Book · recommended on 4 episodes
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins ISBN 0198788606
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Richard Dawkins ISBN 0198788606
Find it on AmazonAffiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
This book by Richard Dawkins has come up 4 times on Lex Fridman. 3 of those mentions were genuine on-air recommendations, not just passing references. The people who brought it up: Andrej Karpathy, Lex Fridman, Rob Reid, Steven Pinker. The earliest mention we indexed is from 2018-10-17 and the most recent from 2022-10-29. Every occurrence below links to the episode page and to the exact second it was said on YouTube.
As influential today as when it was first published, The Selfish Gene has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only brought the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biology community, generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research.
“I was very impacted by the selfish Gene I thought that was a really good book that helped me understand altruism”— Andrej Karpathy
The guest here is Andrej Karpathy: Former director of AI at Tesla and a founding member of OpenAI, previously a researcher at Stanford. One of the most influential figures in deep learning, known for his teaching (CS231n) and hands-on explanations of neural networks. Andrej Karpathy on Tesla's vision-only self-driving, Optimus, the Transformer, aliens, simulation theory, and the path to AGI.
“his launching of the idea of memes is just kind of an afterthought to his unbelievably brilliant book about the selfish gene”— Rob Reid
The guest here is Rob Reid: Entrepreneur, science-fiction novelist, and host of the After On podcast who founded Listen.com (Rhapsody). Known for his deep research on engineered pandemics and biosecurity, featured on Sam Harris's Making Sense. Rob Reid argues engineered pandemics are humanity's most likely near-term self-destruction risk, and cheap defenses could stop them.
“an evolutionary biologist and author of The Selfish Gene the blind watchmaker The God Delusion the magic of reality”— Lex Fridman
The guest here is Richard Dawkins: Evolutionary biologist and bestselling author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion. He coined the word 'meme' and is one of the most influential popularizers of evolutionary science and atheism. Richard Dawkins explores evolution, intelligence, memes, simulation theory, and why we are the lucky ones to be born.
“Richard Dawkins two books the blind watchmaker and The Selfish Gene or enormous Li influential”— Steven Pinker
The guest here is Steven Pinker: Cognitive psychologist and linguist at Harvard; bestselling author on language, the mind, violence, and reason. Steven Pinker argues AI existential-threat fears are magical thinking, and that reason and engineering culture make AI a humanitarian boon.
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