A while back I was asked by Dan Schneider to do an interview for the website COSMOETICA, a somewhat eclectic arts and culture website that's been around since early 2001, apparently without changing the layout of its pages. Schneider has, over the years, interviewed quite a few folks I consider to be world-class thinkers, (such as Dan Dennett, Steven Pinker, and Jack Horner) so I was pleased and amused to be in such company. The interview was done as a long set of questions in a Word doc, without any limits to how long my answers could be.

The full text of the interview is now available at the COSMOETICA website.

A few notes before you read it.

This was an odd interview. Some of the questions were quite good, and gave me a chance to think through why I think the way I do. Other questions were more problematic, containing errors of fact that I couldn't just ignore. Unfortunately, Mr. Schneider chose to respond to me without giving me a chance to reply in turn; more importantly, his responses seemed to be just doubling-down on his positions, even when they were categorically erroneous.

There isn't a comment section attached to the interview there, so if you want to reply, feel free to do so here.