2. Behavioral Evolution 

Sapolsky is the reason I'm a bio major. I read "Zebras" in prison and went around trying to explain everything I took from it to everyone I could haha. First month out, started college, aced bio, and already a TA. Thanks Professor.

Netflix doesn't even have anything as binge-worthy as this guy's videos.

I love how he gives these mini summaries throughout the lecture and it's literally so precise and holistic, like reinforcing information into your brain, What a genius lecturer

00:00 Intro 04:00 Introduction to Evolution and Social Behavior 14:11 Wrong concepts about Behavioral Evolution 19:08 Fundamental Behavior Patterns based on Evolution 41:15 The Strategical Patterns of Behavior 1:02:13 Strategic Behavioral Patterns Examples on Animal Realms & Exceptions 1:15:56 Summary & Predicting Behavior upon Sexual Diamorphism in species 1:36:51 Ending

I can’t believe that the university put one of its most popular professor’s lectures on youtube for free. How great is that? I was so excited when i saw who was teaching this.

Robert Sapolsky truly lives up to the title of Professor.

This series is fascinating. I left school at 16, bad grades , got a job and now doing well in sales. HOWEVER , human psychology and behavior always amazed me and in another life or alternate reality or maybe if I had just made better decisions in life I would have studied this so hard. I feel very lucky to be alive in a day and age where I can watch this level of mentorship on RU-vid for free. Thank you sir.

I hope he is still teaching, and I hope he gets paid a LOT of money. He's the best lecturer I've even able to imagine. Reminds me of Feynmann.

who else aspires to be as well spoken, intelligent and funny as this man?

This is the entire purpose of the internet. Thanks so much!

My 14 y/o self is here during summer break watching a Stanford class and taking notes… my parents are looking at me like I’m crazy and so are a whole bunch of my friends. Thank you, this is what the internet should be used for!

These lectures make me so nostalgic of the feeling of my undergrad years. Thinking of continuing my education.

I am an exceptionally old senior citizen and did not go to college and have always wondered what it would be like to attend college. Now I can say I took a class at Stanford, I found this class extremely interesting. Like the saying goes it's never to late to learn. This is one of more valuable lessons on UTube.

This is the man you climb the mountain to meet

Randomly found these lectures in a RU-vid rabbit hole and I couldn't be happier. I'm so grateful to be able to listen to Stanford lectures for free. I wish I had professors like this man in college.

I’m not even taking this class but I listen to his lectures every night on my way home from work. I love the way he talks and explains things.

Just a comment to honor the man who wrote an hour and a half lecture subtitles. This man is a true hero

I'm a simple old woman, a farmer from Qazakhstan. I study English. And I'm captivated by videos of this professor. Because of them, I better understand English and biology. Thanks so much for such videos!!!!

"Yea, he's a coward. But he makes really good milkshakes, so we keep him around."

Right now, I am procrastinating working on my Master's thesis by watching these lectures. Maybe I will just study again.

Professor: Why have you taken this course? Student: *_yes_*

Reading through the comments section of this video shows an amazing thirst for knowledge. So many people who are not in college and not taking this course are captivated. It's refreshing to see the internet used for something productive. (And thank you Stanford for posting these videos on RU-vid. This is the second course I'm working through and it's genuinely made me want to go to Stanford. I have a fear of our school system and a distaste for debt but these professors make me feel like it might be worth it.)

“Why are you taking this class?” “Yes”

I went to a private Christian school and as such, never had the opportunity to explore thess subjects. now when I find things like this on RU-vid I listen to them while I clean or drive 👏

Why have you taken this course? Person: yes Truly ahead of the time

this is the kind of thing that justifies youtube.

Iv been working on cars for 7 years. Figured this would be interesting. I didn’t know Stanford put entire courses on RU-vid. Thank you

I started listening to this to fall asleep. And I got more and more awake as the lecture went on.

