Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by lukas099 3033 days ago
>Look, I'll be honest. I didn't read a book.

>But I don't want to debate its title, instead its reductionist view of people nothing more as vehicles for the immortal DNA.

The problem is that the book does not expound this reductionist view; it is only your conception of the book (likely based on the title) that does.

1 comments

Except it absolutely does:

    We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly
    programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.
    This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene.
As lukas099 has said, the book does not take the view that you're saying it takes.

Cherry picking quotes out of the context of an entire book can get you to any conclusion you want to come to, especially if you don't know the rest of the contents of the book.

I encourage you to read the book before taking a side that you read an article about.

You still are dodging addressing my points, before going into a "READ THE BOOK" mode. I don't have to read the Bible to realize how it was made and why is it flawed... Similarly, I don't need to read the book, to know the inclusive selection theory on which The Selfish Gene was based is flawed, and hasn't lived up to its models.

EDIT: Started reading it:

    The replicators that survived were the ones  that built survival  machines  for themselves   to  live in...
    We  are  all survival  machines  for the  same kind of replicator—molecules called DNA—but there  are many...
My former quote sure is misinterpreting things /s