1. Comment #178696 by Count von Count on May 12, 2008 at 12:03 am

First post!

Nice tie Richard! Interesting to hear some new questions in an interview. Unlike other interviewers, Abbas seems to know have gained some knowledge of RD before interviewing him. Abbas certainly seems intent about getting his ideas across however...

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2. Comment #178705 by mordacious1 on May 12, 2008 at 12:24 am

It is always nice to hear Richard talking about science and not having to answer the same moronic religious questions. I'm not quite finished but I haven't heard Hitler mentioned yet. Refreshing.

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3. Comment #178714 by mordacious1 on May 12, 2008 at 12:45 am

Oh crap, here come the same old religious questions from the listeners. Almost made it to the end without any. Oh well.

Good, only one listener's question made it into the interview. You can tell by Richard's voice that he was pleased to be speaking with someone off the usual topic. Nice chat, I didn't get any video though.

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4. Comment #178715 by riki on May 12, 2008 at 12:46 am

I was thinking the other day, any arguments that require references to either Hitler or the Nazis, should be flagged as idiotic without further consideration.

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5. Comment #178730 by nogodsever on May 12, 2008 at 1:13 am

This interview is a good example of why it's a good idea to have a table around which to sit while interviewing your subject. The interviewer didn't know what to do with his hands. The content was interesting though.

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6. Comment #178740 by sciatheist on May 12, 2008 at 1:41 am

I actually really enjoyed this interview, the hypothetical questions were interesting and it was good to see some out of the ordinary questioning as well as to see Richard stretch his imagination a bit, usually it's just a piece of cake arguing with most theists. I agree though the set up was not the best but that did not detract from the quality of Richards answers.

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7. Comment #178752 by UncleJJ on May 12, 2008 at 2:10 am

A very interesting interview with a fresh set of questions. Probably the most enthralling of RDs interviews in the last few months. I particularly enjoyed Richard's speculation about the likelihood of Artifical Intelligence one day reaching human levels

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8. Comment #178755 by Szymanowski on May 12, 2008 at 2:12 am

The video is a bit grainy! It seems like it was filmed in a cave in Pakistan :) ...

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9. Comment #178769 by davidgcoulson on May 12, 2008 at 2:45 am

Is it only me, or do other people wish zealous users of this site wouldn't do things like refer to RD using phrases such as "inflated demigod", or else breathlessly promise to rush off this instant and devour every last title on his favourite book list? Aren't we meant to be ... a bit more down to earth than that? Of course, I would love to meet RD, DD and co. But I wonder if they are constantly accosted by sycophants? I'm sure this isn't what they want... I was going to watch this vid, but now I am slightly irritated.

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10. Comment #178771 by gnomead on May 12, 2008 at 2:54 am

Szymanowski - "The video is a bit grainy! It seems like it was filmed in a cave in Pakistan :) ... "

Apparently even a 50 minute display of a total lack of religious dogma is insufficient for some people to look beyond an individual's name and ethnicity. As someone of the same skin colour as the interviewer, it's sad to think that regardless of how rationally I think or speak, I will not be seen as an individual, but only as an inhabitant of caves in Pakistan. A joke made in poor taste.

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11. Comment #178774 by Szymanowski on May 12, 2008 at 3:01 am

What the hell??! I was making NO reference whatsoever to the skin colour of the interviewer! ONLY the darkness and graininess of the video! Sincere apologies for coming across in that way.

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12. Comment #178776 by gnomead on May 12, 2008 at 3:04 am

Szymanowski - Sincere apologies for misunderstanding you. It appears this Monday morning has got the better of me. Once again, I apologise.

edit - Oh, I thought the interview was very good. Great questions.

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13. Comment #178778 by JernJane on May 12, 2008 at 3:05 am

Except for the moving of the camera, this was a very interesting interview - a proper conversation instead of "I ask you a stupid question, you repeat your answer from the last interview where you were asked this question".

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14. Comment #178779 by Mitchell Gilks on May 12, 2008 at 3:09 am

What an excellent interview. It was extremely refreshing to hear RD talk about stuff I've rarely heard him discuss. It was an breath of fresh air from the same old same old. One that I breathed in deeply.

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15. Comment #178788 by Szymanowski on May 12, 2008 at 3:53 am

gnomead - no worries, I used a terrible turn of phrase!

Yes this was an excellent interview aside from the video quality (a totally excusable issue, obviously). It'd be nice to get a transcript... I might even write one myself if I get the time.

