In this episode Robert Sapolsky who is a primatologist at Stanford explain how did evil evolve. Both him and Sam Harris talk about other subjects such as Free Will and Depression
Thanks for sharing the discussion. Very helpful to hear Dr Sapolsky's ideas be expanded and built upon by the host. Most of the discussion I've come across has been him with someone arguing against his position on determinism and missing most of the value of what he is sharing about how the brain works and the implications about how to make a more humane society.
Holy crap that was the most delightful conversation I've heard, possibly ever. I need to write to Sapolsky and let him know he has provided me some comfort. I grew up in and out of violent neighborhoods, thought I got a break when my father went to rehab but just ended up physically abused at the hands of my grandparents when I was a preteen, though they taught me to read they continously made the point that I was unjustifiablely fucking stupid for my age (12-13), got into a lot of fights, moved so often I couldn't learn to properly socialize, developed severe major clinical depression as a teen at which time I was convinced I was somehow inescapablely evil yet somehow all I wished I could do was heal the world and help people. I grew up feeling split down the middle, like 2 different people battling for control. As I grew older I found myself desperately wanting to make friends, I was lucky enough right at this time to be taken in by a well off white couple that wanted to help me. This was a genuine reprieve from the environments I was use to but eventually I was kicked out because they had 3 other kids and after living with them for 2 years they couldn't afford to keep me, or maybe it was I couldn't seem to take regular showers and was offensive to be around. I ended up back with my father at 16, back in a violent neighborhood, back to getting into fights. At some point I began to see visions of my demise, how I was going to be taken out in a fight gone wrong and decided to stop going out. I hadn't seen a lick of school since 6th grade at this point so when my father re-entered me into school (high-school at this point) i just never went. At the age of 19 I got tired of feeling stupid all the time so I started just picking up books I felt I had no business trying to read, like I bought a fucking college study book for 60 bucks on microbiology and thought, I can read and look up words, I should be able to understand this eventually right? I ended up going to RU-vid and looking at biology meant for kids, absorbed as much as I could and that microbiology textbook started to make more and more sense. I got addicted to science communicators, all of them, I was shocked to hear Aubrey Degrey mentioned here (I know I shouldn't be). Richard Dawkins book (God Delusion) didn't make me question a God I was already pretty sure didn't exist but it made me seriously question any sort of spirituality. Then I read Darwin's Dangerous Idea about 50 times cover to cover and that destroyed any notion of free will I had up to that point...then I had a crisis. I listened to what Daniel Denette had to say about free will and I was lost. How could someone like me disagree with someone like him and be right? Just not likely I thought. Then it happened again with Michio Kaku, and at this point I started looking into the topic directly because like what the fuck am I missing? I'm 25 when I pick up A letter to a Christian Nation just to entertain my reddit atheist heart. When I start looking up Mr Harris on RU-vid I am delighted to hear my own conclusion about free will from having read Darwin's Dangerous Idea so many times echoed back at me, and from someone so learned. Unfortunately this didn't stick the landing, shortly after there was that incident between Mr Harris and Chompky and I'm just tuning my heuristics here, I literally don't have time to dig into the complexities of their disagreement (is what I remember thinking, what were they disagreeing about again?) I've got a rough min wage job and demoralizing life to maintain. Then it's black lives matter this and nazis and white supremacist aren't a big problem that and look, I'm not white, I don't disrespect the police, even in my youth I was too afraid of them and yet my experiences with police does not comport with the way Mr Harris talks about them and from what I'm seeing (even at that time) there seems to be a massive issue lurking just under the veneer of civility called white supremacy and many of them are cops. This all made me question Harris in a way that I didn't with Chompky but then I find out Chompky believes in free will! LOST. Again. I've been absolutely distraught about this for years now thinking, am I just not smart enough to see what the compatibilist sees? Do I have to reread Nietzsche, Focaux, Douglas Hofstadter? I have been tortured by a fixation to understand why, why do these people think this way. Then Sapolsky happens to me. I haven't read the book Behave but I intend to, I've seen he dropped a series of lectures on RU-vid. I am going to watch them all some of them probably a few times to better absorb it. I've watched I think 13 hours of interviews as he does his rounds with this book and every time I hear him I want to cry in relief. I'm not stupid. If you've actually made it this far, thank you for listening to me but now I'm going to vent angrily for awhile and lament my circumstances so, now would be the time to stop reading. The relief that I'm not stupid is short lived, I look at my min wage job, I look at my living situation, the fact that I struggle with chronic homelessness without being an alcoholic, without being addicted to litteraly anything and ask myself, what was the point of knowing any of this? I remember the first time it occurred to me that if anyone would understand my situation and be willing to lend me a helping hand, maybe send me some cash, help make my life a little easier, certainly it would be Sam Harris' community. No, no. I'm asking for money so I'm some sort of scammer. Never mind that most scammers are people that need the money, never mind that of all the fucking people on this planet these should be the people most ready to help if they can, no. What does my life matter compared to the endlessly people who have yet to be in the future. Why help a tortured intellectual stricken with poverty in there here and now when it feels so much better to help people that aren't here yet. I mean nothing, my life means nothing and no one is coming to help.