This series of lectures is one of the best things that happened in my life. Immensely illuminating, enjoyable, thought-provoking and above all conducted by a fantastic teacher. Such a privilege to have free access to them.

I like going to sleep listening to these lectures he’s like the Bob Ross of Behavioral Biology

Seriously I had good teachers. As a 40 year old man this guy legit makes me want to go back to school. I love his teaching style

This is seriously my favorite teacher. His methods of relaying a comprehensive understanding of extremely complex ideas and information is impeccable.

4:00 perks of being an osteologist -An inevitable logic about how organisms function, built or have evolved exists -What behavioural evolution is about: you can take the same exact principles and apply them to thinking about the evolution of behaviour. 9:00 role of darwin in evolution -Natural selection = mechanism of evolution -evolution = traits in populations change over time -speciation = traits can change enough that in fact, we get formation of new species altogether -steps darwanian evolution is built upon: 1. There are traits that are heritable (genetic?) 2. There is variability among those traits (different ways these traits can occur, some versions of those traits more adaptive than others) -all of this isn't about survival of the most adapted, it's about the reproduction of (number of copies of genes you leave in the next generation) 12:00 how do you apply these to behavior? -assumption we'll use again and again: some behaviours are heritable 18:53 animals, including us, behave not for the good of the species/of the group, but to maximize the number of copies of genes left in the next generation -and what we see is 3 ways (building blocks) in which this could occur: 1. individual selection: built around the notion that sometimes the behavior of an animal is meant to optimize the number of copies of its genes that it leaves in the next generation by itself reproducing (i) natural selection: processes bringing out an organism which is more adaptive (ii) sexual selection: selecting for traits that have no value whatsoever in terms of survival or anything like that, but only because (for some reason) the opposite sex likes those that way 2. kin selection/inclusive fitness: sometimes you will get behavior which really decreases the reproductive success of an individual in order to enhance the success of a RELATIVE -but constraint: all of your relatives don't share all your genes with you (different degrees of relatedness) (according to vicious logics of mathematics) ("I will gladly lay down my life for 2 brothers or 8 cousins" ~ Haldane) 31:00 3. reciprocal altruism: synergistic benefits of cooperation (rock-papers-scissors equilibrium) -got to be smart animals who'll do this + long-lived enough -should cheat if you can get away with it -another key facet: becoming very good at detecting somebody is cheating against you -an awful lot of social behaviour is built around animals either trying to get away with something or spotting somebody else doing the same (evolutionary psychology: more attuned to detecting cheating than spontaneous acts of kindness) 41:10 what is the optimal strategy in a particular social species for a particular individual? (when to co-operate, when to cheat?) -GAME THEORY= the notion that there are (formal) games, that have mathematically optimal strategies (or multiple strategies, multi-equilibrium) (starting off in the world of people studying economics, negotiation, and diplomacy etc) -what came out was all sorts of models of how to optimize behaviour in terms of game theory -the building block = prisoner's dilemma -starts to introduce notions of irrationality within economics 45:00 how do you optimize prisoner's dilemma? -Tit-for-tat strategy -however they are very vulnerable to signal error -better strategy: forgiving tit-for-tat (fTfT), ends the continuing see-saw pattern -but vulnerability: you could be exploited -an even better strategy: long enough TfT --> fTfT, i.e. switched over to forgiving tit-for-tat -solved the problem of signal error, but forgiving too readily and being taken advantage of

My highschool teachers would have a stroke if they knew I was watching these taking notes.

I WISH I could afford to take these classes, I WISH I could go back and do something with my good brain. I got the phone number sequence the first time 100%. I wasted my life I’m already 44 years old and i could have been someone who helped many people because I have certain passions that are very much needed in todays society. If you have a chance to get an education be grateful that you matter enough to you to do so. If i could only go back id get straight A’s no matter if I had anyone to be proud of me Id be proud of me.

