircal terms until Jung.

[@daviddawson1718]

The word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 as a crutch to explain how thoughts/ideas can replicate, and behave in an analogous manner to genes. The book is titled "The Selfish Gene."

[@daviddawson1718]

The word meme has precisely nothing to do with profundity.

[@rogerdiogo6893]

This guy is very good!!!

[@DavidMorley123]

Videographer: Please display (legibly) the speaker's slides at all times during the talk. Thanks for this excellent talk.

[@MtnTow]

I see an app opportunity there.

[@mostafaalmossalli4498]

Maester Pycel!!!!

[@ShujathHussain0]

+Mostafa Almossalli same thought here!

[@ChRiyad]

+ cake , a lot of cake.

[@saerain]

I kept expecting him to make the point that, in fact, the parts necessarily can't understand the whole, as then you're talking about the whole containing more information in each constituent part than in the sum of them, i.e. the bit is suddenly bigger than the byte.

[@PongoXBongo]

Emergent complexity.

[@Human_Evolution-]

PongoXBongo what are your thoughts on emergence in general? I've been studying it all week on Complexity Labs channel. Super interesting.

[@PongoXBongo]

I view it as a kind of whole-group evolution, as opposed to the "typical" individual evolution. Both different ways of achieving goals. Take crossing a river for example. Individual evolution would see one member learn to swim, then teach others who teach others and so on. But with whole-group, each member tries to swim alone, but eventually discovers that crawling along dead floating bodies works better. But that kind of mass death is bad for the group, so they instead float a bridge of living bodies that can follow once the group has crossed. It's akin to simply brute forcing a solution versus stopping to think of a more complex, but perhaps elegant/efficient, solution. Energy is spent on muscles to act rather than brains to think. Using a pencil to write in space versus a million dollar space pen. ;)

[@frechjo]

There is nothing in principle that precludes a part from understanding the whole. Can you understand things about families? About couples? About football teams? We should make a difference between having all the information, and being able to work with an analogous model, because we are not able to have all information about anything physical (Uncertainty Principle makes that impossible by principle). But we usually say we understand a lot of things about the physical world. If a single neuron doesn't understand the brain, that's more because of a single neuron abilities than of the relations in the system.

[@kevinmathewson4272]

depends how we define "understand."

[@MarkaveliRises]

At about 47:30 he says Dawkins coined the term 'meme'. That's incorrect. The term was being used in the same context by Terrence McKenna decades earlier.

[@JohnMoseley]

Decades earlier than 1976? That's when Dawkins' book, The Selfish Gene came out, in which he first used the word. McKenna only graduated from university the year before that.

[@fukpoeslaw3613]

@@JohnMoseley He's confusing 'meme' with 'mama', McKenna coined the latter a few decades before he graduated.

[@JohnMoseley]

@@fukpoeslaw3613 :-D Very nice.

[@donaldclifford5763]

At 21:30 "competence without comprehension", consistent with Julian Jaynes's unconscious civilization as described in his "Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". Jaynes postulates that even late neolithic cultures were "unconscious", functioning quite competently from instructions and guidance from inner voices, hallucinated and dreamed, with what he calls the bicameral mind. Only as society grew more complex did humans "invent" our modern consciousness, and loosing bicamerality.

[@edreynolds2819]

Too bad that, in the case of Turing, superlative "comprehension" was required to produce the "competent" machine. What part of that do you not get?

[@donaldclifford5763]

A clueless non comprehending process of evolution produced Turing, who in turn, reversed the process, resulting in the example of the computing machine, and a competence without comprehension. And Turing's fabulous brain is composed of individual cells, all quite completely non comprehending. It seems non comprehension ultimately begets comprehension.

[@edreynolds2819]

If superlative "comprehension" was required to design and build a Turing machine, what makes you think anything less was required to design and build Turing, or any other of the "competent" machines, processes, and organisms we find on Earth?

