185 | Arvid Ågren on the Gene's-Eye View of Evolution

185 | Arvid Ågren on the Gene's-Eye View of Evolution

One of the brilliant achievements of Darwin's theory of natural selection was to help explain apparently "purposeful" or "designed" aspects of biology in a purely mechanistic theory of unguided evolution. Features are good if they help organisms survive. But should we put organisms at the center of our attention, or the genetic information that governs those features? Arvid Ågren helps us understand the attraction of the "selfish gene" view of evolution, as well as its shortcomings. This biological excursion has deep connections to philosophical issues of levels and emergence.

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Arvid Ågren received his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Toronto. He is currently a Wenner-Gren Fellow at the Evolutionary Biology Centre at Uppsala University. Previously he worked at Cornell and Harvard. His recent book is The Gene's-Eye View of Evolution.


Episoder(418)

250 | Brendan Nyhan on Navigating the Information Ecosystem

250 | Brendan Nyhan on Navigating the Information Ecosystem

The modern world inundates us with both information and misinformation. What are the forces that conspire to make misinformation so prevalent? Can we combat the flow of misinformation, perhaps by lega...

18 Sep 202357min

249 | Peter Godfrey-Smith on Sentience and Octopus Minds

249 | Peter Godfrey-Smith on Sentience and Octopus Minds

The study of cognition and sentience would be greatly abetted by the discovery of intelligent alien beings, who presumably developed independently of life here on Earth. But we do have more than one d...

11 Sep 20231h 28min

AMA | September 2023

AMA | September 2023

Welcome to the September 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by P...

4 Sep 20234h 3min

248 | Yejin Choi on AI and Common Sense

248 | Yejin Choi on AI and Common Sense

Over the last year, AI large-language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have demonstrated a remarkable ability to carry on human-like conversations in a variety of different concepts. But the way these LLMs ...

28 Aug 20231h 12min

247 | Samuel Bowles on Economics, Cooperation, and Inequality

247 | Samuel Bowles on Economics, Cooperation, and Inequality

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/08/21/247-samuel-bowles-on-economics-cooperation-and-inequality/ Economics, much like thermodynamics, is a story of collect...

21 Aug 20231h 20min

246 | David Stuart on Time and Science in Maya Civilization

246 | David Stuart on Time and Science in Maya Civilization

You might remember the somewhat bizarre worries that swept through certain circles back in 2012, based on the end of the world being predicted by the Maya calendar. The world didn't end, which is unsu...

14 Aug 20231h 9min

AMA | August 2023

AMA | August 2023

Welcome to the August 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patr...

7 Aug 20233h 38min

245 | Solo: The Crisis in Physics

245 | Solo: The Crisis in Physics

Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just...

31 Jul 20234h 22min

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