This is the best, I haven’t felt curiosity and zest for life like this for years. I’ve been up all night, I can’t stop listening to Sapolsky speak.

Free college for everyone. It starts like this.

I am a film school graduate and just like the guy Professor pointed out in the beginning, I want to make films with better understanding of human behavior so my characters are better. Thank you Stanford for saving my money, thank you RU-vid for letting Stanford do it.

i'm a 16 year old dropout due to financial reasons and this is great help! thank you to whoever it was that decided to make this lecture available online for anyone and of course thank you to sapolsky for being such a great professor and simplifying things so everyone can understand no matter how much knowledge they hold. i truly believe sapolsky would be able to teach dolphins quantum physics if he wanted to lol.

The fact that I'm from Brazil and I can watch this is an internet miracle!

Wow. I always wanted to have an an encyclopedia set before the Internet, but we couldn't afford it. I grew up in a poor family and now I can listen to this amazing Stanford professor as I wash dishes. He is such a great speaker. Thanks Prof!

Everyone who reads this, we don't know each other and probably never will but I wish you all the best in life and all the luck in the world stay safe!

When Bob Ross referred to those “Happy Mistakes” it made all of us feel accepted. Those two words flipped our mental pancake from a negative to a positive. I think Bob is the accumulation of everything good, inventive, respectful, and loving. His subtle voice let us create our own thoughts and respect his approach to pushing positivity. I think I will wear my Bob Ross T-Shirt today…

How many 'uh', and 'umm' are there in his one and half hour lecture? None! What an amazing, articulate, intelligent professor he is! 1:14 The scientist he mentioned is John Holland. He received the first Ph.D. in Communication Sciences (obviously related to Computer Science) from U of Michigan (1959). But the first person to receive a Ph. D in Computer Science was sister Mary Keller from U of Wisconsin (1965).

Why would someone dislike such a fountain of knowledge?!Thank you Sapolsky and Stanford.

Took his course in 1996. It was truly a pleasure.

Okay a lot of productive stuff exists on youtube, glad I came through this I'm a math student but here after Anand Gandhi's recommendation I found it totally compelling it feels like I was sitting somewhere in the corner of the class room. I wish we all had such teachers in our lives. Thanks a ton for uploading these videos man, looking forward to finish all of them.

I’m a high school student and I always believed that any topic is interesting if you make it interesting and this man confirms it. I may not understand some things he’s mentioning but he makes me want to keep listening

THIS is the purpose of the internet. Thank you, Stanford.

I just found this it's 2018 (I'm a baby boomer). Extremely interesting. Tried to binge watch, got to the middle of the 2nd lecture before my brain got sucked out. Taking a break to ponder and percolate. I can't believe little ol' me can "attend" these lectures. Who knew? Fantastic! Now it is possible for me to get my dream education. Who needs a paper? Knowledge is power.

0:00 Intro 4:00 Behaviour evolution, Nash equilibrium 9:00 socio biology, evolutionary psychology Darwin, natural selection, Traits, speciation 12:00 Darwinianism and Behavior 16:00 zebras and group selection Survival vs Reproduction of the fittest 19:00 3 building blocks 1. Individual selection, Sexual selection 23:30 2. Kin selection 36:00 3. Reciprocal altruism, reciprocal co-operation 41:30 game theory Prisoner's Dilemma Homo - Economists Tit for Tat strategy, prone to signal errors 54:40 Forgiving Tit for Tat 59:00 Pavlov Examples : Bats, Fish, and Gender Fish, #titfortat 1:07:00 Reciprocal Altruism 1:11:00 why it doesnot work? 1:16:00 The possibility of Mutation 1:17:00 Three Pieces #behaviour 1:29:00 tournament species vs pair bonding species

thank uyou so much FOR ALL THESE CLASSES I LOVE BIOLOGY BUT I LIVE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE THIS IS CANDIES FOR ME

A 34 year old first year Psychology student in South Africa, I happened upon these lectures by accident. My world is changed forever! Thank you.