[@gamesbok]

Ed Reyonalds Firstly any superlative comprehension that designed Turing might have done him the courtesy of making his social interactions a little less difficult.

[@joemarz2264]

Everything in the universe evolves from high order states towards low order states, enthropy increases, time flows in the positive direction. It has always been and will always be that way. Time destroys life, doesn't create higher-level organisms from lower-level beings.

[@RobertASmith-yy7ge]

Joe Maldonado 💯

[@mikebellamy]

At 12:55 _"this is a great moment, this chance collision"_ while showing the sectioned structural difference between a prokaryotic and eukaryotic cell..!! If the talk was actually about *information* you would think he would address *how a chance collision between two simple prokaryotic cells would also coincide with a huge amount of new DNA coding for many new proteins and bio-molecules suddenly arriving at the exact same moment* ..!! But no all we get is made up term _"endosymbiosis"_ and the usual *evolutionary assumption* which although something may have been observed, says *nothing* about the sudden appearance of massive amounts of new genetic information needed for the new complex structures that did not exist before in either of the prokaryotes.!!

[@alimahdavi2276]

Nicely put. I've always been happily accepting passive agnosticism as a rational position to hold for the origin of the universe or life (or other fundamental questions for that matter), but always hesitant to accept evolution theory as a means of actively claiming to know the answers to those questions. Devil's in the details and if we're careless, we might use argument from ignorance.

[@alimahdavi2276]

As for the information, I've searched for a proper information-theory-justified view of darwinian evolution, that is, justifying the amount of information needed to create new forms of life, and then comparing that to the evolution theory in a non-biased way. If you've got a resource, I'm happy to know about it!

[@ralphmacchiato3761]

Grasping for deities again when stuff becomes unexplained? We're beyond that now.

[@mikebellamy]

@@ralphmacchiato3761 Sorry to inform you but making ignorant leaps over contrary observations to arrive at a _"safe place"_ you call _"beyond that now"_ simply won't work any more. Dennett is an ignorant fool with the gift of poetic language. Let me show you why: At 06:41 he quotes Freeman Dyson _"Technology is a gift of God ..."_ the source of which Dennett disputes and explains his source as _"cultural evolution"_ specific only to _"human brains,"_ which he *assumes evolved from non living chemicals* with out evidence or explanation. His problem is the human brain is according to Hawking the _"most complex assembly of matter in the universe"_ which means it is not just the lowest entropy state of 3lb of matter known but the highest expression of technology we know. The real problem here is if _"technology"_ comes from the _"human brain"_ and that is the highest form of technology known where was the _"(human brain like)"_ technology that produced it? *Chicken and egg once again?* The answer is of course the observation that *all technology comes from information!* which again by observation only ever comes from a *mind* to make the technology we observe. Which is why Dennett *must conclude* that our technology is exclusive to humans. But here's the crunch: At 43:49 Dennett quotes Norbert Wiener _"Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism that does not admit this can survive at the present day."_ *But* what does Dennett do next? *Assume that information is a product of matter and energy!!* with zero evidence or explanation other than *disorder -> order* being a straight violation of the second law of thermodynamics! Of which he chooses to be *ignorant.* He is not a _"fool"_ in human education terms but he is in God's eyes for rejecting the most obvious truth clearly expressed by Freeman Dyson.

[@johncastino2730]

@@mikebellamy excellent observations Mike.

[@alienworthreich6175]

52:35 I hold this assumption as a misrepresentation of my perceptive apparatus, which identifies only three letters without any definite informational content. 53:33 Could you repeat that please, Mr. Dennett?

