The Darwin Day Lecture 2018: The evolution of human morality 

More interesting than I thought it would be. I clicked it as it was a Darwin Day thing, but I am very glad that I did. Thanks.

This was an amazing talk. People need to update their "conventional knowledge" every once in a while. I've learned so many new things AND I'm left with a few concepts to think about.

Pure brilliance! What a truly engaging, incredibly insightful and thought provoking talk! Thank you so much for the upload :)

This is the most insightful and thought-provoking lecture on morality that I have ever heard.

Why do the smartest talks have the dumbest comments?

Isn't morality really just a technology that rewards and encourages symbiotic reciprocal relationships while punishing and discouraging predatory and parasitic relationships? We need more of it

Interesting lecture. Especially highlighting the social areas where certain behaviour that's typically judged as "immoral" , yet when asked " what harm is such behaviour actually doing ?" can't be answered logically.I.e. Such moral judgements are driven by a reactionary ( instinctive) emotive process rather than a well considered thought out morality .

Love is wise,Hate is foolish. We are all responsible one way or the other.

Great lecture! Amazing how some people here still argue against rationality.

wish you all the happy darwin day from Tanzania..........Thanx for the good lecture

Great speech. Beautiful ideas. Ultra wise. Thank you.

Thanks for the under - understand subject of psychology evolution. So enlightening. Thanks again and keep up with the good work. From HK

Good that the Darwin Day lecture came out just in time for St Skeletor's Day this year.

I like the guy introducing this. Making philosophy and science not mundane. good for you.

A truly great and fascinating talk! Many thanks! :)

Great, informative lecture. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Diana Fleischman is gorgeous. :)

German philosopher Immanuel Kant, founder of critical philosophy Born - 22 April 1724, Died - 12 February 1804 (aged 79) Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative (a form of "do onto others.."): Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) - “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” Violation of Kant's categorical imperative is hypocrisy of the worse kind.

Thank you for posting. Most informative. Great learning....

And what is your view of the evolutionary debunking of morality argument(s) from Joyce, Steele, etc.?

What has to be true? For there to be such major variations, in a single species, with regard to that species capacity to feel empathy?

When Gandhi was asked what he thought of western civilization, he said it sounded like a good idea. That’s exactly what I think about human morality.

mother theresa is a good case in point of how misguided religion is on morality, it's generally accepted that she thought the way into heaven was for the people in her care to suffer as much as possible. i urge you to look her up, i am biased.

Moral dumbfounding is guilt by association driven by fear of being rejected by the tribe.

At 10:26 Haldane would jump in the lake to save two brothers or *Six* cousins. Six??? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection Eight.

Thanks! I learnt a lot

It's disturbing how many people do not value the well being of their fellow human and the environment we live in. I do not want a child to have to endure suffering caused by socio/psychopaths.

Portsmouth has a Waitrose? Wow. You learn something every day

It starts off boring and gets better. It is interesting how most of us would not want to increase our empathy. I know that I myself have done research into empathy because I wanted to know if empathy was a motivator. For example, I found that my son was not interested in learning Chinese even though we were living in Taiwan and I associated his lack of motivation with a lack of empathy for others. He seemed to think everyone should speak English so he was not interested in learning Chinese. I wondered if I could apply this epithany to getting local students motivated to learn English. I realized that if English learners could feel empathy for people who did not know their language then they would be more motivated to learn English. Alas there is no quick fix for a lack of empathy. But it does help explain why generally badly behaved students almost always do not pick up a foreign language.

The veil of ignorance is part of a long tradition of thinking in terms of a social contract that includes the writings of Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson. Prominent modern names attached to it are John Harsanyi and John Rawls.

Yes

Moral ending 52mins in. Some fish ie:- Tuna(huge) can feed many people and could even make an adequate snack for a Texan!!

Outstanding speaker who rarely asserts without references to sources, except one. I'm not saying she's wrong but on what basis does she believe people are smarter now than ever before?

I wonder what Darwin would think of this talk?

