Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

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As such, I hope to bring you a lot of value by doing these books summaries, which will also be available on my podcast. A great writer and a superb guide to human nature, Sapolsky shows you how all the perspectives and systems connect, and he makes you laugh and marvel along the way. A beautifully crafted work about the biology of morality Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind i127882443 |b1110011731417 |dmrlan |g- |m |h8 |x1 |t3 |i5 |j300 |k191012 |n10-31-2023 18:24 |o- |a612.8 Sap

Science writer Robert Sapolsky to speak about coping with stress April 10". Middlebury. December 17, 2009 . Retrieved March 31, 2020. Of course it first seems a bit far fetched to go from hormones and neurotransmitters to apes, but the stages of culture, groups, tribes, hierarchies, mating, violence, competition,… are still very dominant in our genes and much we wouldn´t associate with fight or flight or mate and date instinct is permanently conscious and subconscous influencing our mental condition and thinking. Social dominance orientation measures how someone values Prestige and power and right wing authoritarianism measures how someone values centralised authority. Hi sdo individuals through the greatest increase in automatic prejudices when feeling threatened. Our five senses constantly send information in the form of sensory cues to our brain. Visual cues, like the faces of strangers, alter our perception and our behavior toward them. The human brain is very attuned to skin color. An example of this is when images of people’s faces are shown to white people, the amygdala is much more likely to activate if the person shown is of a different race.

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When it comes to aggressive behavior, two main parts of the brain take part. The first is the amygdala, which is in the cerebral cortex and is the reason for fear and aggression. It identifies threats in a matter of milliseconds and is often inaccurate. The part of the brain that calms feelings of aggression and helps you think rationally is the frontal cortex. It takes a little longer to react, but helps relax what is often an overreaction from our amygdala. It’s no exaggeration to say that Behave is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read Wall Street Journal i109927886 |b1270001482444 |dgugnf |g- |m231211 |h19 |x2 |t2 |i9 |j300 |k170505 |n08-20-2023 20:34 |o- |a612.8 |rSap The most common cause of individual human violence is male to male competition for direct or indirect reproductive access to females. And then there is the dizzyingly common male violence against females for coercive sex or as a response to rejection. A child is far more likely to be abused or killed by stepper then by parent.

Sapolsky’s book is a chance to stop and take your breath, an ambitious but accessible introduction to behavioral neuroscience that attempts to understand the headline-grabbing findings by synthesizing across a variety of temporal and biological scales. He begins with momentary and molecular and, by constantly expanding his scope, eventually encloses the cultural and generational in his arguments. His tone is conversational, like you met at a party or a coffee shop and started chatting about the topic with someone who happens to be a world expert accustomed to explaining things to novices. The bystander effect: The more people present during an emergency the less likely anyone is to help. This is because we think that there’s lots of other people around so someone else will step forward. The bystander effect does occurring on dangerous situations, where the price of stepping forward is inconvenience. Sapolsky is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor at Stanford University, holding joint appointments in several departments, including Biological Sciences, Neurology & Neurological Sciences, and Neurosurgery. [16]Reese, Hope (October 18, 2023). "A Conversation With: Robert Sapolsky Doesn't Believe in Free Will. (But Feel Free to Disagree.)". The New York Times . Retrieved October 22, 2023. Ho Chi Minh rejected the offer Chinese troops on the ground during the Vietnam War saying that the Americans will leave in a year or a decade but the Chinese will stay for a thousand years if we let them in.

If you’re anything like me then you have a thirst for knowledge and consume a lot of content, whether it be through books, audiobooks, podcasts, blog posts, keynotes, conversations or a combination of all of the aforementioned. And if you’re anything like me you wish you retained more of what you actually consumed so that you could easily recall it later, either to support your work or a conversation you are having. Legalization of abortion led to a drop in crime two decades later. No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legaliz... and also Steven Pinker's critique in Better Angels of Our Nature. i121541253 |b3911300085930% |dlcanf |gn |m200131 |h2 |x0 |t0 |i2 |j7 |k181028 |n09-08-2019 21:12 |o- |a612.8 SAPHowever, while the aforementioned techniques all work really well for remembering bits and pieces of a book for example, it didn’t help me to retain all of the key points. So I’ve decided to start writing book summaries, not only to aid my own learning and retention of key pieces of information, but also to help you accelerate your learning. For example, I don't know much about neuro-imaging studies. About them Sapolsky says "These studies are difficult to pull off, as neuroimaging is as much an art as a science." When I read that, and when I've spent half the book hearing him talk confidently about lots of problematic studies, part of me wonders "hmmm, so are neuro-imaging studies garbage? Should I just skim this chapter?" I don't know! i109966612 |b1060006372716 |deva |g- |m |h11 |x1 |t1 |i6 |j70 |k170511 |n06-05-2023 16:43 |o- |a612.8 |rSAP Where it comes to egregious acts of violence or crime, neuroscience provides little new ground for or against excusing someone’s responsibility for their acts on the basis of biological causes not in the person’s control. Still, an essential role of the criminal justice system is to “protect the endangered from the dangerous”. And despite any solid way to predict dangerousness, juries need to consider diminished capacities for judgment among the accused. Knowledge about the delayed maturation of frontal cortical systems in adolescents helps to justify being more lenient on them in the justice system. The philosopher Stephen Pinker and neuroscientist Michael Gazzanaga both lean with Sapolsky toward the concept that free will is an illusion, but they still argue we must hold people responsible to varying degrees for violent criminal acts. The argument that a man can’t help being a pedophile but is responsible for acts of child abuse is compelling. But Sapolsky holds his ground that the latter acts are biologically determined no less than the ingrained proclivity to fixate on children and to think otherwise reflects an unscientific dualism of an ethereal homunculus pulling the strings. He doesn’t have a practical answer for reforming the criminal justice system, though he did launch an ongoing discussion between a group of jurists and social scientists and a set of neuroscientists starting with a workshop. One can expect further encroachment of neuroscience into the courtroom, which Sapolsky hopes will proceed with great caution: Becoming more comfortable with the notion of ‘strong opinions, weakly held’ and seeking out information not only to prove or validate your view but also to discredit and invalidate it, will lead to the ‘more right’ solution. However, when it comes to almost anything, we can almost never say we are absolutely right because there are so many potential variables and bits of information that we’re just not taking into account.