What Do Our Genes Reveal About Our Past? w/ Richard Dawkins [Ep. 458]

Why does this peculiar desert lizard have such intricate patterns on its bang? And what does it tell you about its long dead relatives? Today, we have the extraordinary privilege of exploring these topics and more with one of our greatest living treasures, Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most influential and thought provoking scientists.

Genes are predicting the future because they will not survive unless they get the prediction right.

Richard is a renowned evolutionary biologist, zoologist, and author, a prominent figure in the new atheism along the other so called horsemen of the apocalypse. Past guest Sam Harris and the late great Daniel Dennett. He's well known criticism of creationism and intelligent design.

You can't opt out of science be because it goes against a traditional faith.

In our wildly ranging conversation, we explored the evolution of sex drive and the aesthetic appreciation of genetics, as well as the way genetics intersect in theoretical and experimental science. We talk about the potential evolutionary outcomes of artificial intelligence as it augments humanity. We talk about what it's like to be a scientist in a scholar with a career ranging over 50 years. Then we encounter along our journey some of the greatest figures in all of science. I know you're gonna love this episode, so let's go.

So would you do us a favor of doing what you're never supposed to do, which is to judge the book by its covers? Tell us the name, choice, the subtitle, and cover of art.

Well, here can can you see the book there? Or Yeah. Is that visible? Yes. Okay. Yeah. It will be. So that's the front cover, and that that's the back cover. It's called the genetic book of the dead. It's a kind of play on the Egyptian books of the dead which were, books that were buried with important people in ancient Egypt and as a sort of guide book to guide them into the into the afterlife.

The connection is pretty tenuous, but I suppose you could say that the genes Clarke, guiding the animal into, how to propagate the genes into not exactly the afterlife, but into the next the next generation. The subtitle is a Darwinian reverie, and it means it's a kind of meditation on evolution. It's it's not a particular one theme. It's a it's a meditation by the author of The Selfish Gene 40 or so years later. And not, climbing down from The Selfish Gene, but expanding in various directions. The the art on the back cover is, cobbled together from the art in the book which is, drawn by Jana Lentsover, in color, computer art in color. The theme of the book, insofar as there is a single theme, is this. The animal, any animal, and its genome can be regarded as a description of a written description, a book about the ancestral worlds in which the animal's ancestors survived.

The animal is a product of Darwinian natural selection of its ancestor's genes. Those genes that were successful in the past in getting themselves passed on are the ones that survive to the present, obviously. And therefore, they can be regarded as a kind of description of those selection pressures, those worlds in which the ancestors survived and reproduced, were successful in reproduction, successful in attracting mates, successful in rearing offspring. The book begins the the first illustration in the book is a is a picture of a Mojave Desert lizard which has its desert environment painted on its back, so to speak. It looks as though somebody's come along and literally painted the desert stones and sand on the back of the lizard. And you can see the same kind of thing in any camouflage animal, camouflaged Arthur camouflage, snail a camouflaged frog, etcetera. Natural selection has favored those ancestral animals that resembled their background, and in some cases, the resemblance is uncannily exact. It's really remarkable.

It really does look as though somebody's come along and painted the background, painted the desert in this case on the animal's back. The thesis of the book is that this painting is not limited to the superficial skin of the animal but goes right through the animal. Every single detail of the interior of the animal must be a description of desert in the same kind of way, but more indirectly as the picture on its skin. So the chemistry of the blood, for example, if you were sufficiently educated in biology, which we're not at present, then theorists of the future can would be able to read the biochemistry of the blood as being having a desert written all over it. And same applies to any animal. Any animal will have its environment, the environment of its ancestors written into every detail of the interior as well as the exterior of the animal.

It's quite a beautiful book. It's beautifully written and, I assume it will be beautifully bound. It looks like it it is behind you. I I did some primary source research. So I I looked up the Egyptian book of the dead, and how it begins, began. And it seems to begin with an homage to, to Ra, Akhenaten Ra, the the art whose disc, thou great god, art in my boat. Thou hast risen on the horizon. Thou hast filled the lands with radiance.

Thou art beautiful. Thou art young. Thou art mighty. Thou art born forever and ever. Are genes sort of like this all animating force or do they do they only live? Do they die? Are Arthur they like this this all powerful disk that illuminated the worlds of the Egyptians?

Well, that's very interesting. They sort of are. I mean, that going on forever and ever is exactly what they do in the form of copies. Of course, the in individual atoms in a DNA molecule don't go on forever. They're they're very temporary. They they only last a few weeks. But the information in the genes, in the DNA, because it's copied and copied and copied and copied with great accuracy, it does go on, if not forever, for 1000000 of years and that's the whole point. The whole point of my world view is that those genes that any gene could potentially go on forever, but only those genes are successful.

Only successful genes do go on forever. And the reason they're successful, what makes them successful, is that they are good at pulling the strings of embryology to make bodies that are good at surviving and good at reproducing, good at attracting mates and so on. So, yes, there is a resemblance between the genes and the great god Ra, but I wouldn't want to push that too hard.