30:50 Common sense tells us that two people witnessing an event will describe that event identically regardless of how they are moving relative to each other. Nope, turns out, that is wrong. Common sense tells us we can know the position and velocity of a particle at the same time. Nope, sorry, wrong again Common sense tells us that a particle like an electron has a specific location, even if we don't know it exactly. Yep, this one is wrong as well. Perhaps common sense is not as reliable as we think.

Why believe in anything if all you feel and believe are all results of random particle interaction?

isn't it more the case that evolution kills off the less appropriate rather than "favouring" the fit? the emphasis always seems to be on the survival part, when the survival part is purely chance and the survivor is only partly "perfect for it's environment", it's actullay the weeding out of inapropriate mutations that does the selection, no?

A collection of examples of our psychological and moral attributes without scientifically linking them with genetic adaptations through natural selection Linking EP to Darwin would very likely disappoint him

QUR'ANIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION VS THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION (1) The theory of evolution asserts that living things are not part of creation or intelligent design, but a coincidental causes and natural process. However, this " theory of Evolution by natural selection " gave rise to doubts from the very beginning. 1- What were the " natural and coincidental variations " referred to by Darwin ? How could these variations provide an explanation for the diversity in animal and plant species ? 2- Darwin asserted that " living beings evolved gradually". In this çase, there should have lived millions of " transitional forms". Yet there was no trace of these theoretical creatures in fossil record. Darwin gave considerable thought this problem, and eventually arrived at this conclusion that " further research would provide these fossils." 3- How could natural selection explain complex organs, such as eyes , ears or wings? How can it be advocated that these organs evolved gradually, bearing in mind that they would fail to function if they had even a single part missing. H.S.Lipson, a British physicist makes the following comments about these " difficulties " of Darwin's: " On reading ' The Origin of Species ' I found that Darwin was much less sure himself than he is often represented to be ; the chapter entitled " Difficulties of the Theory" for example, shows considerable self-doubt. As a physicist, I was particularly intrigued by his comments on how the eye would have arisen. (1) However, contrary to his expectations, more recent scientific findings have merely increased these difficulties. The Problem of Origin of Life : The theory that non-living matter could come together to form living organism, had been widely accepted. Even in the period of Darwin's ' Origin of Species ' was written, the belief that bacteria could come into existence from inanimate matter was widespread. A corner stone of the Theory of Evolution was disapproved by Louis Pasture. In his lecture at the Sorbbone in 1864. He said: " Never will be the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow srtuck by this simple experiment." (2) However, as scientific progress revealed the complex structure of the cell, the idea that life could come into being coincidently faced an even greater impasse. The problem of Genetic : Another subject that posed a quandary for Darwin's theory was inheritance.Vague beliefs about inheritance led Darwin to base his theory on completely false ground.Darwin assumed that : Naturaĺ selection was the " mechanism of Evolution." He was unable to explain how would " useful traits" be selected and transmitted to the next geneation? At this point, he embraced the Lamarckan theory, that is " the inheritance of acquired traits". However, Lamarck's thesis was disapproved by the laws of genetic inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel. The concept of "useful traits" was therefore left unsupported. Genetic laws showed that acquired traits are not passed on, since no alteration in their genetic data takes place, no transformation of species occurs. This was a serious deadend for Darwin's theory, which tried to base the concept of " useful traits " on Lamarck. Mendel opposed not only Lamarck's model of evolution, but also Darwin's. Mendel was in favour of the orthodox doctrine of special creation. (1) H.S. Lipson, " A Physicit's view of Darwin's theory", Evolutio Trends in Plants, vol.2, No, 1988, p.6 (2) Sidney Fox, Klause Dose, Molecular Evolution and The Origin of Life. W.H.Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1972, p.4. Continue:--

Darwin is great man iam an a Indian iam believed Darwin theory and evelution...

8:50 I don’t like how that slide is implying that evolution has consciously only wanted to produce modern humans. 31:10 Kill five people or one person on a train track, well I’d choose the five people, because five people who’re stupid enough to be on a train track, far less stupid people in the world than just the one. 50:38 empathy and kindness: she arbitrarily assumes that people don’t want more empathy or kindness. If I’ve just eaten a tub of my favourite ice cream, then was asked if I want another tub, I’d say “no, I don’t need any more ice cream” lol. Maybe people didn’t choose empathy and kindness, because they believe they already have enough of it.

