{"id":83874,"date":"2015-12-30T11:51:49","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T19:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=83874"},"modified":"2015-12-30T11:51:49","modified_gmt":"2015-12-30T19:51:49","slug":"the-hard-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=83874","title":{"rendered":"The Hard Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/takimag.com\/article\/a_problem_worth_addressing_steve_sailer\/print#axzz3vprKYqpD\">Steve Sailer writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>In <em>The Hard Problem<\/em>, set in England in the first decade of the new century, his similarly old-fashioned heroine is beset instead by the self-confidence of her neo-Darwinian colleagues. The left is intellectually nugatory, and all the energy resides with the disciples of the late biologist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unz.com\/isteve\/william-d-hamilton-unfrozen-caveman-darwinist\/\" target=\"_blank\">William D. Hamilton<\/a>, such as Richard Dawkins and Matt Ridley. Stoppard explains that the play grew out of an argument he started with <a href=\"https:\/\/evolution-institute.org\/article\/the-playwright-and-the-scientist-a-conversation-between-tom-stoppard-and-david-sloan-wilson\/\" target=\"_blank\">Dawkins<\/a> over his 1976 book <em>The Selfish Gene<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the two young men the heroine strives to out-argue sound rather like my pals at the classic blog <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnxp.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Gene Expression<\/a> circa 2005. In his \u201cAuthor\u2019s Note,\u201d Stoppard cites Imperial College evolutionary biologist Armand Marie Leroi, an expert on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vdare.com\/articles\/race-does-exist-new-york-times\" target=\"_blank\">human genetic variety<\/a>, as his chief guide to the science. (Here\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unz.com\/gnxp\/\" target=\"_blank\">Razib\u2019s<\/a> interview with Dr. Leroi at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnxp.com\/blog\/2005\/12\/10-questions-for-armand-m-leroi.php\" target=\"_blank\">GNXP<\/a> ten years ago.)<\/p>\n<p>This surprisingly short play references a remarkable number of concepts utilized by 21st-century right-of-center intellectuals\u2014the story opens, for example, with the heroine\u2019s tutor explaining the Prisoner\u2019s Dilemma, the standard introduction to theories of how altruism could evolve.<\/p>\n<p>Other longtime fascinations of the <a href=\"http:\/\/edge.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Edge.org<\/a> crowd featured in <em>The Hard Problem<\/em> are the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unz.com\/isteve\/the-replication-crisis-is-psychology-more-like-astronomy-or-marketing-research\/\" target=\"_blank\">replication crisis<\/a> in psychology, the larger implications of the financial crisis of 2008, and adoption. The nature-nurture implications of adoption are of natural interest to Stoppard, who only discovered in his 50s that he wasn\u2019t roughly a quarter Jewish as he had assumed, but was entirely Jewish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Sailer writes: In The Hard Problem, set in England in the first decade of the new century, his similarly old-fashioned heroine is beset instead by the self-confidence of her neo-Darwinian colleagues. The left is intellectually nugatory, and all the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=83874\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29700],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83875,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83874\/revisions\/83875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}