That's right. They it's an another delusional god. Right, Richard? One of the many that, hasn't even persisted to this day. I I'm interested, quite frankly, not so much in the past. In my field, which is, you know, which is astrophysics and cosmology, of course, you know, Einstein plays a huge role in, in modern cosmology. And, of course, he was wrong at least as many times as he was right. And, you know, if if not for that, he could have had a good career. But when you look at Einstein, the first thing that really catapulted him to fame and and and notoriety was a retrodiction.

It wasn't a prediction at first. It was the retrodiction that explained why did the anomalous behavior of Mercury's orbit behave the way it did. And, in fact, it wasn't until after the 1919 solar eclipse and and the lobbying by Arthur Eddington and and others, did he become a household name and and so forth. But he really cut his teeth, so to speak, on Keating a retrodiction, ex an explanation. And I wonder how interested you are in these things because, the genes, as you say, the the the iguana or the the lizard that lives not too far away here in the Mojave Desert where I am in San Diego, that paints a picture, as you point out, of the past of the environment that this thing was born into. Is there a sense that genes can sort of predict the future? And is there a way we could get glimpse into, well, this lizard will eventually be living in a megalopolis like Los Angeles or San Diego and it will have, you know, graffiti on its back or can genes predict the future, not just adapt to them?

No. They don't predict in that sense. They don't predict the distant future. However, there is a sense in which the, retrodiction, which is the the the painting on the back is based upon the past. But insofar as it is an accurate prediction of the future, the immediate future, not the distant future, insofar as it's an accurate prediction of the immediate future, then the animal will survive. So if the prediction turns out to be wrong, if, say, there's a flood or something some other catastrophe, which means that it's no longer living in a in a desert, or if it strays onto a onto a gulf green, and therefore the prediction, thou shalt be living in a desert, turns out to be wrong. It's now living on a green sward, and it gets picked off by a predator. So it is predictive in that science, and and and I do say that this in the book that there is a sense in which genes are predicting the future because, they will not survive unless they get the prediction right, and all sensible prediction in the real world is based on the past.

I mean, you can't you can't predict if if the the world is a capricious, randomly changing place such that the past is not a good guide to the future. In so far as the past is a good guide to the future, in so far as the world is a conservative place, then any information about the past can be used to predict the the immediate future and therefore to survive in the immediate future. By the way, talking about, Eddington, I I I presume you know that when Einstein was told about Eddington's successful, fulfilling of his of his retribution, he was asked what he would have said if it had turned out to be to be false. And he said, then I would be sorry for the dear lord. The theory is correct, which is not the way scientists are supposed to proceed.

No. Well, I always say, you know, one of my laws is that for every quote, there's an equal and opposite quote. So Richard Feynman is famous for saying, you know, if you can't explain it to your grandmother, you don't know what you're talking about. And then he won the Nobel Prize and the journalist asked him what you win it Brian he said if I could explain it to you pal, it wouldn't have been worth a Nobel Prize. And similarly, Einstein Einstein suffered from what we now call computers syndrome. He he called himself an an involuntary swindler, getting the attention and affection of others. But, yes, you're you're absolutely right. That was, that was an incredible quote.

And it really came about prematurely because we couldn't really confirm general relativity to the precision that they claimed until the after the advent of radar astronomy in the 1960s. So, of course, Einstein was correct and, but but it was good that he was, there there was a delay by 2 years and, the first eclipse they tried to to do this expedition was in 1914, and it went through Crimea, which wasn't a great place to do astronomy or anything if you wanted to live in 1914, 1915. And Einstein had a factor of 2 error at that time. So the good lord would have been, right had the eclipse. I wanna ask you about, this. It's impossible not to think about artificially engineered, structures, intelligences, and, we'll we'll come to that in a little bit more detail later on when we get into, one of the themes that makes a big appearance in this book, which is the extended phenotype, which is, of course, a groundbreaking, hypothesis. I wonder I I have all these questions. I I call these my ABBA questions, Richard.

I hope it's not offensive to you. But my my feeling is if I have the rock group ABBA on my show and I don't ask them to play Dancing Queen, I'm not doing a great service to my audience. So I I wonder if you'd be kind enough to explain what is the extended phenotype. One one of your surely one of your greatest hits. Can you explain

Okay.

The extended phenotype and its application in this book?

Phenotype is, the external not external. The manifestation of of the genotype. And so as I said before, genes survive in the gene pool by virtue of their effects on bodies, which means phenotype. So something like the cut the color of the lizard's skin is part of its phenotype, its eyes Arthur its phenotype, etcetera. And conventionally and for most of the almost all the time, we think of phenotype as being parts of the body in which the genes sit. So, a beaver's tail, is is, influenced by the genes that sit inside the beaver. Those genes that make the tail good for swimming survive because the beaver is good at swimming, and that's good for survival of the genes, and so on. So on the whole, genes live inside what I call a survival machine, which is the body, and successful genes are the ones that build a good survival machine, a good a good, a body that's good at at surviving.