Is evolution amoral?? I disagree. Can someone expand on this point?

No, I do not think we should prioritize potential future people. Non-existence is morally neutral. We should prioritize people who will exist, but not people who could exist. People who,. in the end, never exist, do not suffer at all.

Human morality is rooted in the human unconscious. There can be no understanding of the evolution of the former without an understanding of the nature and evolution of the latter. Freud's trepidation about incorporating Darwin's theories into his own was a major ommission,

A very lovable presentation🙏

Starts @5:45

80k watched in 2017 for Dawkins and Krauss.

My fundamental problem with the trolley problem is how unrealistic it is. I just can't imagine actually being in that situation. However, recent events give us a much more realistic version. Should we stop vaccinating people against deadly disease C with vaccine X once we learn that this might actually kill one person per _large number?_ There's an important difference here, though - _all_ the victims are anonymous when you have to decide. There's a reason some people like the torture (and it is torture) to make a parent decide which of their children will live and which will die. That's what the trolley problem feels at least somewhat like, whereas the vaccine problem mostly doesn't.

The future people part is crucial. Get more children, Diana!

Literally no one ever has said this in any church I have been to or studied with regards to impregnating through the ear canal.

I was an atheist for about the first 39 years of my life until i realised how smug, authoritarian and self righteous my fellow atheists were and it disgusted me.

Welcome, please help me explain the origins of life .I will talk about the emergence of single cell objects . Please explain the phases of the (first cell) .These are compounds in the same cell 1-amino acids 2-peptides 3 - chains of nucleic acids 4-nucleotides .Question Who is the former? Is it amino acids or nucleotides? .The second question is who is the former Are they nucleic acids or peptides? .There are contradictions in the stages of the components of life .We ask you to develop explanations for the origin of life .We ask you to develop explanations free of contradictions .Please send me my letter to biologists and chemistry .

Basically Athiesm adopting/ adapting religious virtue to Secular life. Eliminate the middleman or idol or ideal for a purely intellectual and human experience. The supernatural aspect that we ascribe as justification for passion,pride,and prejudice is removed .

The myth of the virgin who gives birth to a SON, obviously not a daughter, is very ancient and predates the Christian myth. It's been around the Mediterranean cultures and in India and Persia (Iran) thousands of years BC The funny thing is that Jehovah /Yahweh impregnated the fiancee of Joseph, a grave sin for Jews, to be born as his child, but Christians believe that Jehovah /Yahweh and Jesus Christ are the same. So, God committed suicide, another grave sin. It would be laughable if those dogmas hadn't caused innumerable deaths and torturing. Excellent lecture. A scientific proof that morality has nothing to do with religions. Unfortunately there are some groups of people whose ideas are from the Middle Ages.

i thought that said "dawkins day"

Watching

the trolley problem is a misrepresentation of morality - it concludes you either push or dont push the man. But the reason why pushing is immoral isnt because he would die, it is because you take away his freewill to choose jumping on his own volition in order to stop the trolley. as soon as you create a moral framework that justifies removing people's freewill, you will corrupt all consequential moral judgments.

Watching this post COVID has a very different feel..the assumption man is smarter than ever before? Man is more moral than ever before?

So, a train is coming. I could ; 1. Flip a switch and the train kills one person . 2. Leave the switch and the train kills five people. I think , on average , every morally well adjusted person would choose to save the five people. It's not that you'd " choose" to kill the one person , it's simply a matter of saving as many lives in that moment as is possible. But, the pushing an innocent onto the track in order to stop the train adds another moral depth to the thought experiment. As that would change the whole moral dynamic from saving as many as possible , to killing one human intentionally in order to save many. E.g. that depends on the scenario. A innocent ? No. I wouldn't intervene. Though if it was some psychopathic weirdo with a bomb, I'd have no moral dilemmas taking the terrorist out to save the lives of the many innocents. Though again , I'd prefer a star trek like stun gun , so the terrorist can at least be treated for their psychopathy.I.e. lack of empathy and severe indoctrination in that they believe there is some self value ( jihad) to their own death only possibly because of a social experience in which they have learnt to devalue being alive. Thus seek false hope in the " after life " .

