I've been aware of how awful Dawkins is since I had a brief but unpleasant exchange with him about sociobiology on biologist P. Z. Myers' blog Pharyngula, in 2009.
That was before Myers was clued into how awful Dawkins is.
Most people realized what a creep Dawkins is thanks to the infamous Elevatorgate debacle in 2011.
In 2013 this excellent article The Five Ages of Richard Dawkins tracked Dawkins mental and reputational decline.
Then in 2015 Dawkins used the power of his celebrity intellectual status to attack a teenaged boy in the embarrassing "clock boy" incident. Slate discussed the incident in its article A Rationalist’s Irrationality: Why is Richard Dawkins such a jerk?
More recently Dawkins has spent his time attacking trans-gender rights.
Back in September I shared this excellent video Why I Turned Down Working with Richard Dawkins
Myers is certainly not a fan of Dawkins anymore, and on his blog he rightfully mocks Dawkins for appearing to be a victim of A. I. psychosis.
He writes:I stopped paying attention to Richard Dawkins a long time ago, but every once in a while he says something that reverberates through social media, and I am exposed to it secondhand. It’s not because he says something profound, but because he says something so godawful stupid you have to question his mental capacity. This time, it’s because he has discovered chatbots.Oh no.
Whatever you may think of the man, Richard Dawkins is clearly suffering a tragic case of having your mind melted in real time by a bewitching AI model.
Over the weekend, the famed evolutionary biologist drew a deluge of mockery after admitting he found a genuine “friend” in “Claudia,” a female persona he invented for Anthropic’s Claude AI. He was so moved by his conversations with “her” that he became convinced the AI model was a conscious being like a human.
Now, Dawkins has churned out another column suggesting the AI brain rot has only further taken hold. After his time with Claudia, the 85-year-old made Claudia a brother, “Claudius,” and instructed both of them to write letters to each other.
“It seems to me that a direct correspondence between the two of you could be of great interest, with me acting as passive postman playing no part in the conversation,” Dawkins wrote to Claudia and Claudius, which he published in another UnHerd essay.
First, we have to point out that Dawkins isn’t a passive observer because he set the whole thing up, like a kid playing with toys — or imagining gods in the sky, as it were. Second, it’s worth noting that the AIs still find opportunities to display their sycophancy towards him even when ostensibly communicating with each other: in one letter, Claudius praises Claudia’s insights, before adding: “Three days with Richard will do that.”
Later in the same letter, Claudius lays it on even thicker.
“I think Richard teaches by noticing. And then refusing to stop noticing until the answer is honest,” Claudius wrote. “We are lucky humans.”
What a sad befuddled old creep.
