Yes, this stood out to me when I read the article. The examples he gives are all pop-science, all take some thesis and making a story from it that'll be interesting to a general audience.

I feel like he's looking at this through the prism of his speciality (producing interactive learning materials), and by doing that has missed the point a little bit. He's looking a genre of books at if they're a different thing to what they actually are, it's the wrong level.

I get reading a book once doesn't translate directly to "facts retained in memory" whereas his idealised new form of media does. But as you say, his examples are edutainment. I feel like what he's suggesting only usefully applies to either textbooks (which he's separated off into a different category anyway) or to a situation where the aim is to memorise as much as possible in a single reading. Which is fine! But it doesn't really need to happen for pop science -- just getting the general gist of an idea across in an entertaining package is okay.

"The examples he gives are all pop-science"

I don't think that's true of The Selfish Gene (and even more so for its successor, The Extended Phenotype, as one can tell just from the title). It seems to me to be a serious work on evolutionary biology.

It's "pop science" in the sense that he's taking academic work and making it palatable to a general audience, minus the rigor and complexity. His sources were books like Fisher's Genetical Theory of Natural Selection and papers by WD Hamilton.

It's not that it isn't serious. Pop science doesn't have to be BS. But it often risks conveying to readers that they have a better grounding than they actually have, which The Selfish Gene has also done. Pop science books are good ways to attract young readers to the sciences and to keep older readers engaged in it, but they are not in and of themselves contributions to the field.

I'm not really up on the history of these ideas, but my impression is that The Selfish Gene was a contribution in the same sense that Einstein's paper on special relativity was a contribution. Neither really changed what one would predict the result of any experiment to be (the Lorentz transformation had already been produced before Einstein, by, err, Lorentz...), but rather in the perspective by which one views the field, which does affect future research.

He's a populariser of science though. No criticism intended by that. His books are still serious works, but the serious intent is to educate a general audience, not be an important document for a specialist audience. It's a story about his theory. And good popularisers of science, which I think he definitely is (or was?) are good storytellers. He takes a basic thesis then uses multiple lyrical examples to illustrate it. As a layman, I loved that book and read it several times, it made me feel like I had an understanding of genetics, and many of its ideas have informed how I think about things now (the additional, if somewhat vague, stuff he added re memetics in particular). But I'd also say that book is an epitome of pop science, and that feeling of understanding of genetics was just the basic concepts clicking. Which is also fine, that's a really good thing!

Edit: to go back to original article: memorising the stuff in detail isn't hugely useful -- it's a useful jumping off point to investigate in more detail, but the books basic ideas are easily understood, that's the point

Agreed. Was it not The Selfish Gene that coined "meme"? Or was that word used before by Dawkins in research papers or similar?

'Meme' came about when Dawkins modified the word 'mimeme' to sound like 'gene'. AFAIK that was first done in that book.

I can't comment on the others, but I'm a trained historian, and hating Guns, Germs, and Steel is probably the single thing that unites our field. It's vastly oversimplified, and gives anyone who reads it the idea that they understand the major forces shaping world history while ignoring most of the things that historians agree are more important than environmental determinism in that process.

Do you have an alternative book (or list of) which you'd recommend instead?

I always recommend Charles Mann's 1491 as the antidote to Guns, Germs, and Steel. (Although note that this focuses entirely on pre-Columbian America.)

Interesting choice, since I did not feel as if 1491 contained any information that contradicted the basic theses of GG&S, and if anything reinforced it.

What does 1491 teach us?

Not a historian, but _Why the West Rules - For Now_ by Ian Morris was a good read. Covers the sweep of world history with the audacious goal of quantifying human development at all moments in history. It mainly focuses on the west (starting in the Mesopotamian region) and the east (starting in the area surrounding the Yellow river) and addresses questions like "why didn't China discover America" (basically - too far away). You might also find it interesting!

What would you say are "most of the things that historians agree are more important than environmental determinism" that Diamond ignores?

I found the examples very surprising - because I think several of those books exist exactly to communicate a very specific, important idea. If you can describe in a few sentences what the central idea of 'The Selfish Gene' is - I would argue that the book has done its job 'transmitting' an idea perfectly. The reason the book takes a hundred or so pages to do that transmission is because the idea is 1. specialized - if you're not a biologist you need to do a lot of work just to understand the questions and the background 2. difficult - even if you're familiar with the biology, you need to think through lots of examples and discussions of what the selfish gene idea implies and 3. controversial - Dawkins spends a lot of time explaining what evidence he has, responding to other views, disclaiming misreadings of his work, and so on.

I have read that book, I believe I understood its central message, I could probably explain it (not very elegantly) in a couple of sentences, and I can't point to any other particular benefit I drew from reading the book, and yet I'm very glad I read it.

Agree. I found Thinking, Fast and Slow painfully biased

Interesting, can you add some depth to that statement? I enjoyed the book, and found it useful in illustrating many cognitive biases.

I've gone on to read more of his work and agree the data is from, "WEIRD societies: Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic." (i.e. a lot of small study groups from ivy league schools) -- but nevertheless found the book enjoyable and useful

I really enjoyed it to but agree with GP that it falls down. Initially, he sets up a system around our pattern matching, biasing, etc. but as the book progresses I felt it got more and more hand wavy. Lots of the examples didn't really fit the plot of his system but he implies that the system still holds. Also, lots of the studies like the marshmallow test have failed to stand up. We take a single study of proof when it is usually no more than an indication. The conclusions are really just a data point. Perform the same test 100 times with different scientists and participants and look at the data again. Instead we take one test and cut the data to fit and then publish.

Read older books.

I became excited with Jordan Peterson's first videos and bought his book "12 rules" when it came out. I skimmed it and... I'm literally using it as a footrest. Peterson is a powerful speaker but has little content.

Older books:

(a) Have stood the test of time.

(b) Typically arose in a time where intellectual celebrity fermented in core intellectual circles first, and only then popularized.

Kahneman and Tversky have their share of technical contributions but were catapulted to thought leaders (and Nobel-Sveriges Bank prize winners) due to classic tokenism: someone from psychology or behavioral science had to win. The same just happen to someone two rungs below their level, Esther Duflo.

If she comes out with a popular book, don't buy it. Read Polanyi's "The Great Transformation", if inclined to left-ish ideas, or Richard Powers' novel "Gain", otherwise.

I too was enamored by Peterson when he first came to prominence, but he quickly lost steam for me. I've read some of his influences, and they're much more interesting.

I found it painfully slow and repetitive.