But if you think about the beavers, not the beavers tail, but the beavers dam, the beavers dam is not part of the beavers body and yet Clarke it is a Darwinian adaptation. The dam is shaped for the good of the beavers genes and you could therefore think of the genes as influencing the shape of the dam, the form of the dam, the size of the dam, via, of course, the beaver's behavior, which is its nervous system, its muscles, and so on. But there's a very real sense in which you would think of the beaver dam as phenotype, just as the beaver's tail is phenotype. A bird's nest, is not part of the bird, it's made of grass or made of mud, Not part of the the bird's body, but nevertheless the shape of the of the nest is crucial to the survival of the genes which in a sense built the nest. It was the the bird's behavior that built the nest, but you can think of it as phenotype influenced by the genes. And so the extended phenotype is those parts of the phenotype which are not part of the body in which the genes sit. Artifacts like beaver dams and birds' nests are the the simplest kind of extended phenotype. But there are others when parasites influence their host in such a way as to, change the behavior of the host so the parasite becomes more likely to get passed on to the next parasite in sorry, the next host in the in the sequence.

Flu worms big example, many many parasitic worms need to go from an intermediate host into a definitive host. A fluke in a snail needs to get into a sheep, a liver fluke needs to get into a sheep. And so it may influence the behavior of the snail in such a ways to to perhaps make make the snail more likely to be eaten by sheep and therefore inadvertently eaten by sheep and therefore, get passed on to the snail. Well, anything that the parasite can do to change the behavior of a snail of the snail in such a way as to make it more likely to be eaten by the sheep. That's extended phenotype. That's extended phenotype of the of the worm genes manifesting themselves in these brains phenotype. So lots and lots of examples, rather macabre examples of parasites influencing the behavior of their host, and that's extended phenotype. They are there's a real sense in which genes in the parasite are having phenotypic manifestation in the behavior of the host, and that's when the parasite lives inside the host.

What about parasites that don't live inside the host Clarke cuckoos? Cuckoos don't live inside their host, they live in the nest of the of the host, but they influence the behavior of the host. They have a very powerful gape, a very powerfully stimulating gape, which causes the host parent to foster parent to drop food into the gate. And that is manipulating the host and that's, once again, genes in the cuckoo baby, the the nestling cuckoo, are changing the behavior of the host and that's extended phenotype of the host. So that's a very brief summary of the extended phenotype.

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There are many examples. There's even some pictures, some beautiful, photos of of birds dropping food, wasting their food and dropping into the gapes of fish that somehow have tricked them into thinking they're they're young. And in the book, it's quite it's quite lovely. I mean, this book is is really remarkable in that it has illustrations, woodcuts, it has massive genetic Clarke. It has beautiful photographs. It's you're really to be commend. It's a very different book from your previous books, which I've all enjoyed. Thinking about the extended phenotype, it seems to me there there might be some sort of, and I'm it's just a simple, humble astrophysicist, Richard.

But so feel free to abuse me and disabuse me of my of my inaccuracies. But it seems like there must be some sensory apparatus of the gene or the phenotype because it's not just the organism itself. You talk about these crickets that make megaphones, which I found delightful and and we'll get into these bang they're related to these creatures that plague us here in California, mud daubers and other things. So a cricket, in my, my mind could make use of a megaphone, for Keating, in in some way. It it could it could advertise itself. It could, you know, trumpet its its CV or its h index. It could do a whole bunch of things. But with other processes like you're talking about, it seems like the one phenotype kinda has to know what the other phenotype is doing.

In other words, it's a collective. There there's some there's some difference. As Philip Morrison said, you know, more is different, not just, you know, multiple many many times the individual. So can you say something? Is there some sensory apparatus or some some sensor detector that allows a phenotype to say, well, actually, I have to keep modifying my extended phenotype because this other creature that I'm interested in in some reason or not, it's also waging a war where its phenotype is perhaps doing things. How do how do phenotypes interact with each other? Is am I am I off here?

No. You're not off. It's it's very true, of course, that that, it's an interaction between one animal and and another. It might be between a male and a female of the same species. It might be between a cuckoo and a cuckoo and it and its host. It might be, an bang anglerfish, trying to lure small fish by play playing a fishing rod on on on its bang. And, it's an it's an arms race. That's the that's the term that I use, between, say, predator and prey or or parasite and and and host.

And and when one side in the arms race ups the ante, the other one ups the ante. And and so you get a an escalation of the arms race. In the case of the cuckoo, the it's astonishing fact that that a that a a a cuckoo may be fed a a a baby cuckoo may be fed by a tiny, tiny wren, which it could swallow it whole, but it but the the wren is dropping the working itself to the bone, dropping food into the cuckoo's great gape. So this is this is a culmination of an arms race between the cuckoo and the wren or the bang ancestors of the cuckoo and the ancestors of the of of the wren, and each side is playing against the other. In the case of the cuckoo and the wren, it looks though the cuckoo's won the arms race because because it's so it's so one-sided. In the case of the arms race between, say well, we talked earlier about males being more ready to mate than females. So there's an arms race within the species between the males and the females. Males trying to seduce, trying to become become more attractive, trying to persuade females to mate with them, females resisting, to a large experiment.

