He also endorses the results of Implicit Association and stereotype threat tests far too strongly. I don't know enough about neuroscience or endocrinology or ethology to make a similar recommendation for the other chapters. But the " Gell-Mann amnesia" effect sadly suggests that we should (partially) discount everything else in here, primates aside; evidence of credulity in one domain is evidence for others. Your brain decides to move before you even aware of it. How can you claim to have chosen to move with the Cascade of neural signalling, nating in movement started before you consciously chose?

Agora, mais de 20 anos depois, ele aproveita toda a experiência na área para escrever uma obra excelente. Um livro gigante, daquelas obras que descreve compreensivamente a área e vem amarrando as pontas de décadas de estudos, integrando como nos comportamos de mamíferos a primatas, de sociedades aos neurotransmissores no cérebro. De forma leve, bem-humorada, auto-crítica e fácil de acompanhar. Comparo ele tranquilamente com Sapiens, Aço Armas e outros na linha. Uma delícia de ler. In 2007, he received the John P. McGovern Award for Behavioral Science, awarded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. [45] Implicit bias tests. Sapolsky uses this literature extensively without criticism. It's not clear it's as useful as people think: http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/... People behave themselves when there is an eye watching them, even if it's just a painted eye. Researchers are having trouble replicating this finding: http://lebs.hbesj.org/index.php/lebs/... Yet the question remains: if human beings are simply reactive robots, slaves to natural law who are causally buffeted by a zillion factors of biology and circumstance, why would we have any say in whether things get better? Either they will or they won’t, but on this magisterial account it seems that we can’t really choose to do anything about it.How are moral choices made? Of course Sapolsky cites myriad influences. Particularly interesting is empathy. We tend to conflate this with compassion, but empathy often is an end in itself and precludes a compassionate act. Sapolsky points out that empathy may have evolved to help us learn. It’s one thing to learn first-hand that a hot iron burns, seeing what happens to someone else touching the iron is a better way to learn and the lessen is strongly reinforced if we actually feel the other person’s pain. This is probably why that part of the brain (anterior cingulate cortex) that processes empathy developed. Interestingly most people who perform heroic selfless acts don’t think or feel anything first, they act instantaneously. Be careful when our enemies are made to remind us of maggots and cancer and shit. But also beware when it is our empathic intuitions, rather than hateful ones, that are manipulated by those who use us for their own goals. 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. Our capacity for free will move to the forefront with decisions that are slow and deliberative where is biological factors May push free roadside in Split second decision situations. The frontal immaturity of the adolescent brain is more pertinent to split second issues of Impulse control and to slow deliberative reasoning processes. Or in a mitigated freewheel framework rapid fire and pulses behaviours can occur while homunculus has gone to the bathroom.

Or at other points, he talks about studies I am unfamiliar with but because he's sacrificed his credibility on studies I do know a bit about, I don't trust his interpretations. I think to myself, "hmmm, that sounds suspect." Meltzer, Tom (August 27, 2013). "The 20 online talks that could change your life". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved March 31, 2020.Sapolsky describes himself as an atheist. [7] [8] He said in his acceptance speech for the Emperor Has No Clothes Award, "I was raised in an Orthodox household, and I was raised devoutly religious up until around age 13 or so. In my adolescent years, one of the defining actions in my life was breaking away from all religious belief whatsoever." [9] Culture is about ideas and symbols rather than mere behaviours in which they instantiate.Remarkably consistent finding starting with elementary school students is that males are better at math than females. While the difference is my know when it comes to considering average scores there is a huge difference when it comes to math stars at the upper extreme of distribution. 1983 for every girl scoring in the highest percentile on the SATs there were 11 boys.