Full YouTube version and DailyMotion version. The third episode is titled "The Monkey In The Machine and the Machine in the Monkey" and weaves two themes together. The first theme begins with a look at the relation between the minerals needed by technology and the civil war raging in places like Kisangani and the mille collines of Rwanda between the Hutus and the Tutsis.
The second theme begins with the question of why humans are altrustic. Bill Hamilton answers by suggesting that humans are the means by which genes reproduce. You can harm yourself if it helps your genes survive. George Price discovered the paper in the 1960s and saw this as "a description of machines he already understood, computers." It supported the idea of understanding and analyzing the world in a completely rational way. But the theory explains not only altruism but also murder, war and even genocide. It becomes known as the selfish gene.
"If everything we did, either good or bad, was actually a rational strategy, computed by the codes inside us, then religion with its moral guidance, is irrelevant. And it demolished the enlightenment idea that human beings were above the rest of nature." Cue Dian Fossey, living with the Gorillas, caught up in the war. The altruism of the now-religious Price toward the poor. The altruism of Fossey toward the gorilla. And as the old dream of a liberal democracy in central Africa was dying, a new dream of man and animal as equals in the web of nature was emerging. The Hound of Heaven. Cue Richard Dawkins (and, with no hint of irony, disco music).
Hamilton becomes convinced, first, than modern medicine is fundamentally wrong, because it interferes with the gene's natural self-expression, and that AIDS was caused by the efforts of doctors working in the Congo to create a polio vaccine. Flying to central Africa to explore this theory, he comes face-to-face with the consequences of the wars, "consequences created not just by western imperialism and greed, but also by the best and noblest of liberal ideals." The theory about AIDS was hokum, Hamilton's idea that "human beings are helpless chunks of hardware controlled by software programs written in their genetic codes" lives on, as does the idea that altruistic liberal interference does more harm than good. Everything we do, either good or bad, seems to have terrible unforseen consequences. The genes will win out, in the end.
See also the Wikipedia synopsis. I am dissatisfied with this episode, though I think it strives mightily to get to the heart of the doctrine that any effort to make things better results in "unintended consequences". The doctrine - and the series as a whole, for that matter - needs a response.
The second theme begins with the question of why humans are altrustic. Bill Hamilton answers by suggesting that humans are the means by which genes reproduce. You can harm yourself if it helps your genes survive. George Price discovered the paper in the 1960s and saw this as "a description of machines he already understood, computers." It supported the idea of understanding and analyzing the world in a completely rational way. But the theory explains not only altruism but also murder, war and even genocide. It becomes known as the selfish gene.
"If everything we did, either good or bad, was actually a rational strategy, computed by the codes inside us, then religion with its moral guidance, is irrelevant. And it demolished the enlightenment idea that human beings were above the rest of nature." Cue Dian Fossey, living with the Gorillas, caught up in the war. The altruism of the now-religious Price toward the poor. The altruism of Fossey toward the gorilla. And as the old dream of a liberal democracy in central Africa was dying, a new dream of man and animal as equals in the web of nature was emerging. The Hound of Heaven. Cue Richard Dawkins (and, with no hint of irony, disco music).
Hamilton becomes convinced, first, than modern medicine is fundamentally wrong, because it interferes with the gene's natural self-expression, and that AIDS was caused by the efforts of doctors working in the Congo to create a polio vaccine. Flying to central Africa to explore this theory, he comes face-to-face with the consequences of the wars, "consequences created not just by western imperialism and greed, but also by the best and noblest of liberal ideals." The theory about AIDS was hokum, Hamilton's idea that "human beings are helpless chunks of hardware controlled by software programs written in their genetic codes" lives on, as does the idea that altruistic liberal interference does more harm than good. Everything we do, either good or bad, seems to have terrible unforseen consequences. The genes will win out, in the end.
See also the Wikipedia synopsis. I am dissatisfied with this episode, though I think it strives mightily to get to the heart of the doctrine that any effort to make things better results in "unintended consequences". The doctrine - and the series as a whole, for that matter - needs a response.
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