And the arms race escalates, And, yes, so there there is this constant interaction between the different parties to an arms race.

You speak in the book of a, hypothetical scientist of the future. I want to, hearken to your to your many decades as a masterful educator. If you are sort of equipping the science of the future with her own, you know, academic book of the dead. What sorts of environments would you say that she has to be ready to interact with? What what would you like to endow her with? What skills, what tools in 2024 would best serve a scientist of the future to do the type of work that you lay out in the project?

Well, I suppose my guess would be and and I I'm just sort of crystal ball gazing now. My guess would be a big dose of computer science, molecular genetics, and molecular genetics is increasingly becoming a branch of computer science or vice versa. It is something that would have amazed, I think, amazed Darwin probably the extent to which genetics is digital. It really is a branch of computer science. It's not it's not theory. It's quaternary. But apart from that, it's exactly like a a computers, and it's it's digital and and a chromosome is a long long sequence of digital information theory much like a a computer tape. And the technology that the scientist of the future, I I call her SOF, s o f, Scientist of the Future, would need certainly would be a lot of molecular genetics and that means a lot of computer science.

That would be the first thing. Probably a lot of mathematics, I should think. Probably more mathematics than most biologists have at present. Those are the 2 main things, I think. Yes. I may think of others, but those are the 2 main things.

Yeah. I asked your colleague, mutual friend, sir Roger Penrose, a similar question, but maybe slightly slightly orthogonal, which was that, he's a theoretical astrophysicist and a general relativist, and I asked him, well, what what do you see as the skills that an that a theoretical astrophysicist should know about experimental astrophysics? In other words, I don't like my students to be siloed to just know how to turn wrenches and solder and make circuit boards. What alternative, you know, adjacent fields perhaps, maybe physics, my my field, What other tools would help Soft distinguish yourself in a career in a changing landscape that can only very vaguely be predicted even now with the rapid change in technology? So what what other brains, chemistry, quantum mechanics, what what sorts of thermodynamics, what other fields might might inspire her to great heights?

I'm interested in what what Roger said actually when you asked him that that question. Did did he have an answer?

Yes. It was, he's very conversant in data, somewhat troublingly so because I I think he has a tendency to succumb to, you know, the bias that that all of us scientists are subject to, which is confirmation bias. So when when results come out that C to support his conjecture of what he calls hawking points, he immediately, he immediately jumped on those and and later they were sort of falsified. His, answer to that adjacency question was analysis, was data analysis, Not not not just, you know, the the the theoretical or the application of data, but likelihood testing, frequent frequent theorists and, approaches, Bayesian approaches. It's very far removed from the pencil and paper theory that he does.

Interesting. Yes. Well, I've I've mentioned, computer science and molecular genetics. Chemistry, obviously, and that and that that that comes in as well. Data handling, yes. Nowadays, it's possible to sequence the genes of any animal you like very very quickly. And so in principle, you can take any pair of animals you like, sequence their genome totally, and then you can, by sophisticated data handling, you can calculate how how long ago the common ancestor lived and, what what the closeness of cousinship is of the and that has to be quite sophisticated. There are lots of traps, you can fall into.

Another aspect of data handling is signals of natural selection. You can look at the genome of an animal and you can you can use it to calculate what which as which parts of the of the genome have been subject to selection, Darwinian selection, in the past. And that's obviously very revealing. It it tells you what pressures the animal's ancestors were under, to survive. So that so data handling is is theory important. Yes.

What about field biological work? You you do so much. I think you've been to every continent or close to at least Antarctica if you haven't set foot at the South Pole. Don't worry. You're not missing much. There's not much going on theory, from my experience being there. But, what about being in the field? Does that give an advantage to, you know, the pure pencil and paper, zoology, geneticists, etcetera? Would you recommend that they develop field skills?

I think I would. I think it's a remarkable fact that Darwinian evolution, Darwinian natural selection was not discovered until the middle of 19th century. And then it was not discovered by sophisticated mathematicians or philosophers. It was discovered by 2 traveling naturalists, Clarke Darwin and Alfred Wallace, both of whom were collectors in tropical jungles, and I I'm actually genuinely puzzled as to why it took that kind of skill, that kind of experience to tumble to this really remarkably simple I it's a terribly simple idea when you think about it, not for selection. And it evaded really, really clever people down the centuries until until 2 traveling naturalists in the 19th century. So, yes, I think I think soft is going to it would would would benefit from some field trips as well.

The core of the book, you, you make experiment. At the end of the book rather, you describe our genome as a swarming colony of symbiotic verticoviruses Keating that not just the 8% of our genes are actual viruses, but the entire gene pool operates as a type of cooperative virus hell bent on traveling to the future. How how should this view, be be influencing our perspective on the way that our genes and our bodies interact with one another?