[@lastfreegeneration984]

Yes, humans can use natural selection to evolve their software and designs. But we first have to create the design space to do the selecting, then build in reproduction with variation. So the question is, who created our 4D spacetime and the matter within it? Its fine-tuned for life, meaning its likely a design space, where a reproducing lifeform, however simple, was introduced and allowed to evolve. What is the big conceptual leap that evolutionists can't make? Its not a bad thing if we really are intelligently designed, or the information for the running of life's nanomachines came from another dimension. Its a very cool prospect. I mean, even during this talk, Dennet descibes how natural selection can give rise to a brain, within which memes can take on a life of their own, living in the shared brain-space of human groups, as well as encoded on books, hard drives etc. Information is a different dimension to our world of spacetime and mass-energy. And yet, it was born out of it. Then he goes on to describe how humans have recognised the best way of developing designs in THE NEW dimensions of infomation-space, is: natural selection! And so the cycle continues! One dimension is fully explored, begins to stagnate, and the next wave of natural selection takes place in a new dimension. Based on the last but a fresh design space non-the-less. We can therefore expect our world of space-time and mass-energy is based on a lower dimension. Also a realm of information, and one we cannot fully access, although our world is built upon it. Welcome to the world of quantum. It cannot marry up with relativity, because space-time exists independantly of it. Quantum discovery is humans peeling back our reality to peer into the dimension from which ours was born...

[@firecloud77]

*"As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan." --Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the National Institutes of Health, Director of the Human Genome Project*

[@netelsg]

If Eve was created by GOD from Adam's rib, was Eve's DNA the same as Adam's DNA...?

[@netelsg]

Trigger :"99% with most species" So do you believe human evolved from apes...?......."Same creator same DNA" Female has x chromosome while male has y chromosome. Male and female don't have the same DNA.

[@boxelder9167]

@@netelsg - Life would be pretty boring if they did have the same DNA.

[@Synathidy]

Well I'm going to play the space leprechauns's advocate and say I think DNA is the language of space leprechauns who dwell deep within the moon and anyone who has any silly alternative cannot convince me their faith-based beliefs are more reasonable than this.

[@firecloud77]

@@Synathidy Faith-based beliefs? So basically what you're saying is that it requires faith to believe in a God, but it requires no faith to believe the extraordinary claim that random code copying errors are capable of writing the code for the creation of biological hardware that would bring to fruition concepts that never used to exist, like vision, hearing, flight and consciousness.

[@azouitinesaad3856]

is that Charles Darwin himself ?

[@z4k4z]

I never tire of Daniel Dennett. An excellent talk and very entertaining. I love the bit about hand axes (41:44) as costly signalling... "Do you wanna come up and see my hand axes?". I've not heard this suggested before, but it makes perfect sense. The other bit that had me laughing uncontrollably was (53:26) when Dennett has the audience repeating an unrepeatable splurge of vocalisation, apparently listening for correctness in their response. He's such a joker. #science #evolutionOfCulture

[@grigorigahan]

It's something I thought about with a slightly different take watching this. hand axes had to be very time consuming to produce in an time when most of your waking hours were spent meeting your basic survival needs. It might very well have been a flex to say "I'm doing so well, and am so successful that I have several hours in my day to sit here making axes."

[@Semantic8Satiation]

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and William Burroughs proposed these ideas a long time ago.

[@goranvuksa1220]

So formicaries with all of their complexity and organisation are a product of ants just moving dirt around without any knowledge or organisation system, and they just do it with luck?

[@goranvuksa1220]

***** Thanks for the answer, but I am confused. Your answer than is yes?

[@goranvuksa1220]

***** Ok, that is fine, but I have asked the question because this explanation does not make sence. I watched this because I work with information technologies and I need to know about the theory of information, so I was wandering where is the information on how to build formicaries stored. If there is no infromation and each ant is just digging a small part, then building a whole structure to be functional wolud be no more than blind luck. Workers on construction site all do their small part at a time, but there is a more complex plan. If you compare ants with brain neurons, that would imply that they can communictate to form more complex information processing system and that they all together make plan on how formicarie will look and be organised. Keep in mind that formicaries are very complex and well organised.