Impregnated through ears...scriptural reference ?? Why do we fight wars...or have moral emotions..notions of good and bad? What is a moral rule?

If future people are no less important than existing people - isn't the logical conclusion that abortion is a murder, even from a utilitarian perspective? (because the argument here is that we should focus our morality on the potential and not on the current status of the embryo). Its astonishing that the speaker ignore this question altogether

Great lecture.

there is no morality outside of our emotions and intuitions- it's anthropogenic

Thinking about potential humans, I wonder what she makes of the Anti-natalist viewpoint. See David Benatar’s book.

Unfortunately, this speech is not about evolution of morality. Just chunks of definitions related to morality. This lecture/speech had no consistency and neither a deep of analysis of morality evolution.

Religious or secular our " divergent " nature will at some point need to resort to violence to uphold moral superiority. Its at this point we as humans become all to human. All the idealism gets put into perspective. Our need to slaughter food ,be aggressive, maintain disgust, and pursue greatness, ' superiority ' are ingrained in us to essentially maintain diversity. So if you're intellectually superior and peaceful ,the complete opposite of those values will inevitably surface to " Keep it real ". Survival instincts insists you better be capable.

The giraffe evolved from an animal with a much shorter neck.

Great talk but she underestimates sick skateboarding tricks

The train was too fast to change the track, and he killed 201 instead of 5...!

Diana is alright lookin =)

Imagine you are at one of the Normandy graveyards where Americans killed in the war are buried. You see a Frenchman peeing on one of the American graves, but it turns out that particular solder had raped the man's grandmother and was killed by her husband. To avoid murder charges or retaliation they conspired to make the rapist look like a war casualty and told the story of the rape only in the family. Would it change how you feel about this person disrespecting that grave if you knew the person buried there doesn't even belong with the other heroes. That he was killed violating some young woman?

Nice video

Great stuff, but it would be brilliant if you pronounce in British accent

I didn't watch the video but I'm guessing that the entire lecture was about how our morals have become better.

Eusociality does not explain human morality. This lecture is using basic biological principles to explain some valid examples in nature, but the way she attempts to stretch these thin aspects of biology to assume concepts of human morality is very unscientific indeed.

I wonder how a person can empathize with the suffering of an animal being slaughtered?

Smart and pretty! This professor is in the genetic Hierarchy of the human species!

She says humans often use moral frameworks to try and coerce others into believing a certain way. And then it looks like she asked scores of people to come in here and demonstrate that. Good work, team! 😎😇🥳🤣

She speaks way too quickly and I struggled to keep with her. If you watch Richard Dawkins, his delivery is a good deal slower. Maybe she will slow down a tad as she goes on, hopefully. But I enjoyed her intelligence, so cheers to the Dr.

I don’t buy her point that dogs have more facial muscles than wolves..... I’ve encountered wild wolves before, I had a dog and I worked with multiple wolf breeds (half wolf, half something else) A wolves facial expression is far more nuanced and detailed than that of a domesticated dog AND most domesticated dogs have no chance in actually recognizing most of a wolves facial expression and acting accordingly because the amount of body language dogs depict is minimal compared to that of a wolf

😇

Pretty smart cookie. And (intending this respectfully) not a bad looker either.

I think it is wise to beware of being too altruistic. You and people like you will likely lose the evolutionary game by being too giving to those that will not return the favor. Maybe I am woring, but there is an evolutionary reason we are limited in our altruism. It should be taken into account at least that "humanism" may be unsustainable.

This was not one of the better Darwin Day Lectures. Oh well, still interesting.

she's pretty

I'm glad that the person who did the introductory speech found a place in academia. I don't think he'd have had an overly happy life if he were a football hooligan, for example. He just doesn't have the right voice and accent for it...

Give the robots the Three Rules

31:00 If you really want to stop the train, jump onto the tracks yourself. If you are unwilling to sacrifice your own life to save others, why should you sacrifice the life of another? If you are willing to sacrifice your life to save others, then sacrificing the life of another is unnecessary.