I'm afraid that's a rather typical piece of the kind of thing I do. That that's me being provocative, like Francis Crick, in a different way. I'm not saying that, we we that that that viruses that once were separate came together and to form a colony of viruses. It's it's not that. It's it's rather that when you look at the world from the point of view of the genes, which is what I do, the reason why the genes within one species gene pool, such as the human gene pool, work together cooperatively to build bodies altogether as a cooperative unit is simply that they have the same expectation of getting into the future. The only way the vast majority of our of the genes in your body can get into the future is through sperms, if you're female through eggs. Therefore, everything about the animal that conspires to survive theory reproduce in the male or female way, whichever it is, they all benefit from the same thing. They all benefit from from the from the body surviving, from the body reproducing, from the body being sexually attractive, from the body being a good parent, etcetera.

Everything about the body is programmed in unison by the genes. They all agree simply and solely because they have the same exit route from exit route into the future. The few that don't are things like viruses which get which get sneezed out or spat out or or or ejaculated out or whatever, coughed out. And and these are these we call viruses because they have an alternative way of getting into the future. They don't go via sperms or eggs. They go via breath or spit or sweat or whatever. So all I was really saying is it sounds it's actually much less radical than it sounds. It's simply that cooperative viruses would be those that have the same expectation of the future.

A bacterium that passes from parent to offspring in the egg or sperm, again, has the same expectation of the future because it's that's the only way it can get into the future is is via the egg or the sperm. So that that so the genes in that bacterium, insofar as they have extended phenotypic effects on the human body. Those extended phenotypic effects will be in agreement with the extend the with the phenotypic effects of the the human's own genes. So theory might as well be own genes, and mitochondria are in that category. Mitochondria are actually bacteria originally, but they become so, deeply embedded in our own cells that we they might as well be our own our own genes. And the reason is that they have the same method of getting into the future, namely through eggs. It's really just a a a way of dramatizing the point that the way a gene becomes the way genes become cooperative is by sharing the same expectation of the future. That means the same method of getting out of the present body into the next body whether it's being via sperm, sperms, or eggs, or being sneezed or coughed out.

It made me think,

and a exceptional colleague I have here at UC San Diego is, Kim Prather, who's National Academy of Engineering and Sciences member. She's, I believe, and she's she's incredible. She has a theory. You know, we suffer from horrific droughts here, and you'll be here in California, and we're gonna talk about your tour in just a bit. You're coming to America. And she has, works on aerosols, and she's found that during periods of extended drought that microbes actually find their way up into the upper atmosphere and, and seed, the downpour, you know, that eventually causes the drought to sort of come to an end, which I I I find quite remarkable as as almost the it's a global extended phenotype in that these these microbes, as you as you just described them, are influencing the Earth's climate as a way of, as you call it in the end of the book, making their final exit to the future. Have have are you familiar with this this model that that, you know, these atmospheric rivers can be triggered by the, stressors placed on colonies of microbes?

I'm familiar with, the same idea from my colleague, Bill Hamilton, who I quote extensively in the book. I wasn't aware of your colleague, but I wonder whether she is aware of of of of Hamilton because he proposed it sounds identical actually. He proposed that bacteria and algae and, fungal spores, find their way into the clouds and seed brains and, get themselves spread around the world by getting up into the upper atmosphere Brian, spreading around the world in in clouds and then getting brains down to Earth. And this is this topic of a of a rather bizarre fact. He wrote a a a paper called my intended Brian. And he said that when he when he died, he wanted to be not buried, but laid out in the Brazilian jungle where where he's he did where he did a lot of his research, and so he was devoted to Brazilian jungle. And he would be taken down below the soil by burying beetles. And then the adult beetles would take off in the next next year and fly up in in beautiful iridescent cloud and carry him all through the to the jungle.

Anyway, when he did die, very tragically, his partner life part part partner in his end towards the end of his life, Luisa Bozzi, an Italian woman, knelt down into the open grave and said something like this, Bill, your body is not we cannot we can't actually take your body to the Brazilian jungle. Your your body is buried here in in in Oxford. But eventually, the bacteria and algal spores are and will will rise up into the into the air and carry you around the world and will rain you down into your beloved Brazilian rainforest. Anyway, tell your colleague that that, she probably already already knows of Hamilton's idea, but it sounds like exactly the same I idea.

This is an out of this world conversation, isn't it? And if you're interested in getting a fragment of our early solar system, something that's truly out of this world, I know you're going to want to go to my Monday Magic mailing list. And you can subscribe at Brian. And if you have a dotedu email address, you're guaranteed to win one of these beauties, a real fragment of our early solar system. Who knows? Perhaps some of the schmutz was on this very meteorite that brought life to Earth some 1000000000 of years ago. I don't know about that. But I'll teach you all about meteorites and how to observe meteor showers in a follow-up message once you join my Monday Magic mailing list. And if you have a dotedu email address, you're guaranteed to win one of these beauties if you live in the United States. Go to brianketting.com/edu if you're a fellow academic like me and Richard.