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16. Comment #178789 by eirik on May 12, 2008 at 3:57 am

what an interesting and refreshing interview. i've grown so tired of the same old, same old interviews where the good doctor has to repeat the same answers for the umpteenth time for why there almost certainly is no god. do more of these, richard! kudos to the interviewer, as well. i think i'll check in on his blog regularly from now on.

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17. Comment #178792 by gnomead on May 12, 2008 at 4:16 am

Szymanowksi - Actually the fact that the possibility of such an interpretation didn't even occur to you shows you in a very positive light. It shows that you're the polar opposite of what I accused you of being. Although I'm tempted to blame the appalling racism on YouTube for my rather embarrassing hyperparanoia, I take full responsibility.

Oh, if you do decide to transcribe the interview, let me know if you want to team up. I used to work as a subtitler in the past (most days were terrible, but on some days I got to transcribe the ethereal voice of Sir David Attenborough), so from experience I'd say it would take around 6-8 hours to transcribe the entire video with respectable accuracy. I should have time to take on about 10 minutes of this video.

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18. Comment #178797 by GBile on May 12, 2008 at 4:42 am

Reading and commenting on articles on this site for some time now, 'real science' stuff beats the 'reli-babble' more and more for me. From interviews like the present ABBAS-Dawkins interview, I learn so much more than what Cardinals, theologians, or what have you, have to offer.
Fortunately 'science' progresses, so something new is to be learned on a regular basis. If only we could spend all our time on this rather than also have to 'fight' the ghosts of the past.

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19. Comment #178808 by m.t.nicholas on May 12, 2008 at 5:08 am

This really was a fantastic discussion.
More like this please!!

The extended conversation style is such a pleasure to watch.

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20. Comment #178810 by mordacious1 on May 12, 2008 at 5:12 am

Hey, at least you guys got grainy, in a cave. All I got was black screen (and no, I'm not trying to make racial slurs). I wish Richard would do more of this (science interviews). I know he is still selling the God Delusion, but he also has Modern Science Writing out in the UK and coming out soon in the US. By the way, 50% off at amazon UK, only 32% off at amazon US. What gives with this?

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21. Comment #178818 by Styrer- on May 12, 2008 at 5:25 am

I actually enjoyed the 'homely' way this interesting interview was filmed, and it showed off nicely Richard's easy engagement with some not so usual and fairly wide-ranging lines of discussion.

Abbas did indeed seem 'intent about getting his ideas across' but here I think the time spent was justified as he set up some refreshing and quite incisive questions for Richard to get his teeth into.

I am looking forward to reading Richard's new book when it comes out. Not only a celebration of Darwin but a welcome (and timely) decimation of IDiotic 'ideas' too, I hope!

Best,
Styrer

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22. Comment #178822 by aheggie on May 12, 2008 at 5:27 am

Enjoyed the less formal, makeshift interview atmosphere compared to the usual TV studio with the "pseudo-clever" anchorperson. I have occasionally wondered why life may not have had a multifocal origin and was pleased to hear this point raised.

Great news to hear RD is planning an evolutionary evidence book that will hopefully help to neutralize much of the distorted arguments against gaps in the fossil record by creationists.

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23. Comment #178842 by marv78rpm on May 12, 2008 at 6:26 am

That is so right about the public's being confused by pendulums of medical advice, especially with nutrition. There is a Marx Brothers routine in which Groucho is the doctor and Chico is the patient:
Doctor: I want you to drink a quart of milk every day.
Patient: OK, Doc, I'm-a gonna do what-a you say!
(The next week the patient returns for a follow-up visit)
Patient: I'm-a do what you tol' me, Doc. Every day I'm-a drink a quart of milk.
Doctor: Stop drinking milk. Don't drink any more milk ever.
Patient: But Doc--only last-a month you tell-a me drink lotsa milk.
Doctor: See how fast medical science advances?

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24. Comment #178866 by and7barton on May 12, 2008 at 7:05 am

I wouldn't worry about the picture being "grainy"; let's face it, the whole universe is grainy when you look at it close enough.

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25. Comment #178907 by Ohnhai on May 12, 2008 at 8:10 am

interesting to hear Richard refer to the USA as a 'Rogue State' :D

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26. Comment #178954 by Zaphod on May 12, 2008 at 9:51 am

Very interesting interview. I found all the topics discussed to be fascinating. Ideas that I have thought about myself. A nice break from Richard giving the similar responses to the daft religious questions he always gets asked. 47 minutes well spent.

It was amusing at the end when the guy started to gush a bit over meeting Richard and the video ended abruptly.

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27. Comment #178960 by mcashin on May 12, 2008 at 10:08 am

One of the best interviews so far I think. Repeat listening required!