" The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know." 💬Albert Einstein

I'm 61 and I love learning, especially human and animal behavior. So glad these lectures exist. I'm a retired special Ed teacher...talk about lessons in human behavior!

I will forever be thankful for Standford to show this. Nothing is a better commercial for higher education, than an amazing professor.

Wow, loved this lecture. Fascinating. I am 70 and wish I could have attended college and listened to this guy.

"Some times a chicken is just an egg's way to make another egg" he says triumphantly..

As a teacher his nothing less then brilliant bonding techniques should remind all teachers that we are all students as well. If u can't tell I'm very impressed. I term not often used unleased surprised. Well done.

Introduction 3:55 Logic of Optimization 🦒🐭 5:48 Darwinism 9:00 Social behaviour 12:01 0. Simplistic misconceptions 🐊 14:10 1. Individual selection 🥚 18:46 2. Kin selection 25:51 3. Reciprocal altruism 🤝 36:31 a. Game theory 40:55 b. Animal Behaviour 🦇🐟🐠 59:49 c. Exceptions 🦁🐀🧬 1:08:52 Animal behaviour Tournament vs. pair-bonding species 👱 1:18:37 Closing 1:36:15

"Yeah, get the old guy in the river!" "Let's sacrifice Grandma for the economy!" Welp. There it is.

he looks like the LVL 100 botanist NPC you buy healing herbs to make concentrated healing potions++

7M views. Wow. For a simple lecture this is well done. And of the viewers, probably close to zero are actually taking this or any other class.

Guy's the Bob Ross of biology

looks like the algorithm picked up Sapolsky's lectures and threw them into my reccomended. Time to binge!

43:07 leads up to fascinating nuerological differences finding 44:20 "homo econimus" 44:38 brain scanner...pleasure center...some people activate when they stab someone in the back, others when they achieve mutual cooperation...

I've taken in more info with these lectures in a few days, than I have in my whole first year of Uni. Fantastic teaching methods!

"It is not from the benevolence (kindness) of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

I just found this series. This man is funny, well-articulated and charismatic. Great!

I've just started a Psychology degree I can afford and in the meantime I'm going to boost it with some quality lectures and books. Thank you for making these available!

The behavioral strategies open up a whole human behavior dimension for me, that just makes me how easy it is to make two groups of people who are coordinating, start fighting, by introducing some kind of miscommunication between them

I happened upon this by accident, but I can't stop watching it. Mesmerizing. This guy is a fantastic teacher and the subject matter is beyond interesting.

People, basing your thoughts of large-scale concepts, such as human behavior, on this one lecture is BAD. In the first lecture in Sapolsky's series, the one before this, he talks about how categorical thinking is a very easy bias to fall victim to if you think about a concept from only one direction, such as evolution. If you watch the previous lecture, this professor is against basing your opinion on one aspect of thought. Throughout the course, he talks about several ways of looking at things, evolution being only one. His goal is that by the end of the 25 lecture series, you realize the fault in categorical thinking. Watching only one lecture about evolution will strongly support this type of thinking, so be aware of this! Evolution appears to explain everything, until you learn about other explanations! No one thing explains it all. It is an intricate intertwining of many disciplines that makes humans the way they are, and this is the message that Professor Sapolsky tries to get across by the end of the entire course.

Thank you for sharing this for free.

