logoalt Hacker News

tor825gltoday at 11:46 AM2 repliesview on HN

> Could you recall a quote or chapter from the book that bolsters your point?

Yes, the second word of the title.


Replies

upliftertoday at 12:47 PM

Yeah, that's not really good enough, by the author's own admission:

From wikipedia: 'In the foreword to the book's 30th-anniversary edition, Dawkins said he "can readily see that [the book's title] might give an inadequate impression of its contents" and in retrospect wishes he had taken Tom Maschler's advice and titled it The Immortal Gene.[2] He laments that “Too many people read it by title only.”' [0]

Furthermore, your concept that genes should be thought of as having a plan is just in stark contradiction with the Darwinian conception of natural selection, which Dawkins was largely a champion of.

My own recollection was that he described how genes readily had the appearance of acting in their own best interest, but he fell short of advocating that modeling them as having intention is a useful contrivance. Evolution does not have any sense for the future, there is no planning evolved, and Dawkins understands that.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene

show 1 reply