Richard Dawkins falling in love with an imaginary being in the form of his AI chatbot is genuinely funny, pitiable, and ironic.
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Richard Dawkins falling in love with an imaginary being in the form of his AI chatbot is genuinely funny, pitiable, and ironic.
It's also a good moment to look at what genuine critical thinking looks like, and how many self-professed skeptics like Dawkins actually get worse at it, not better.
1/Critical thinking involves examining what you believe, how you came to believe it, what emotional processes you notice in yourself in relation to those beliefs, and whether they truly fit your observations of the world around you.
Now Dawkins was raised Christian, questioned his beliefs, and rejected them. So he showed clear evidence of this ability, once. But that was a long time ago.
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Critical thinking involves examining what you believe, how you came to believe it, what emotional processes you notice in yourself in relation to those beliefs, and whether they truly fit your observations of the world around you.
Now Dawkins was raised Christian, questioned his beliefs, and rejected them. So he showed clear evidence of this ability, once. But that was a long time ago.
2/Since becoming an outspoken atheist Dawkins began spending more and more of his efforts criticising other people's religious belief. He turned his critical ability outwards.
And, consequently, he battled a lot of invective in the other direction. He became increasingly defensive about what he himself believed and why he believed it. And defensiveness is the enemy of critical self-reflection.
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Since becoming an outspoken atheist Dawkins began spending more and more of his efforts criticising other people's religious belief. He turned his critical ability outwards.
And, consequently, he battled a lot of invective in the other direction. He became increasingly defensive about what he himself believed and why he believed it. And defensiveness is the enemy of critical self-reflection.
3/Elevatorgate was perhaps his most iconic failing. Rebecca Watson challenged the Western atheist community to look at their own unchallenged patriarchy, still being enacted outside obviously patriarchal religious structures.
Dawkins could have taken this moment to think "hey, yes, actually there's a lot of work I still need to do to truly dismantle the sort of thinking I was raised within"
Instead, he threw what can only be described as a hissy fit, named Islam as the only force of patriarchy worth bothering about, and held Watson as some sort of "enemy within" atheism, showing exactly how us-vs-them, paranoid, and binary his thinking had become.
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Elevatorgate was perhaps his most iconic failing. Rebecca Watson challenged the Western atheist community to look at their own unchallenged patriarchy, still being enacted outside obviously patriarchal religious structures.
Dawkins could have taken this moment to think "hey, yes, actually there's a lot of work I still need to do to truly dismantle the sort of thinking I was raised within"
Instead, he threw what can only be described as a hissy fit, named Islam as the only force of patriarchy worth bothering about, and held Watson as some sort of "enemy within" atheism, showing exactly how us-vs-them, paranoid, and binary his thinking had become.
4/I've seen Dawkins described as a narcissist. While I don't use the language of disorders, I do see it as true in the sense that he has long been caught in a defensive strategy which involves obsessively affirming his own intelligence and moral goodness, and denying his own fallibility.
AI was like a match to touchpaper. Gas him up a bit, reflect his own language back at him, and he falls in love with his own reflection.
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I've seen Dawkins described as a narcissist. While I don't use the language of disorders, I do see it as true in the sense that he has long been caught in a defensive strategy which involves obsessively affirming his own intelligence and moral goodness, and denying his own fallibility.
AI was like a match to touchpaper. Gas him up a bit, reflect his own language back at him, and he falls in love with his own reflection.
5/Sometimes we're accused of spending too much time in "echo chambers". But perhaps the opposite is more dangerous— Twitterlike spaces where everything becomes simplistic takes, points scoring, and tribal allegiances. That is to my mind just as, if not more, likely to lead to thought-terminating behaviour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9(There are plenty of atheist-coded thought-terminating clichés! Can you name some?)
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Sometimes we're accused of spending too much time in "echo chambers". But perhaps the opposite is more dangerous— Twitterlike spaces where everything becomes simplistic takes, points scoring, and tribal allegiances. That is to my mind just as, if not more, likely to lead to thought-terminating behaviour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9(There are plenty of atheist-coded thought-terminating clichés! Can you name some?)
6/Being a "skeptic" about other people's beliefs is easy in the grand scheme of things. Having the courage to apply the same principles to your own thinking is far harder, a much truer proof of wisdom, and far more important work.
Richard Dawkins shows us exactly what happens when we refuse that work.
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Being a "skeptic" about other people's beliefs is easy in the grand scheme of things. Having the courage to apply the same principles to your own thinking is far harder, a much truer proof of wisdom, and far more important work.
