We humans have grown in population technology and intelligence to a position of terrible power. And we have the same genes that our ancestors 10,000 years ago had. It's not genetic. It's thinking tools that have made this all possible - which raises a chicken egg problem. Did evolved tools make us smarter? Or did we evolve to become smart enough to make tools?
Daniel Dennett is one of the world's most original and provocative thinkers. A philosopher and cognitive scientist, he is known as one of the 'Four Horseman of New Atheism' along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens. In 2013 he came to Intelligence Squared to share the insights he has acquired over his 40-year career into the nature of how we think, decide and act. Dennett revealed his favourite thinking tools, or 'intuition pumps', that he and others have developed for addressing life's most fundamental questions. As well as taking a fresh look at familiar moves - Occam's Razor, reductio ad absurdum - he discussed new cognitive solutions designed for the most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, consciousness and free will.
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