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28. Comment #178987 by Yebhx on May 12, 2008 at 10:52 am

Agreed, very interesting interview, kudos to Abbas.

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29. Comment #178995 by Neuro on May 12, 2008 at 11:11 am

Awesome interview.

You can see RD getting so incredibly excited at the prospect of some of the questions/hypotheses.

Some of these questions have sort of been answered. Another great interview of RD is from the NPR website.

Go to the National Public Radio website and listen to RD's interview on "The Ancestor's Tale". That's another pretty good interview!

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30. Comment #179012 by gnomead on May 12, 2008 at 11:47 am

Perhaps one of you can help me out with this. Abbas talks about the fallibility of humans when it comes to having an intuitive understanding of probability and as an example he says that people, after seeing 6 successive reds in roulette, bet on the next one being black. But doesn't probability favour you when you bet black and against the possibility of 7 consecutive reds? I suspect I'm wrong about that much like I was intuitively wrong about the Monty Hall problem when I first encountered it.

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31. Comment #179015 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 11:54 am

I agree with others. This is a fresh and refreshing set of new questions. Nice not to hear the Hitler/Stalin and not too many questions about religion.

About the probability question. As far as roulette is concerned, the history of the outcomes, has no bearing on the next result, so you can ignore the 6 preceding results. The probability is still ~50% (minus the probability of landing on 0).

There's another good probability question that most people get wrong. Suppose you have 2 cards in a hat... 1 has red on one side, black on the other, and the other has both sides red. You pick a card from the hat and you see a red. What's the probability that the other side is red? I give you a hint... most people guess this one wrong. If you've had any probability lessons, you should be able to get this right.

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32. Comment #179022 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 12:02 pm

Another good example of unintuitive probability questoins (BTW. I don't know what the Monty Hall problem is, anybody care to elaborate? Maybe this is the same problem...):

You're in a game show where you have the chance to win a trip to Hawaii. There's 3 curtains and behind 1 of them is the trip to Hawaii, behind the other 2 is nothing. Now, the host has you choose one of the 3 curtains. You tell him which one it is you chose, and after you tell him, he opens one of the curtains that you didn't choose, one which is an empty curtain... Now, after the empty curtain is opened, he gives you the option of staying with the curtain you chose to begin with or swapping to the one other remaining closed curtain. Should you swap or not?

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33. Comment #179023 by gnomead on May 12, 2008 at 12:02 pm

@AtheistJon - Is it 50%? (red/black cards question)

Oh, and thanks for answering the roulette question. Your answer has satisfied my brain, but not my gut. I guess that's exactly what Abbas was talking about.

edit- The Monty Hall problem is:

"Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

The problem was solved correctly by Marilyn vos Savant, but she got a ton of feedback from proper academicians and mathematicians insisting that she was wrong. But she wasn't. It's quite amusing.

edit2 - Oops, it's exactly what you described.

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34. Comment #179025 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 12:05 pm

gnomead:

@AtheistJon - Is it 50%?

Nope. It's one third. See if you can figure out why.

I'll give you a hint. List all the possible combinations of possible ways you could have gotten the red card face. How many of those combinations have a red on the other side?

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35. Comment #179027 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 12:09 pm

Oops. I meant 2 / 3 (not 1/3)... I guess I might as well elaborate:

Call card 1 (with Red and Black) the red side, "side A1". Call card 2 (with Red and Red), the first red side "B1" and the other red side "B2". Now, you picked a card (A or B) and saw red. So, you could have:

A1
B1
B2

Of those three possibilities, B1 and B2 both have red on the other side. A1 has black. So you have 2 out of 3 chances that the other side is red. 1 out of 3 that it is black.

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36. Comment #179031 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 12:15 pm

OK. Seems that the Monty Hall problem was the same as my Hawaii trip problem ;-)

By the way, a good way to make the "Monty Hall problem" extremely obvious to somebody who doubts it is to give the following similar problem:

Suppose you are playing the lottery and you choose a ticket (one out of a million possible tickets). Now, somebody comes up to you with all one million tickets and gives you your ticket which you chose. He then throws away 999,998 of the other lottery tickets in the trash, all of which were losers. He now gives you the option... stay with the first ticket (which you chose at random) or swap to the remaining ticket in his hand. Would you swap or stay?

Isn't this a much more obvious (i.e. intuitive) version of the same problem? At least, to me, it becomes much more obvious this way.

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37. Comment #179036 by Layla Nasreddin on May 12, 2008 at 12:24 pm

This is a very interesting interview; not just the same stupid questions for the 6,868th time. Real science for a change!