Understanding does not come via knowledge, that is mere acceptance, an act of will. Oh, that old contradiction. We have to understand, that is the only actual meaning in life. Seeing a tiny part of the picture is of little use when building a million piece jigsaw.
@@shakeyj4523 Yes. He's likely autistic but doesn't know it and I suspect suffers from borderline personality disorder. He at one point dedicated his life to creating his own encyclopedia of jazz fusion, was incredibly gifted as a musician (Spanish acoustics guitar was is favorite) but struggles with reading. Reading overwhelms him and this is so incredibly unfortunate for both him and I. I am the wrong person to try and convey any important information to him that he doesn't already know. I now suspect I too am autistic, suffer from borderline personality disorder and am practically addicted to the cognitive sciences, philosophy of mind and physics. Although I can't really do math as it overwhelms me (I'm still hopelessly trying from time to time). He and I view things so differently we can't talk, he burns through my "executive function point" like fire does paper.
Thank you very much for you generous help me to improve the understanding what, who, how am I. Please keep you be healthy. On the other hand, the damage of deep depression paints your knowledge with brilliant colours in every twilight. Beatiful symbiosis suffering and creativity to transform illness. Thank you very much.
Although each of you are quite different externally and internally - I can still say each of you are excellent styles of beings and are beings of excellent thinking 💜 I enjoyed this so much. I don’t laugh easily but there were few funny parts in this conversation that had me laugh as well with you.
The way I think about Kant is that he described the nature of concience as experienced. When you have to lie to someone for a good reason you feel guilty about it. But there are many moral codes that within certain situation can clash and you make a conflicted choice. That does not mean the rule was suspended. You just made a moral choice to stay true to most of your morals. There is also the weight of a moral involved. As n moral being you respond to multiple moral codes in s specific situation. The way moral codes become expressed is the moral choice and act. There are few situations where only one moral code comes into play. As Kant said the overarching rule is the golden rule (to paraprase). To put yourself into someone's shoes means that you have to account for context all morality as a whole. Empathy, I belief is in line with the Kantian view even though of course his views were conditioned by the times he lived in.
PS- in consideration of the potential for surgical brain enhancement, I'd encourage you to consider how that could interrupt the natural flow of how we evolve. I'm thinking of chaos theory. If we evolve along a continuum, so to speak, that sort of blossoms naturally like a fractal, if we change that flow we might be in for some unintended consequences. An example: (please bear with my limited knowledge in some areas) when synthesizer keyboards first were invented, they were made to be "perfect". They had perfect rhythm, tone, etc. It was found that the quality of the sound produced was greatly diminished b/c in the natural world sound doesn't happen like that. There's an element of randomness. When they introduced an element of random error to the signals produced by the synthesizer, the sound quality improved and sounded more real. Though I appreciate the honest curiosity with which some might want to explore this, I'd encourage you to be careful.
@@nancychace8619 Did the sound quality improve, or did it dis-improve in a way that our imperfect auditory system finds familiar? You really can't look at things in isolation. Would surgical enhancement really be different from an environmental change that "enhanced' the brain? It would be targeted, and planned, but that really should not be an issue. And no, our evolution is not a continuum due to changes in the environment. I think if the planet had never cooled or had an ice age, we would be very different creatures. Nature is messy and random, and not really a "flow" at all.
@@shakeyj4523 But that's just the point - messy and random IS the flow. Appreciate your response. The sound quality improved in a manner more consistent with the natural world. What makes you think our audio system is imperfect? Isn't that a subjective assumption? Perfect is a relative term. I can see the potential for both the positive and the negative with brain enhancement.
Let me say these ads are annoying. Don’t know who is responsible for this. I have to keep skipping so often. I’ll think twice about listening to a Harris RU-vid next time. WTH. I am staying with it cuz I really like Sapolsky.
