Are We Adaptable to the Human Condition?

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We have no right to expect that we should necessarily solve these difficult problems, like the hard problem of consciousness, or like ar quanto mechanics. Our brains were not, we're not adapted to understand these really difficult problems. In a way, it's a wonderit's a wonder that we can understand so much as much as we do,. At least some of us do. Not, notnot me in most cases, but term that some members of the species homosapians are capable of understanding quanta mechanics is, to me, a wonder fact.

In episode 205, Michael Shermer speaks with Richard Dawkins, the author of The Selfish Gene, voted The Royal Society’s Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor’s Tale, The God Delusion, and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. He is a Fellow of New College, Oxford and both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.

This episode is heavily edited because Dawkins was having trouble with his voice, and Shermer tried to speak a little more to give Dawkins a chance to let his voice rest.