
Darwinian Fairytales
by David Stove · first published 2006
7mentions
1recommended by
4HN commenters
2017–2020first – last mentioned
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Yeah, that was a biggie for me, until I read "Darwinian Fairytales" by David Stove. Everyone who has read Dawkins needs to have a look at this. A philosopher has a look at what Dawkins actually says and realizes it is basically medieval demonology dressed up in pseudoscientific…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗Read the philosopher of science David Stove's "Darwinian fairytales." You'll realize that Dawkins book is 1) Not orthodox science in any sense of the word, nor really philosophy of science (though it is a popularization of the work of people like William Hamilton) 2)…
on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?” ↗…feel something, it's going to stick with you a lot more clearly than some recitation of dry facts. Storm of Steel sticks with me better than the official British History of the Great War. Similarly, "Darwinian Fairytales," which is absolutely hilarious in addition to being perfectly correct, sticks with me a lot better than "The Selfish Gene" -which I've paid considerably more attention to.
on “Why books don't work (2019)” ↗…spectacularly depressed by the huge contribution of the childless: Copernicus, Swift, Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson, Haydn, Dalton, Francis Galton himself - to mention a few examples at random." (David Stove, Darwinian Fairytales)
on “First gene-edited babies claimed in China” ↗> "Darwinian Fairytales" by David Stove The search engine coughed up a PDF. I randomly opened it (p. 173) and read up to this author-provided "TL;DR" on p.176: The main reason, however, for thinking that sociobiology is false,…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗"Money: whence it came from and where it went" by John Kenneth Galbraith -title is self explanatory. "Darwinian fairytales" by David Stove -the antidote to Selfish Gene; funnier too. "Prediction, Learning and Games" by Cesa-Bianchi and Lugosi -the right way to think about sequential machine learning -a toss up with "Conformal…
on “Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?” ↗Hmm, I'll check that Darwinian Fairytales out. However, I must say, I've read Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments against Evolutionary Psychology, to see what critics of Dawkins and evolutionary psychology had to say, and found it rather poor. So,…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