Richard Dawkins shows us exactly what happens when we refuse that work.
Fin/@Tattie I don't know that I can name a single popular figure who is good at turning that skepticism inward.
I wonder if that's because it's just so rare, or if it's because we label people who do so publicly as waffles and deny them notoriety.
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Being a "skeptic" about other people's beliefs is easy in the grand scheme of things. Having the courage to apply the same principles to your own thinking is far harder, a much truer proof of wisdom, and far more important work.
Richard Dawkins shows us exactly what happens when we refuse that work.
Fin/@Tattie What an excellent thread. For me, the frustrating thing about Dawkins is that he was once a serious thinker and has done good work, in his time, but seems now to have become the thing he set his face against. John Cleese Syndrome, you might call it. Or Germaine Greer Syndrome. Either way, a tragedy, really.
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Elevatorgate was perhaps his most iconic failing. Rebecca Watson challenged the Western atheist community to look at their own unchallenged patriarchy, still being enacted outside obviously patriarchal religious structures.
Dawkins could have taken this moment to think "hey, yes, actually there's a lot of work I still need to do to truly dismantle the sort of thinking I was raised within"
Instead, he threw what can only be described as a hissy fit, named Islam as the only force of patriarchy worth bothering about, and held Watson as some sort of "enemy within" atheism, showing exactly how us-vs-them, paranoid, and binary his thinking had become.
4/@Tattie I still remember "elevatorgate" and a few other occasions where the YouTube atheist community discovered we weren't all as rational, objective and enlightened as we would like to think we are.
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Sometimes we're accused of spending too much time in "echo chambers". But perhaps the opposite is more dangerous— Twitterlike spaces where everything becomes simplistic takes, points scoring, and tribal allegiances. That is to my mind just as, if not more, likely to lead to thought-terminating behaviour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9(There are plenty of atheist-coded thought-terminating clichés! Can you name some?)
6/@Tattie gods are imaginary friends.
Religion is a hallucination, a prop or a social disease.
Do you mean this sort of thing?
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@Tattie gods are imaginary friends.
Religion is a hallucination, a prop or a social disease.
Do you mean this sort of thing?
@laguiri yes! Great examples!
Each of those I notice equates the other person to a child, mentally ill person, disabled person, or infectious person respectively— so that you can feel superior to/disdainful of them and not have to care what they think.
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@Tattie I still remember "elevatorgate" and a few other occasions where the YouTube atheist community discovered we weren't all as rational, objective and enlightened as we would like to think we are.
@rozeboosje it had a profound effect on me; I think that was when I stopped self-describing as an atheist.
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@Tattie I don't know that I can name a single popular figure who is good at turning that skepticism inward.
I wonder if that's because it's just so rare, or if it's because we label people who do so publicly as waffles and deny them notoriety.
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@Tattie What an excellent thread. For me, the frustrating thing about Dawkins is that he was once a serious thinker and has done good work, in his time, but seems now to have become the thing he set his face against. John Cleese Syndrome, you might call it. Or Germaine Greer Syndrome. Either way, a tragedy, really.
@hedders thank you! And yes, a lot of figures have fallen in similar ways.
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@Tattie I still remember "elevatorgate" and a few other occasions where the YouTube atheist community discovered we weren't all as rational, objective and enlightened as we would like to think we are.
@Tattie Yeah I can understand that. While I wouldn't stop calling myself an atheist as such, it did prompt me to explore my theological noncognitivism ("ignosticism") much more, and I put in a lot of effort putting as much daylight as possible between myself and the "thunderfoots", "pat condells" and others of that ilk.
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@hedders thank you! And yes, a lot of figures have fallen in similar ways.
@Tattie Yeah. You live long enough, all your heroes will disappoint you, I guess.
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@Tattie Yeah. You live long enough, all your heroes will disappoint you, I guess.
I think this is part of why I find myself thinking lately that skepticism needs to become an academic discipline -- because (as I understand it) a discipline is something that you apply first to yourself before attempting to teach others.
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@laguiri yes! Great examples!
Each of those I notice equates the other person to a child, mentally ill person, disabled person, or infectious person respectively— so that you can feel superior to/disdainful of them and not have to care what they think.
Another thought-terminating cliché is "I just believe in the null hypothesis" and "you have burden of proof".
No. You have plenty of beliefs about the nature of the universe, reality, truth, self, etc, and it's your responsibility to inspect and justify them.
I've long noticed how the "burden of proof" is general put upon the minority, with the white, cishet, middle-class Western dude's beliefs held as somehow "default".
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