Now back to the episode. Absolutely. Yes. It's it's, it is incredible. In the book, we talk you talk about the role of, again, external extended characteristics like birdsongs. What is the purpose of music? Is there, you know, in other words, if you if an intelligent alien were looking at the Earth and it knew all of our, you know, technology and it could see our our DNA and chromosomal, you know, patterns, would it predict that we, you know, have music to entertain and and to woo? Or what could you predict based on genes alone? And and what could what requires sort of field work of an evolutionary biologist, you know, or theorists, naturalist, like Wallace and and and and Darwin. What what could you predict just from knowledge of of these phenotypic behaviors?

I think music is is a theory difficult one. It's, something that probably is best regarded as a kind of byproduct, I think. Although of of of course, it can be used, as you suggested for for sexual attractiveness. I mean, it's it's arguable that in our wild ancestors, individuals who were good at singing, good at dancing might have been attracted to the opposite sex. I think that's a plausible idea. Steven Pinker, who's who's one of my favorite intellectuals, he he's in one of his books talks about possible, origins of music and his idea is he calls it the Cheesecake Theory. Our brains are equipped to analyze sounds, especially perhaps the sounds of language, to do a some kind some equivalent to Fourier analysis probably, to work out the from the stream of pressure changes that are hitting the eardrum. We analyze them and decode them into patterns which make sense to us, in for speech and other things.

If you have a brain which is into Fourier analysis, then pure tones or notes that are of a particular frequency or particular combination of frequencies might be attractive in the same way he says like like cheesecake is attractive. It's not necessarily good for you, but it's it it stimulates your taste buds in a in a super normal way. So that could be the origin of music, but then I suppose you could say something like the sexual attraction theory would take over and, would fashion music into being attractive. In in the book, in in The Genetic Book of the Dead, I do talk about birdsong as as as I mean, rather speculatively, as aesthetic appreciation by the birds of me of music. If you look at the way birdsong develops in in many songbirds, it looks as though there's good evidence that the the male the young male bird, before it's singing properly, it teaches itself to sing. In American bang sparrows, for example, they begin by, singing for random fragments of of song, which is not really proper song at all, and they learn to sing by whichever fragments of trial and error song fit in with a built in template. The template is built in genetically so that the bird in on the sensory side of the brain, it knows what bang sparrow song ought to sound like, and then it teaches itself to sing by random trial and error and repeating those sort of burbling phrases which fit in with the built in template. Well, there there's evidence for that.

Now if you think about it, what this bird is trying to do is to seduce females. Female has a brain which is the same species and therefore probably, has the same template built into its brain as the male has. So the male is teaching himself to sing with reference to a template which is also present in the female's brain. So in effect, he's saying, if this appeals to me, it'll probably appeal to a female too because we we have the same kind of brain. It probably appeal to a female because we have the same kind of brain. Well, that sounds awfully like aesthetic appreciation. The male is is trying things out. Does that appeal to me? Do I like that? Is that is that the kind of music that that I that I like? Because let's if it if it if I like it, I'll repeat it because, it'll probably appeal to female as well.

And I think you'd say the same thing about bowerbirds, these magnificent Australian birds which, build bowers out of grass and other things and beer bottle tops and and anything beautiful things they can find, colored things they can find to lure females. And females come to the bower. They're attracted by the bower. It's better than a peacock tail in one way because although it looks like it's similar to a peacock's tail, the the the bird itself the male bird itself is not made vulnerable by it because it's not part of its body. It's an extended phenotype, in fact. Well, David Attenborough has beautiful films of bowerbirds building male bowerbirds building bowers, and they really do look like an artificial of standing back from the canvas and looking at it and sort of darting forward to make a little adjustment, standing back, looking at it with head on one side, cocking its head and looking and then adjusting it. That looks to me like aesthetic appreciation again. And once again, the bird is trying out what it itself, the male bird is trying out what it has a male appreciates, because the female is likely to appreciate the same thing.

Therefore, once again, we have an an explanation for, aesthetic, appreciation by a bird. We've got a bit of music, but in the case of birdsong, it is music. It's it's bird physics, and I think we can make a good case that it the bird birds, both male and female, appreciate it aesthetically.

I wanna turn to a concept that's really a core inside of the genetic book of the dead, and that's the pamplocyst, which I wasn't familiar with, but, until I realized my my kids do these, and make pamplocysts all the time. You know, they ride over, destroy stuff, Presume you know, usually what their siblings have made, they efface it to make room for for new Keating. But you can still see the traces of the older, siblings work, in the case of at least sometimes, when my kids get to it. And it made me think of, you know, in astronomy, we we look at spectra, which we we call the library of light, you know, the the patterns of of starlight that's traveled to us, perhaps from distant galaxies, which may no no longer exist. And I wonder how these, you know, looking at the past, which is all we can do with astronomy. We can't do an experiment. I can't change the temperature of the sun and ask, how does that affect the number of sunspots? Right? So but we make use of vast collections, which are similar enough, but they're they're not identical. And I guess, how does the this concept of the PAM process, how does that explain, you know, what you've worked on, which is convergent evolution, which I understood.