But what thrills me a LOT more than it should is the fact that Dawkins' interlocutor is a descendent of the Prophet Muhammad--his full name is Syed Abbas Raza. "Syed" is a title given to (alleged, I should say) descendants of the Prophet (also spelled "sayyid," "seyed," etc.)--though that might prove a bit difficult to prove. Start the DNA testing! Not that anybody else will care; I just think it's an interesting factoid.

(By the way, I wonder what that trip to Africa RD mentioned where he was interviewing the prostitute portends...)

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38. Comment #179040 by gnomead on May 12, 2008 at 12:32 pm

AtheistJon - Haha... yes that is more intuitive. The way that works best for me is to ask whether you'd want two guesses or one guess. When you switch, you're essentially getting two guesses. When you don't, it's just one

And thanks for the card solution. I feel like an idiot for not seeing it.

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39. Comment #179042 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 12:39 pm

Gnomead, don't feel bad. I screwed up the card problem, too, when I first heard it. I have the feeling (intuitive?) that most people get it wrong.

BTW. Does anybody else have any other examples of such probability problems, where most people's intuition fails them? It is an interesting connection of ideas, i.e. of connecting this bad innate probability calculation to religion. Hadn't thought of that before... at least not explicitly. I just think that most people don't have enough logic in them to construct (or tear down) arguments beyond 3 steps long... especially when somebody authoritative demands that we should all accept an argument without going beyond step number 1. ;-)

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40. Comment #179052 by Samir Nayanajaad on May 12, 2008 at 1:04 pm

To AtheistJon and gnomead but I suppose mostly to gnomead.

In the case of the roulette question it would be better to bet on red after seeing 6 blacks in a row. True the probability is 50 50 given 2 choices but the odds are in your favor that a red will hit.

Probalility and odds are two different things yet closely related. A simple way to look at it is probability is just a measure of how likely an event is to happen where as odds are a measure of how likely an event is to happen over x number of successive events. Thats why odds are written 1:10 that reads as one in ten meaning once in every 10 times a given event should occur.

So to bring this back to the roulette I will just make up some numbers to show you. Yes on the 7th spin the ball would be just as likely to hit black as red (50 50) However, if you take it as all 7 spins put together you could say the odds of hitting black all 7 time are 1:100 (i just pulled that number out of thin air I don't know what it would be) This means that if you spun the wheel 7 times, 100 times in a row(so 700 spins) one time out of the set of 100 the ball would hit black all 7 times.

So yes in a way its 50 50 but in another way its not.

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41. Comment #179067 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 1:22 pm

Hi Samir,

Don't take this the wrong way, but I think what you said just now was confused. Or at least confusing.

Yes, I must agree that the odds of getting 7 blacks in a row is indeed much much less then getting a black on throw 7 after having gotten the first 6 blacks.

So we are comparing 2 events: event_1 = getting black 7 times in a row, event_2 = getting the 7th black after having gotten 6 blacks already. By the way, the probability of event_1 is easy: It's (1/2)^7, i.e. 0.0078125 or .78% probability.

I think it is wrong to say that event_1 is "the odds" and event_2 is "the probability". Odds and probability are synonyms, at least in American english. Maybe in Britain it is as you say...? But I have the feeling that you are just a little confused.

Again, I hope you don't take this the wrong way. They say you should never correct people, if you want to make friends and influence people, but I hope this doesn't apply in this case!

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42. Comment #179073 by mordacious1 on May 12, 2008 at 1:33 pm

I, knowing little of probability theory, would say the odds of getting black or red is still 50-50 . If you get another black that might be called coincidence. Unless you're that moron Bob Bennnett, who has a gambling problem, then you bet on black and pray to the good lord to let you win. He'd probably then promise to use the money to do god's work...blah blah blah.

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43. Comment #179076 by gnomead on May 12, 2008 at 1:36 pm

I continued to think about this and I think I'm still going to side with AtheistJon. I looked at it this way:

Event 1: For 7 consecutive reds, the probability is (1/2)^7

Event 2: For 6 consecutive reds followed by a black, the probability is (1/2)^6*(1/2) = (1/2)^7

The odds/probability are still the same. One might be tempted to say (I was) that it didn't need to be in that order to get a black on the seventh. But if that weren't the case, we wouldn't have the prior knowledge of 6 consecutive reds hence changing the problem.
We only have two possibilities: 7 consecutive reds OR 6 consecutive reds followed by a black.

