Q&A: the difference between elitism & anti-intellectualism – and the ethics of switching off your mother

A conversational Q&A session between Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins made for an entertaining listen, yet in my opinion had less information value than a one-on-one discussion between these two gentlemen would have had. Richard Dawkins was clearly in entertainment mode: his focus was more on funny anecdotes and making tongue-in-cheek comments towards the audience than conveying information. I applaud Sam for his devotion to serious conversation. Still many topics contained food for thought, what follows now is my pick of quotes, a lot of paraphrasing and some of my own opinion.

the two horsemen

On science and religion:

Richard (RD): “This is a unidirectional conquest of territory. You never see a point about which science was once the authority, but now the best answer is religious. But you always see the reverse of that.”

BB: This does not justify extrapolation ad infinitum though, so one would have to come up with a different line of arguments if the goal was to convince someone that a theistic world view is not the most probable explanation of our universe.

On AI

Q: Does mere scaling of intelligence and information processing get you consciousness?
Why do we need to be conscious?

SH: The conscious part of you is generally the last to find out about what your mind just did. Continue reading “Q&A: the difference between elitism & anti-intellectualism – and the ethics of switching off your mother”