Jack and I went to UCI last night to see Daniel Dennett. He is scary smart and the lecture was tons of fun–Jack and I left after one hour and got coffee and Yogurtland.
The Beckman center is beautiful and the lecture was well catered. The audience was mostly really old people and high school kids with some scary solo science-y looking creepy guys who were all very quite. Jack and I sat next to Michael Melfi’s mom–I evidently went to school with him, but do not remember. She was very nice.
The lecture was great. Dennett asserted that if you understand:
If under changing conditions of life organic beings present individual differences in almost every part of their structure, and this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to their geometrical rate of increase, a severe struggle for life at some age, season, or year, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinte complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of life, causing an infinte diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variations had ever occurred useful to each being’s own welfare, in the same manner as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being ever do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterised will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the stron principle of inheritance, these will tend to produce offspring similarly characterised. This principle of preservation, or the survival of the fittest, I have called Natural Selection. It leads to the improvment of each creature in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life; and consequently, in most cases, to what must be regarded as an advance in organisation. Nevertheless, low and simple forms will long endure if well fitted for their simple conditions of life.
you understand Darwin–which was a nice healthy summary.
He talked about the irony of evolution creating mockingbirds, but not “Ode to a Mockingbird” which I loved.
He contrasted Trickle Down Creationism (all paintings have painters) with Bubble Up Theory of Creation (evolution, at some level).
He talked about the day Sweden decided to stop driving on the right side of the road and switched to the left–11/3/67. Evidently, with solid planning it went well. Very interesting aside.
He talked about people who cannot realize / accept that ego may be a computational system.
He bad mouthed Jerry Fodor (his Newman), Thomas Nagel (who is crazy), and John Searle (just to mention a philosopher, I think).
He used the Skyhook vs. Crane analogy. He used the term “opening design space” very often–which I really like.
His current epitaph is “yes we have a soul, but it is made of lots of little robots”
It was a fun time.
David Given Schwarm 
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