I stumbled upon these videos randomly. My job requires me to do very little and I needed a distraction. I can’t help but thank god I found these! They pass the time and are extremely interesting. Im not an auditory learner, but this professor makes it easy. Also, it’s preparing me for my fall semester to prepare me for similar classes I’m taking! Thank you. Can’t wait to finish these

I’m completely amazed by this series. for sure going to watch it all. he makes it easy - and plearsuble - to spent hours learning about such complex themes. what a didatic teacher. so glad that youtube algorithmus recomended it to me, and even more that technology makes me abble to see it, eleven years later, in Brazil. thanks so much Stanford for having this posted! really life changing

I don't really know what I'm doing here, I'm about to get my bachelor's degree in translation here in Venezuela but i already finished one of the readings he assigned in the first video and I'm watching two videos a week. This is so illuminating

Thank you for the lectures! I'm an attorney at law, and despite of my educational background I found your lectures very invigorating and comprehensible. It helps me to learn how the "truth" is to be seen and questioned, and to sharp the critical mind. The examples from the 1. lecture of the scientist and professors from 20. century that made great damage to the world shows the importance of the ethical and moral responsibility of the scientific ways and rules that needs to be carried in every moment.

I love this teacher. Any students taken his class will not ever be waiting their time. This is how you keep students engaged. 👏

I would give a lot to have been in this classroom, 12 years ago. Thank you for allowing the world to see these videos, Sapolsky. They bring me joy.

This is the first time, I am listening to a lecture on a topic like this without losing attention even for a bit. Professor is awesome

THIS IS JUST AMAZING. what a privilege to be able to see this.

I think the lecture was a very good look at how our everyday experiences illustrate the subjects and especially liked the natural progression of the class models and how they are relatable in more fields.

2 alarming things: - My dinner was literally delivered to my front door and went cold because I was too focused on watching this guy speak. - I stayed up for a day and a half to fix my depressed sleep pattern, only to stay up a second night watching this guy speak.

Currently attending a junior college in FL, but this Professor is awesome. With my major being Psychology I'm definitely learning a lot from his lectures.

"That son of a bitch, I can't believe he's doing that to me. We've worked together for years, I can't believe he's doing... oh he's pretending to go forward but I see he's not really doing that, fortunately that guy isn't coming forward anymore either, phew." I've never been so invested in the adventures of this fish.

I am glad that I am alive in this era of RU-vid! Education accessible for all!

Amazing. If we had one teacher in our classes each year of our education like this professor who loved their subjects as much most of us would never stop learning in life or consider our education as boring, and something to get through in order to get a better, or higher paying job . Spot on professor. Kudos

You. You just made my day. When I started watching this I wasn't expecting to suddenly have an epiphany about how couples and family in my story's vampire society worked. I swear, I thought I was watching this for character development at a much smaller scale, not on the scale of the whole species, but here I am. This has had the effect of baking soda and vinegar in the sink that represents my understanding of the universe I myself have been creating

The tit for tat strategies involving the elements of forgiving or cooperation gave me a great insight into how modern relationships when disrupted can be helped to get back on feet!

The awesomeness of this lecture series is diminished by the sudden stops. It’s still pretty awesome.

Sapolsky is one of the brightest points in contemporary theory and science

So grateful to have Robert Sopolsky lectures to listen to with my phone anytime.He brightens up my day with his awesome, inquisitive, brilliant and funny stuff. Not sure what good it's doing me to know all this about my species, but because he's teaching it, it sure doesn't make me cynical.

Perfect lecture. If he was a professor at my university I would want to stay forever instead of waiting to leave.

That's such a privilege to be able to listen to these lectures in free access!

This is a gift . This guy is the best ( period). I am surprised that his courses are free on RU-vid. Personally I would pay for them if I had to .

I wish more people would watch these, as they open the mind to how and why we all do what we do. So many people are stuck with the ancient Greek concept of willpower, blaming people for behaviour instead of learning how to avoid triggering it.

What a time to be alive y’all. This is the one gem I found in 2020. Thank you, Professor!

"it is best to teach in such a way, that the pupil does not realize that they are learning...until its too late!!!!" - Richard Feyman this guy gets it.

I watch these in my spare time. The lecturers way of teaching really appeals to me and though I’m only studying an Access to HE course in the UK, I still find this massively interesting. I can’t believe I get to watch/listen in for free!