[@goranvuksa1220]

***** You still miss my question. Evolution is random gene mutations, and those that work well in their current environment stay alive. So that comparison makes no sence, ants are bulding their homes on purpose. Maybe it is deterministic gene that drives them, but that does not explain complexity of the structure that they are building.

[@goranvuksa1220]

Agaperion Rex Thanks for you answer also, but as I said, I understaind that. I am afraid that you too are missing the point of my question (and point of your answer for that matter). Natural selection is a blind process in which if a creature can't survive it dies, and those that manage to survive leave their genes to the next generation which will enable them to survive. On the other hand, brain neurons can be compared with transistors in the cpu (more complex, but same logic), they bind and produce electrical signals that combined can process input information and create proper output information. If we agree that both human nervous system and ants amerged from those natural processes, that still leaves my question unanswered. You use terms like "specific task that an ant performs", "It's job is to...", "joins the process of...", "transports it to a designated location", etc. All of these require knowladge of what needs to be done, therefore an information. If one ant deposits a grain of sand somewhere in the tunel, and another decides to take it out, than nothing prevents first one to take it out too. This same organisation exists in human organised construction sites. If ants are not organised, than nothing would prevent second ant to just return that grain on the same place from which first has removed it from (and them ending up in an infinite loop :)). Also, you said "When moisture is detected in a certain direction, that ant joins the process of...". Not all of them join, only some, while others work on different jobs, but that implies that they know (so have information) what their job is, and where they should join work. Also, when building food storage for example, they know when to stop, and when to expand it and stop again when needed. So, my question was implying simple fact, that there must be an organised complex structure with shared information or that they do it just with luck. One can compare emergence of this system with an emergence of a human nervous system, but not how they work now. So, maybe they do not have a final blueprint, but they eather have and share complex information or they do it with luck.

[@goranvuksa1220]

Agaperion Rex Sorry but your analogy is totally wrong. I was NOT discussing on how cells of a single ant communicate but how ants share information of how formicaries (or at least parts of them) should be build, and where is that information kept. Cells are formed and form bodies of ants and trees using information in genom and cells communicate with one another. We know where the information on how to build a tree is stored and we know that although cell in the root does not even "know" that there is a cell in the leaf (or leaf it self, or even root, for that matter), that there is common information for the entire tree.

[@tactixsky]

lol reclaiming the term I see

[@TeslaNick2]

***** Yes...! Like it... That should happen.

[@bfkc111]

Damn, I think I once could have seen him in Würzburg... Not that I think it would have changed everything, but it would have been a cool thing to look back to. Either I missed the date or I had to go elsewhere. Or it was one of these creepy things where one is asked to hang out for longer...

[@calebogden]

So much information, it’s hard to take it all in

[@shishkabobby]

He is giving us a bird's eye view of the origin of language as a subconscious meme. I am skeptical, it is hard to swallow. But perhaps he is right to crow about it.

[@msheart2]

He was like hell!

[@ambarnag]

It seems that many people commenting on this video haven't read any of Dan Dennett's books. These ideas are not easy to understand in 60 minutes.

[@mattgilbert7347]

Excellent! Title is slightly misleading. The first half contains content found in his lecture on "Hume's strange inversion of reasoning" but in the second half of this one he gets into more detail with regards to evolutionary processes. Thoroughly engaging and enlightening.

[@kennethgarcia25]

The boss of termites is natural selection. The executive cortex of termites are the forces of nature expressed over time defining the environment in which termites as living organisms endeavor to persist and propagate. Thus, the human mind is the interface with an imagination based on its internalized (encoded) model of how the world works and a capacity to collect feedback within a relatively short interval of the outcome of it's invention. Thus it performs rapid prototyping of potential solutions which it can subsequently optimize. It can also transmit any viable solution within minutes rather than over generations. You get a Gaudi like intelligence from a termite colony of neurons because of a transfer of information between the generations (ie cultural evolution) and the genetic preparation of our neural networks to encode that data in a practical/useful/adaptive manner. Meanwhile, regarding evolutionary advances, language and culture are grounded in the ability to encode objects and processes and integrate data through the plasticity of the mammalian cortex supported by the development of the other subcortical modules! Don't mix categories and keep to using the biological. The other related perspectives should remain categorically separate though related.

