Richard C. Lewontin - Conversations with History

[@slyburner]

Lewontin is very much a hero and a criminally underrated and under-read thinker. I hope this interview spreads his ideas to a wider audience.

[@camalejon]

It`s always interesting to hear Lewontin. Many people are tired of oversimplification of most geneticist, physiologists and so. Life is more complex...and interesting.

[@fredgotpub871]

"the rhetoric of war justifies the expanditure of public money with, in our ideology, is not to be done because it's socialism: so war replaces socialism" R. Lewontin, 29min50

[@frrascon]

RIP to a great one.

[@ovenlovesyou]

Richard Lewontin is the single scariest figure in all of science. And I love him for it. We need his hard-edged pragmatism as an antidote to the nonsense of Dawkins and his confreres.

[@chikkipop]

*"the nonsense of Dawkins and his confreres."* What nonsense?

[@jeffersonaraldi7168]

the dogmatic commie Lewontin only talks uncientific bullshit.

[@jk7140]

@@jeffersonaraldi7168 Are you mad he doesn't think you're any better than a black person? Better get around to proving your worth if what he says is true! Maybe you don't want to do that though, maybe that's what makes you hate his work 🤔

[@beutyindetail]

@@jk7140 taxonomy is real. race is not skin deep. on colour spectrum you will not say that blue or red does not exists because there is a intermediate area where colours are mixed.

[@Jguwr]

Richard Lewontin is fierce.

[@jamesford120]

Sweet. Nice interview. Thanks.

[@hardware199]

That´s why it would be great if those videos had subtitles so that people like me can understand everything.

[@matrixnaz]

My thoughts exactly!

[@fukka007]

I think it is better to say that the interpretation of scientific research (especially biology) has been heavily (but not completely) shaped by political ideas instead of objectivity, and that Lewontin joined these debates for this reason. He has his politically-charged views, and others have theirs.

[@matrixnaz]

Well said!

[@ovenlovesyou]

@RuinSonic Scientists do a lot of thinking, but not a lot of scientists do a lot of thinking *about what they think about* and how they think about it.

[@polpoint]

The War on Television. Now that is a Freudian Slip if I've ever heard one.

[@whiff1962]

He has also-rather unwittingly-made a housecleaning of the rampant biologistic-reductive nature of the mental "health" professions. If you haven't read "Not in our genes" (1980), I highly recommend it!

[@RadicalShiba1917]

Obviously a super old comment, but for anyone seeing this today, the book was reprinted and updated in 2016!!! You can get it from Haymarket Books!

[@raddy3434]

i like guys!

[@paulbk7810]

Lewontin says Watson's quote is "rubbish." ---- Lewontin's thinking is dated. Pure 1960s wishful thinking. 23andme, as well as other genetic data sets, show a strong relationship between SNPs and human health.

[@LRMN2233]

First of all, there's a very wide gap between "genetic data sets show a strong relationship/correlation between SNPs and human health" and "we now know that our fate is in our genes". There is most definitely correlation between genes and human health, but that does not mean, however, that our genes are responsible, by themselves, for our health. Or our future, as Watson and other biological determinists hoped to be true. About Lewontin's thinking being "dated", that's just wrong. Just take a look at Watson's promises about the Human Genome Project (as the quotation cited by Lewontin) and it's results. They hoped to find the "genes that caused cancer" and stuff like that and, in reality, what they found was a complex scheme of interaction between parts and wholes, of wich genes are a mere part.

[@Elmirgtr]

Agreed with Luca. It’s a mere correlation. In research we use DNA and RNA sequences to track states of cells, and genes and DNA give a lot of useful information. That should be the way to think about it. They alone don’t give rise to a phenomena but they can be useful to track phenomena in a specific context of time and space.

[@johannagel4520]

@@Elmirgtr By that definition, everything is mere correlation.

[@Elmirgtr]

@@johannagel4520 it depends on the question you are asking and how you are trying to answer it. Just because something can be measured, does not necessarily mean that thing is the main cause behind the biological phenomena you are trying to solve.

[@johannagel4520]

@@Elmirgtr That changes your point from correlation vs causation to primary vs secondary causation. To very different arguments.

[@martinmayberry8587]

After studying this evolution/creation debate a long time and listening to Richard Dawkins and the like over and OVER I have come to this conclusion. the whole argument of evolution /creation is NOT what this is about Because science has proven that God has created the world and universe,{that's why they need the multiverse theory} but the whole argument can be summed up like this:Do the scientist believe that Jesus the Christ died on the cross to save us from our sins? Yes or NO? and if the answer is no then they believe in evolution! If the answer is yes then they believe in Creation! The dividing line is the Cross of Christ and science has nothing to do with it! And the reason I know this is this man stated in his book that "we must NOT let a divine foot in the door even if the evidence points that a divine means had happened!" {THE CROSS}

[@ngc-fo5te]

Bollocks