I learned from you many things about it. But but one of the things that strikes me, I theory I learned from you that octopuses have eyes that are quite similar to human beings even though our genetic ancestors, you know, diverged, you know, 700000000 years before the dinosaurs were exterminated. So, how does the Pampasist, you know, kind of encode or pre presage convergent evolution? Is there a relationship?

Let let me stop you. Do do you got the word wrong. Do do you mind? It it it's palimpsest.

No. No. Please. I'd palimpsest. Okay. Absolute thank you very much. Yes. So the palimpsest, does that, you know, kind of work symbiotically maybe with convergent evolution? Are they independent? How is it possible that 2 different books of the dead, you know, which which today look like as different as an Egyptian and a bowerbird, But, you know, how how can it be that they that they converged upon the same solution for things like eyes or you mentioned electric fields produced by fishes in the book? How does it play into this to this rewritten archive over over almost cosmic history.

Wouldn't it be rather surprising if it if they didn't actually converge, wouldn't it? I mean, if there's a good way to make an eye, and, we we know that there is because because cameras work in the same way. It's not the only way. I mean, there are compound eyes which work in a different way, and there's the Keating telescope method as well. Even some animals which have a ref equivalent of of a reflecting eye, a a parabolic reflector. But the camera is obviously a very very good way to form an image, and to analyze that image. And so not surprisingly, the camera eye has evolved independently at least twice in molluscs and in, in vertebrates. And it's different in interesting respects. The the in the in the mollusc eye, in the in the cephalopod, like, the octopus eye, the wires that lead from the photocells, if we can call them that, to the brains, go backwards from the retina in a sensible way, the way an engineer would have designed it.

But in us, invertebrates, it the the wires leave these photocells from the front of the eye, and they travel over the surface of the retina, and then they dive through the retina in the blind spot. So that's an indication of that's what that's indication of the fact that they evolved from different starting points and they have different embryologies. But the the design of the camera eye is the same. And why wouldn't it be? I mean, it should be because it's a very good way to form an image. And the whole chapter on convergent evolution is to make the point of the power of natural selection. It's an example. These are they're all examples of the power of natural selection to, to come up with a good engineering solution to a problem. I mean, bats and dolphins use echoes, use sonar, use echolocation.

They've independently evolved it. Electric fish, you mentioned, there are 2 different groups of electric fish which use electric fields, which they generate themselves to navigate around, and they totally independently one group in South America, one group in Africa have independently discovered this way of doing things. And there science again, revealing little differences. You bang only do this if your body is rigid because if your body is moving in serpentine waves like a fish's normally does, then that messes up your electric fields and so you can't do it. So the body has to be has to be rigidly straight. That means how do that means you can't swim in the normal fish way. So what they do is they have a fin that runs right the way the length of the body which moves in a sinuous way like the whole body of an ordinary fish. But the the main body of the of the electric fish is rigid, is is stiff.

And both these groups of of fish, the South American ones and the African ones, do the same trick. But in one of them, the longitudinal fin is on the bang, and the other one, it's on it runs along the belly. Once again, a Keating difference showing that they, independently evolved it from different, starting points. But I think you shouldn't regard convergence as something that excites your incredulity and and needs a special explanation. It would be surprising if if convergence didn't happen because because whatever is a good engineering solution ought to be theory, and it is.

I wanna pivot to another modern subject which which has some bearing in in the genetic book of the dead, and that's the role that pain plays in evolutionary processes. But I want to ask it from a slightly different perspective, and that is to pivot to artificial intelligence. And the way I want to do that, with your indulgence and your forbearance, is to, is is to remind you if you don't know or or, you know, or if you do know or maybe not, but Albert Einstein science said that his happiest thought I'm showing a finger puppet, by the way, to all my listeners who aren't watching me talk with Richard But, but Einstein said his happiest thought, Richard, was that if he was in free fall, he'd experiment no gravitational field. And I use that as sort of a hint that it may not be so easy to generate artificial intelligence in the human form, for two reasons. 1, what does it mean for a computer to feel happy? An artificial intelligent agent, a large language model of a of a Hilbert space, of a vector space, how can it sense happiness? A, that's one part of the question. And then, b, how can it, visualize, a visceral experience like free fall, like the pit of your stomach as you go over a roller coaster or a bump in in the road, how can it do that if it's not embodied in a physical organism? And and Noam Chomsky and I debated this as well. But I wanna ask you, how first of all, how likely is it that you do you think that we'll have artificial Charles Brains or Richard Dawkins? I mean, can a computer do, or or a computational system replicate human generative thoughts in physics, in in biology, that rise to a level that would entertain us, interest us, and be worthy of research?