[@StormCougarTypeZero]

m e m e s a r e e v o l u t i o n

[@MrPoutsesMple]

funnily enough even memes evolve

[@SSGwattedge]

@@MrPoutsesMplebut how did memes first come to be?

[@julianwilliams9088]

Termites aren't going to space yet because they're still in their Victorian era 😁

[@flaviorodriguez8594]

What a video! thanks a lot for this one!

[@pcclan01]

Where do the termites get their programming to build such structures?

[@Jalip07]

Generations of trial and error probably.

[@ObeySilence]

Evolution is just slow from our perspective

[@ObeySilence]

We don´t possess the whole data about the universe and beyond, so it can not be said that evolution is slow.

[@michaelkreitzer1369]

You're essentially saying that because we don't know all there is to know that we cannot make any definitive statements of the speed of a known process in relation to other known processes, which is absurd.

[@danhaynes446]

It's not fast even from a geological perspective. Think about it, it's been nearly 4B years to get to where we are today. That's roughly 1/3 the age of the universe, and even then we don't know how much of a head start life might have had e.g. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia "The chemistry leading to life may have begun shortly after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, during a habitable epoch when the Universe was only 10-17 million years old"

[@MrMyz123]

the assumption that the termites are clueless is an ignorant statement indeed

[@EleanorPeterson]

Hmm... I'm tempted to borrow the chant from 'The Simpsons': "Dan! Dan! He's our boy; If he can't do it, no one will..." Never turn your back on a philosopher.

[@dochmbi]

This example of stotting is exactly why I want to understand human sexual selection and the behavioral signals associated with it.

[@sanjosemike3137]

I still don’t know how “non-directed” materialism can produce complex code and ordered information. Crick thought it came from “intelligent non-human aliens.” (LOL) Some materialist mathematics authors say it came from “super intelligent humans of the future who reached back in time to supply the cosmos with ordered code.” (LOL again) Dawkins has retreated from his lectures because he can no longer “handle” audience questions about Fine Tuning and when under-graduate biology students point out the errors and stupidity of his “examples” of evolution in his books, Krauss no longer lectures either because it is pointed out that a universe that has a ground-state ALREADY exists. Materialism is under attack by, of all things, science. Most of it in the last 30 years. Sanjosemike (no longer in CA)

[@ianjuarez7864]

You can't see? Too bad. The oracle of Delphi hasn't opened your eyes

[@bandogbone3265]

I suggest digging in to the latest research in evolution and origins (e.g., systems chemistry). The world and universe are even more wondrous than previously thought. Please don't blame "old" guys like Dawkins and Krauss for not being able to keep up with everything -- nobody can! Research what you're most interested in, and be kind to others.

[@blurryimage4585]

Let's say you have your computer generate two random x-lettered sequences in many, many rounds. Rules: in the first round, it generates two completely random sequences. Then you get to choose which of those more resembles a real word. After that, the selected sequence will mutate (change one letter), and you will be presented with the original, plus the mutated version in each following round, again selecting one more resemblant of a real word. Will you eventually get a real word? The answer is yes. And you will need much less rounds for this, than if you generated the sequence from scratch in each round. Also note, you had no preconceived idea of what specific word you are looking for in the beginning, the aim was only to get A word. This is, in a much simplified way, how evolution works. You represent natural selection, the computer represents the generator of random mutations, the words (and sequences more or less resembling words) represent meaningful / adaptive (to greater or lesser degree) sequences. Selectors speaking different languages would represent different ecological niches with different rulesets of what counts as a word (adaptive sequence). Does the computer need to know or understand what is the purpose of the excercise, in order for it to "work"? In other words, while mutations alone are non-directed, the natural selection is very much directed. "Ordered" is that which is favoured by natural selection or, differently put, that which contributes to self-propagation. You can think of sequences of viable information as of sequences that contain the information about how to self-propagate, and because they do so, they propagate.