I think it's important to identify that these aren't simultaneous events. I think that's at the source of the confusion.

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44. Comment #179079 by mordacious1 on May 12, 2008 at 1:44 pm

Let me put this another way. You have a deck of cards. You draw seven red cards in a row. THEN the odds of drawing a black card are very high. But with the wheel, you have not diminished the amount of black or red. It stays 50-50 .

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45. Comment #179080 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 1:48 pm

Not to beat a dead horse, but just one minor disagreement, Gnomead, to what you said:

Event 1: For 7 consecutive reds, the probability is (1/2)^7

Event 2: For 6 consecutive reds followed by a black, the probability is (1/2)^6*(1/2) = (1/2)^7

Your Event 1 and mine are the same, but what you wrote here as "Event 2" is not the same as what I defined as "Event 2": i.e. getting the 7th black after having gotten 6 blacks already.

In my definition of event_2, you might as well forget the previous 6 throws. It is irrelevant. It's just incidental. In your defintion, I think Event 1 and Event 2 are the same thing. Although you did correctly calculate that they had the same probability.

For my definition of event_2, the probability is 1/2. Of course, throughout this discussion we ignored the fact that 0 is neither red nor black ;-)

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46. Comment #179084 by Jaz on May 12, 2008 at 1:54 pm

Firstly, it's not even worth the discusion of whether previous events on a roulette wheel influence the future events! Obviously it doesn't

In that vein, I have to agree with Athiestjon and fear that Samir is a touch confused. Why would it be better to bet on red after seeing 6 blacks in a row?? The roulette pays out according to the set probabilites of the roulette, and so will never change. So, no previous event makes any odds better or worse in relation to the underlying odds?

If the roulette wheel issued odds according to money placed, and having seen a lot of blacks, people bet on black, then yep, it would be better to bet on red.

p.s. Is it me or does that whole "many mathemeticians querried the monty hall solution" seem ridiculous. I mean, why would actual serious mathemeticians ( I'm not one!)be thrown by a simple conditional probability problem??? Surely this is just a rumour that never actually happened....

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47. Comment #179087 by gnomead on May 12, 2008 at 2:02 pm

Ah, I think I used the term "event" incorrectly. It should have been Probability 1 and Probability 2. It's been years since I took a class in it. I think we're in agreement. Thanks for the correction. mordacious1's explanation is also good.

Well, I learned something today. Actually, I let go of a superstition today. That's pretty neat.

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48. Comment #179088 by gnomead on May 12, 2008 at 2:04 pm

@Jaz-

It's not a rumour. If you go to Marilyn vos Savant's website, you'll see all those letters (apologies included) archived.

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49. Comment #179089 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 2:07 pm

Whoops... Gnomean, now I noticed that
you defined event 2 as 6 blacks followed by a red (not black). Anyway, it still slightly differed from my point which was that the 7th spin was independent of the first 6. BTW This is what are called "independent random variables". I.e. when event X has no influence on event Y (and also the covariance(X,Y) = 0, if you want to get really mathematical ;-))

Jaz, you wrote

p.s. Is it me or does that whole "many mathemeticians querried the monty hall solution" seem ridiculous. I mean, why would actual serious mathemeticians ( I'm not one!)be thrown by a simple conditional probability problem??? Surely this is just a rumour that never actually happened....

I sort of agree with you here, but, then again, you look at a world reknowned evolutionary biologists who think that a frozen waterfall implies something about the truth of the holy trinity, and then you have to wonder. People (even mathematicians) can be real idiots, at times. And the really, really hard part is the "admitting it when you're wrong". You know... Sorry seems to be the hardest word... (that's maybe one of the only things I agree with Elton John about)...

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50. Comment #179094 by AmericanGodless on May 12, 2008 at 2:24 pm

Unfortunately, I have been unable to watch this video (it stops about 7 minutes in, and offers to start at the beginning again -- three times now!!)

But I have to comment on the Monty Hall problem. The Wiki article on it is very good, and points out a very important source of confusion (and Vos Savant's telling of the problem was ambiguous on this point): the game host must not only be assumed to be omniscient, but also to have an agenda to keep the game going as long as possible. This means that he will never immediately reveal that you have won or lost the big prize right after your first pick, so after he reveals a goat you have some new information about the probabilities of what is behind your door.

I have long thought that Monty in this story might be a good stand-in for God. The wisdom of ordering your life-choices around the "will of God" depends critically on whether you have reason to believe not only that He is revealing stuff to you, and is omniscient, but that He has a plan for your life and that you know what that plan is. If you're wrong about any of these points, you're back to even odds.

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