Wha?! Enhancing empathy and kindness is NOT the same as enhancing morality. They do get us to where we think about morality, sure, and if they're too low, there's a problem. But if they're too high, that's _also_ a problem; we want to make rational ethical decisions, not ones that are purely driven by emotion. There's a balance to find there. Compare to hunger. If you don't get hungry enough, you'll starve. However, modern society has trouble with people getting hungry _too much,_ so there's an "epidemic" of overweight. Similarly, a little greed is necessary to make modern, more-or-less capitalistic society work; similarly, too much greed is working hard to destroy it. Anything emotion is a delicate balance, and what the best balance is shifts over time.

47.49 min in the presenter ( i will not give that person a name or gender as those words imply difference . ) says that we are " beholden" and " shackled " by these evolved emotions which have constrained our moral behavior in a variety of different ways. Perhaps humans would be better off by becoming more like Sheldon Cooper. ( Big Bang ) Highly specialized, focused, emotionless and genetically useless in the real world. Perhaps if we build more robots and computers which don't have morals , imagination, or sense of aesthetics (beauty ) we ( the intelligent elite )can rule over the majority of humans so that the remaining few can enjoy life. ...OR... I want a future for all living life. A future with humans not robots, not cyborgs. Already in the last 20 years of this age of information we have actually drifted further from nature, become more separated from loved ones , mainly due to our increasing use of our mind i n a non ethical way, and the rapid rise in modern technology without debating the pros and cons.( consequences ) . In economic terms the middle classes have shrunk in size considerably. All spiritual and religious traditions have brought us good ethics and morals for 3000 years . Now mummy and daddy are too tired to play with their children. Work, careers come first. Sharing, caring and respect are not taught at school. Education should be free or low cost(40 years ago it was),......and not just for the wealthy greedy few. I thought schools and other government entities were there to serve the public, not enslave the public . We are just tax file numbers. You are being constantly watched on electronic media devices by government and corporate computer algorithms . Now you are feeling tired and angry at this information overload. Don't worry, don't have fear your computers ( rational , reductionist, focused ,,brains ) have all the answers. Selfish genes and selfish memes will someday learn that in order to survive we need emotional, ----spiritual----, mental--- and physical balance. Lets maintain homeostasis. Mother Earth. Gaia.

If you're not going put morality in the perspective of collectivist thinking, ie tribalism, and tribe status, moral peacocking, power dynamics, then you don't have understanding of human behavior.

Oh come on, the ear impregnation story is totally plausible, and consistent on top!; "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word *was* God" ()). That totally means that the Seed was word, ok? Ok! but you can't get pregnant if Someone simply whispers into your vagina, right? So ofcourse it was the ears! So, don't ask stupid questions about left or right ear! 7:33

If everyone stopped eating chickens then there would be no chickens. So eat more chickens and eggs, to make room for more chickens. Get a chicken or two of your own.

Go to 5:38 to skip all the ego boosting of the nobodies.

I heard the whole talk but I have not heard an explanation on how morality “evolved.” The assertion is made at the beginning and throughout but she is only describing things we already know. 🤷🏽‍♂️ association and patterns doesn’t mean they are the cause of it. If we are using the scientific method, let use it properly. You are right about people not wanting their morality “enhanced” - that aligns exactly with their desire to reject God too and just live the same way they are, like I once did, until my eyes opened up 😉

we will create religious AI and put them in charge .... its going to be bad as bad can get.

Just a feedback about the presenting of speech and not about the content: making a teeth sucking noise while you are giving an academic lecture is really annoying and distracting.

they show you pictures and ask you who you would trust. whaaaat? that is a silly experiment. or I am silly, 'cause, based on a picture alone, that would be always 0% trust from me

Babbling priests should watch this lecture, but can't bear to hear an alternative view.that argues them out of a job.

'We are smarter than our predecessors'. You have got to be kidding me. How arrogant and misinformed. Dr. Fleischman's desire to play 'God' is truly horrifying, not to mention irrational. Literally unbelievable nonsense.

bugs are tasty