[@sanjosemike3137]

@@blurryimage4585 The problem with your analysis is your lack of understanding of Shannon Information theory and the NEED for intelligent design to MAKE the decisions you say are just chance. In fact, by "ignoring" who makes the decision for the word, you are proving intelligent design. You say it is chance and "improvement of the species." But there are enormous roadblocks against chance or even improvement of the species doing this, not to mention lack of time. Actually, Douglas Axe, PhD has done real research that disproves your hypothesis. There are enormous numbers of choices available and the substrates have to be perfectly situated to MAINTAIN these chemical changes, so even after they occur....they don't disintegrate due to improper PH. James Tour, Phd has some excellent videos on EXACTLY why your analysis does not work. It also has much to do with Shannon information theory. Your analysis is incomplete. Some intelligence has to direct this process. I'm not saying it's Jesus. In fact I have no idea who or what it is. Since I am not a Christian, I don't know. Dawkins and Crick have suggested it is intelligent aliens. (LOL), but they too recognize the problem. It is the main reason why Dawkins is no longer lecturing at colleges. Sanjosemike (no longer in CA)

[@Jeffsw-bi3ur]

@@blurryimage4585 Ok but you have to put the word into a multi word sentence for it to be of any value “the cell membrane and all the mechanics that make the cell work”. You are assuming the sentence already exist for you random word but it doesn’t, it too must be created by the same random exercise you described. The sentence must be created at the exact same time by the exact same processes as the word and in each case the probability of creating all at the exact same time in order to be of any use is back to “impossible”. It’s the whole chicken and egg problem, you need the cell for the protein to be of use and both have to happen without either knowing anything about the other.

[@svartvist]

What physical, repeatable experiments does a cognitive scientist perform? Near as I've been able to ascertain "artificial intelligence" is an oxymoron. Pseudo might be closer to fact.

[@timothyperkins3723]

I think it's such a hugely interdisciplinary field that "it" is best described as cognitive sciences. Obviously, much of the empirical data comes from psychology, linguistics (psycholinguistics, even), anthropology etc. The cognitive sciences are also especially related to their philosophical grounding, which are interesting meaningful theoretical enquires in themselves, and I think you're quite right to draw attention to the manifestation of this work in so-called AI. The models might be creative & useful for machine learning or whatever but whether the human mind can be simulated without precisely modelling the physical brain, well, it's an open question isn't it?! Machine learning isn't human intelligence by a long shot. However, computer simulations of cognitive processes, or predictions based on proposals by cognitive scientists, can be employed as hypotheses testable by experiments observing human behaviour & how well they succeed in, for example, modelling the details of language development in a child. Much of this as previously noted may be carried out under the auspices of the many related disciplines. Meanwhile I'm not holding my breath for a computer simulation of intelligence. Or of an ant, for that matter...

[@timothyperkins3723]

I suggest looking it up & keeping an open yet critical mind. Thanks for making me do it :-) Back to it...

[@msheart2]

"cognitive scientisst" brainwashing eugenicists.

[@timothyperkins3723]

@@msheart2 What does cognitive science have to do with eugenics, exactly?

[@philj3167]

"Thanks goodness" for Dan Dennett One of our world's greatest minds

[@archangecamilien1879]

44:27 perhaps some would argue that those aren't real things, haha...I mean...even if not always the case, but in the case of many of the cited things...abstract ideas, I think I once saw it defined, are a way of talking about things without thinking of a specific example...a song could be a label for a pattern among actual physical things, well, vibrations through the air or what not...it could be that it's not a real thing...