I suppose as a materialist, I'm committed to the view that, there's nothing supernatural in the brain and therefore Keating that the brain can do must be doable in an analogous system, electronic system, com computer system. So we don't wanna get mystical about about it. On the other hand, you make a a less mystical point about not being embodied in a body, and therefore theory like the pit the the pit pit of your stomach feeling in a in a roller coaster. You have to have a body in order to to experience that kind of thing, and that may be non trivial or it may be trivial. I mean, it it it in a way one could say, oh well, yes, I mean, of course, gotta gotta have a body to do that, but that's not the important thing. In order to do really clever stuff like like, doing what Einstein did or doing what Darwin did, you don't need a body. You just need a brains, and and you just need the well, the the function equivalent of a of a brain, which I think I'm committed to the view must be possible in electronics. But I think the the instantiation in a real body probably is nontrivial and and, probably is essential for certain kinds of experiment, which which which an animal, human has and which perhaps a a computer can't have.

Unless you put it in into a body, I mean, you you could put it into a a a robot and and really could perhaps experience the feeling of losing your stomach when you're in a roller coaster because it would experience the same acceleration forces, as as we do.

Hey. There's a good chance you might be a scientist or an engineer aspiring to be, maybe going to school, graduate school or after school or maybe you're a professor like me. If you're wanting to learn the greatest tips and ways to become your best scientist, you might want to get my book Into the Theory Like a Nobel Prize winner with a forward by my friend Nobel Laureate Theory Barish. In it, we describe an incredible series of tips on how to collaborate better, unlock your creative genius, and get over common pitfalls like the computers syndrome. I hope you'll take a deep dive into it, and I know you'll enjoy it. You can read a free chapter at my website, brianketing.com/books, and you can buy it at amazon.com, an ebook, audiobook, or in physical hard copy or paperback form. Thanks a lot. Right.

Yes. That would that would

be quite a trivial way to do it. I I had a different, question to pivot off of that, which is, where you bring up the role that pain plays in an organism. And that's to ask, well, maybe it's hard to replicate that feeling of Einstein called it the happiest thought, the one that titillated him most. So maybe perhaps you could replicate, the titillation in some sort of a computers form. But but it seems maybe easier just from thermodynamic considerations, entropy consideration, that you could make its life much worse easily or you could make its existence much worse. Those of us, you know, who, who have children know that it's the happiest you could you could ever be, but but also opens you up and exposes you to the greatest pain that you could ever experience. And that's by virtue of, you know, there's many more ways to ruin your life than to make you twice as happy. And I wonder with with artificial agents, is there a way that we could educate them, train them using pain, and, you know, blow a capacitor every now and then to like, are there ways, though, that we could instantiate pain rather than the, you know, the the the stick, you know, rather than the carrot, use the stick.

How about that training these agents using negative reinforcement?

Pain is a Darwinian adaptation. It's it's to to train the animal not to repeat actions which are damaging to its body in which potentially they might therefore lead to its death. So, something like picking up red hot coals, we we experience that as as pain. It's a warning. Don't do that again. Don't ever pick up a red hot coal again. It's dangerous. It could it it can jeopardize your survival.

What's puzzling is that it has to be so damn painful. Why couldn't it just be a flipping a switch in the brains, and and this just simply flip because it don't do that again, raising a little red flag, and the animal doesn't do it again. And I think that's a genuinely difficult question, and I I think it's maybe something to do with the danger that the animal might overrule the little red flag. Because the animal is conflicted, it's got it's it's got to balance big, the need for to find a mate, the need to find food, the need to find water, the need to avoid danger, the need not to not to fall over cliffs. If pain was not really painful, if it really was just a red flag, then you could imagine the animal overruling. Well, when when a human is tortured in order to get a secret out of out of him, it's it would be trivially easy to to to for for a spy who is being tortured to overrule the torture and just say, well, I don't I don't care. I mean, that's a red flag, but I'm I'm ignoring it, because my my priorities are different. And that's a sort of dim feeling my weight towards understanding why pain has to be so painful as opposed to just being equivalent of a of a flag going up in the brain.

Before we wrap up, I wanna talk to you about your tour. So what inspired you to go on a tour, when you could be comfortably home at, you know, collecting world or doing things by, by Zoom or Riverside as we're on now? What, what was the, genesis of this tour?

By the way, it's probably gonna be my my last tour. I mean, I'm I'm 83 now, and and, I I don't think I'd imagined I'll I'll do it again. It's gonna be very strenuous. I suppose I have been in the habit of doing a book tour when I've got a new book out, and and, it's just that this is a much bigger affair than I've ever done before. And, it, well, we'll see how it goes. It's not being billed as an actual book tour. It's been but it's but it that's sort of what it is. And as I say, it it's it's gonna be my last such big big tour.

Well, that's wonderful. Yeah. Unfortunately, you're only coming to Northern California, but I'll see what I can do to to make it up to the masonic up there, theater in San Francisco. Otherwise, you'll be really traveling quite a bit. I I don't envy your, your travel schedule. I do envy your frequent flyer miles. You're you're sure to do

a great deal. If you watched all the way to the end of this episode, I know you're gonna love this conversation with Dan Dennett, the late great philosopher in his last ever podcast interview. And click here for a playlist of my best episodes on the origin of life and consciousness. See you next week on Into the Impossible.

Join me and Richard Dawkins in an extraordinary conversation on his final tour on October 6th in Vancouver, Canada. Visit Brian for more information.