The Selfish Gene
Mentions in Episodes:
- Episode: Episode 500: What a Long Strange Trip it's Been | Dave Rubin
Podcast: The Jordan B. Peterson PodcastSo I was thinking about this in relationship to Dawkins' theory of The Selfish Gene; it's like the implication of The Selfish Gene is that reproduction takes privacy and that there's no difference between reproduction and sex. But that's not true; there's a big difference between reproduction and sex, especially among human beings because we're high-investment parents.
- Episode: Dangerous Thoughts: What is an Infohazard? | STUFF THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW
Podcast: Stuff They Don't Want You To KnowHe wrote this book in 1976 called 'The Selfish Gene,' and he took the word meme from the root of memo, mimic! And Wartman has this great quote summing it up, which I don't know, like we’re going straight to our pal Wartman here because he sums it up the best, I think! The quote is basically a meme is an idea, the kind of idea that endures over time like a memory, which can be copied or mimicked and shared like a memo!
- Episode: Truth Terminal - The AI Bot That Became a Crypto Millionaire
Podcast: The Ben & Marc ShowAt its center is this idea of memes: a simple definition is a funny image that spreads virally, and the deeper definition was originally by Richard Dawkins, who introduced the idea of memes as concepts that spread in society in a way akin to genes.
- Episode: Woodstock for the Adventurous and Responsible | Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying | EP 483
Podcast: The Jordan B. Peterson PodcastThe bitter pill is in Chapter 11 of The Selfish Gene, where he presents the concept of memes. For the first time, he says that memes are a new primeval suit; he sees it as a new evolutionary realm where creatures are beginning to form.
- Episode: Faith, Philosophy, and the Layers of Human Existence | Richard Dawkins
Podcast: The Daily StoicEverything about a body can be regarded as, in my terminology from 'The Selfish Gene', a survival machine.
- Episode: 137. Richard Dawkins on God, Genes, and Murderous Baby Cuckoos | People I (Mostly) Admire
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireRichard Dawkins is both a distinguished scholar of zoology and evolutionary biology and a remarkably successful popularizer of scientific ideas through his bestselling books, including The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion.
- Episode: 137. Richard Dawkins on God, Genes, and Murderous Baby Cuckoos | People I (Mostly) Admire
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireIn 2017, the Royal Society, the United Kingdom's Academy of Sciences, conducted a public poll asking readers to name the most influential science book of all time. The winner was The Selfish Gene.
- Episode: 137. Richard Dawkins on God, Genes, and Murderous Baby Cuckoos | People I (Mostly) Admire
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireI have to start with a confession: before last week, I'd never read your book, The Selfish Gene. I have now, and I was quite shocked at how eye-opening the book was for me.
- Episode: 137. Richard Dawkins on God, Genes, and Murderous Baby Cuckoos | People I (Mostly) Admire
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireOne of the most striking chapters in The Selfish Gene is chapter 11 on memes, and I've often heard people say, 'Oh, Richard Dawkins created the term meme,' but I always honestly thought of memes as being somewhat trivial because now they're very much associated with internet fads.
- Episode: 137. Richard Dawkins on God, Genes, and Murderous Baby Cuckoos | People I (Mostly) Admire
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireIn the concluding chapter of the first edition of The Selfish Gene, I cast around for another example of a replicator. I wasn't then aware of computer viruses; otherwise, I might have chosen the computer virus as my analogy.
- Episode: 137. Richard Dawkins on God, Genes, and Murderous Baby Cuckoos | People I (Mostly) Admire
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireAbout the same time you were writing The Selfish Gene, Gary Becker was writing a book on the economics of the family, and a lot of the same trade-offs are in place.
- Episode: 137. Richard Dawkins on God, Genes, and Murderous Baby Cuckoos | People I (Mostly) Admire
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireSo you talk in The Selfish Gene about the quantity of children and the trade-off between more offspring and higher investment and so better outcomes per child.
- Episode: UPDATE: What It Takes to Know Everything | People I (Mostly) Admire
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireNext week we're back with a brand new episode featuring evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins; his books 'The Selfish Gene' and 'The God Delusion' are two of the most influential popular science books of all time.
- Episode: 136. The World’s Most Controversial Ornithologist | People I (Mostly) Admire
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireThe math has supported that for a very long time, but evolutionary biologists are still resistant to it, mostly because many of them grew up reading Richard Dawkins as a teenager, and they feel like their mission in their intellectual life is to rediscover that buzz, and this is the way to do it in birds. So Richard Dawkins is an extremely famous evolutionary biologist who wrote 'The Selfish Gene,' who I think would represent the hardcore adaptation team, the team that you, Richard, are not on, correct?
- Episode: 136. The World’s Most Controversial Ornithologist | People I (Mostly) Admire
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireIn two weeks, we have an exciting new episode featuring Richard Dawkins, famed author of 'The Selfish Gene' and 'The God Delusion,' amongst others. His name frequently emerges in our discussions, including today’s episode, and I've yearned to meet him for quite some time, which will finally happen in two weeks!
- Episode: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins Discuss Science, Religion & Evolution
Podcast: StarTalk RadioSo you've written – I mean I have a list here of, like, all your books; you've been out of control, but not as much as some people. Was The Selfish Gene your first book? Yes, back in 1976.
- Episode: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins Discuss Science, Religion & Evolution
Podcast: StarTalk RadioIf I may, so start off The Selfish Gene. Natural selection chooses between genes; genes are the only thing. The information contained in genes, digital information is the only thing that goes from generation to generation; that which survives is information, digital information.
- Episode: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins Discuss Science, Religion & Evolution
Podcast: StarTalk RadioYou came up with the word meme; I know it was you. That was in The Selfish Gene. You invented the word, and people long forgot.
- Episode: 128. Are Our Tools Becoming Part of Us? | People I (Mostly) Admire
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireYou can even turn things upside down a little bit in the same spirit that Dawkins did with selfish genes. They talked about genes having a kind of agency and reproducing, sometimes even at the expense of the larger organism.
- Episode: What They Don't Want You To Know About Cancel Culture - Rikki Schlott
Podcast: Modern WisdomWe kind of refer to Richard Dawkins' idea of a meme because cancel culture is very effective.
- Episode: The Humorless Fundamentalists of Social Justice | Andrew Doyle | EP 373
Podcast: The Jordan B. Peterson PodcastI tweeted out about Richard Dawkins recently, and I talked to Richard Dawkins, and I actually admire him. I liked his books; they taught me a lot, including some of his essays.
- Episode: Robert Axelrod: Why Being Nice, Forgiving, and Provokable are the Best Strategies for Life | Ep 47
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireThe reception was overwhelmingly positive, and Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, wrote one of the most effusive prefaces I've ever seen for a later edition of the book, which must have felt gratifying.
- Episode: Andrej Karpathy: Tesla AI, Self-Driving, Optimus, Aliens, and AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #333
Podcast: Lex Fridman PodcastI was very impacted by 'The Selfish Gene.' I thought that was a really good book that helped me understand altruism as an example and where it comes from, and just realizing that, you know, the selection is in the level of genes was a huge insight for me at the time, and it sort of like cleared up a lot of things for me.
- Episode: Garry Nolan: UFOs and Aliens | Lex Fridman Podcast #262
Podcast: Lex Fridman PodcastAnd so, the DNA—if you ask where does DNA come from, and you can go all the way back to Richard Dawkins and the selfish gene hypothesis— The way I look at DNA, though, is it is not a moment in time; it assumes the context of the body and the environment in which it's going to live.