Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs.
Interpretation
Understanding our genetic impulses can empower us to override selfish tendencies.
In this quote, Richard Dawkins emphasizes the importance of self-awareness regarding our genetic predispositions, suggesting that by comprehending the motivations driven by our 'selfish genes,' we gain the ability to challenge and potentially alter their influence on our behavior. It highlights the intersection between biology and self-determination, encouraging individuals to actively engage with their instincts rather than passively adhere to them.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one might mention how understanding our instinctual drives helps in making conscious choices.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
We explore because we are curious, not because we wish to develop grand views of reality or better widgets.
One day the world will look upon research upon animals as it now looks upon research on human beings.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction
We used to think that you could pay attention to five to nine things at a time. We now know that's not true. That's a crazy overestimate. The conscious mind can attend to about three things at once. Trying to juggle any more than that, and you're going to lose some brainpower.
Studying organisms at a molecular level was totally compelling because it was moving from being a naturalist, which was the 19th-century kind of science, to being very focused and really getting to the heart of these molecules.
Some of the hydrogen in your body comes from the Big Bang, and when you see a kid walking down the street with a helium balloon, you can say, 'There goes some of the primordial universe.'
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