Harrtis says he has done some studies using fMRI and detecting activity in the insular cortex. What activity was it? fMRI machines measure the blood pressure in the brain. The logical assumption is these areas are "indicating" an increase in blood levels that 'correlates' to the patient in a highly enclosed structure that can cause claustrophobic experiences. The patient is then asked to do some task and sometimes they give a description to the researcher who then uses his language skills undergoes an interpretive action mind. The researcher's interpretation comes from a 'subject's description', so the researcher's interpretation cannot be verified as being objective in any way. Psychology has never had a breakthrough discovery and it has never had a success rate comparative to its 'fail rate'. It all gets reduced down to language games. No one knows what a brain pattern looks like. Spot checks on 'sensuous matter'. These two guys are 'success driven' and can slough it off as having "Jewish mothers" down their necks. Much like the Newfie culture in Canada breeds fishermen and they never leave 'the bay'. Yeah I've heard that from the guys that left and headed west. "Was that inder mudder's dreams bay?" They were rogues then!... "Hindsight is 20/20"...Sapolski never measured his grandparents cortisol levels or adrenaline spurts. He may believe he saw it in his mother like he sees her chin in his sister or daughter. The science of stress is empirical, the rest is just the same old saw to make the academics react. Harris knows how to pull strings. He loves to spot the bad guys and label them immoral. Hah! Nietzsche said the Moralist loves immorality and to point fingers at something and away from them. Harris came from the Hollywood Brat Pack..His pedigree shows 'under-achievement' His mother was producer of the Golden Girls. Harris acts like he 'knows what makes people tick'. Sociopaths always excel in that delusion.
Free will does not mean to make a independent, uninfluenced and „random“ choice. It means to make a decision that is not forced from inner or outer forces or trough mind manipulation. Free will has to be understood as self-determination in order to separate it from randomness. This self determination is based on the character of a person and not reducible. Almost nobody argues for a „out of the blue“ free will that is understood as complete unrelated random act. In this view determinism is not a problem or mystery for free will, part of its correct understanding. Character based self-determinism.
This all sounds well-grounded and wonderful...except it is absolutely scientifically incoherent...you are no more instigator of your next thought or the agent of your next action than you would be of controlling your breathing, heartbeat or consciously affecting the workings of your internal metabolism. But it's ok, no need to panic...all this just means that you are also part of an intertwined and interdependent cosmos.
@nagy7946Explain coherence? With randomness there would be none, with direction there is. Take a group of musicians, each not hearing what the other is playing, not seeing what the other is doing, then record the whole event, just what a great tune that would be!
@@haraldtheyounger5504logical consistency,which would hold repeated,scientific scrutiny…the free will concept breaks down by all these definitions at every considerable level and challenge - how can something be even remotely autonomous (controlled by your free agency),when every single manifestation of that effect is predetermined by a previous cause(over which you had absolutely no control)?This is by its virtuous definition not freedom…am I wrong?ps:by that same token your analogy is incoherent as well….
@@istvannagy7946Obviously all is cause and effect, or affect, hence the relative stability, and coherence of life. If randomness was the driving factor of behaviour, people would simply be far more crazy than they are. As we can see, the craziness is due to causes rather than randomness. It's like self-determination, that could not exist without free will. As self-determination means choice. Sure choice is within the constraints of memory, of the known, of identification, etc... which all point to free will not determinism nor randomness. If we were just a direct result of mere input, there could be no change, and we'd be machines following orders. That has never been the case. The majority are like sheep and just blindly follow the shepherd, but there are always "free thinkers" or those with actual insight... which does not fit the determinism model at all.
@@haraldtheyounger5504 what???Determinism is the opposite pole of randomness…i think we are talking a separate language my fiend.Let us just agree to utterly disagree 💪
I agree that there is no such thing as FREE will, but I certainly think there is CONSTRAINED will. I think of volition as a horse in a corral with fences too high to jump and too low to go under. The horse can go anywhere it pleases within the constraints of the corral, and I think that describes our human choices and the biological and environmental constraints thereon. I do not think determinism is so fine-grained as to prescribe every minute action. Even genetics does not do that, one proof being that genes might prescribe that veins and arteries form and grow to your hands, but they do not prescribe the exact route they take to get there, as a look at the backs of your hands and those of your family will attest.
@shakeyj4523 If you are talking about imagination, you can think of things that are not physically possible, but even imagination is constrained by biological, cultural, and personal capacity limitations. Human thought is such that we don't usually perceive those constraints, any more than a fish notices the everywhere and always of the water it lives in. That is, until something happens to the water to make it noticeable.
Why do we even need to replace a debunked concept with another unproven concept, when neither interpretation has any application to you? If you explain the use of cataloging the concept and providing delineated nomenclature for the concept of human motivation and endeavor, I'll stop yawning when people talk about it. It's simply one of those things where the average person has no use for except to engage in some conversation that makes them feel more intelligent. It's far more useful for researchers needing food on their table (grants) and RU-vid content creators wanting to stroke their audiences. No use. No application. No enrichment of life has been brought by the revelation that our control over our own lives is constrained. We didn't need a neuroscientist to figure this out - every human child learns how "constrained" their will is from a very early age, and _our entire lives are spent in the pursuit of gaining _*_more_*_ control over our lives._ It's a monumental stupidity to tell people who spend their entire lives seeking to gain more control over their lives that they (checks notes) _don't have total control of their lives._ Sam, please make this information USEFUL somehow. Information with no application is masturbation. Hundreds of years have been spent on this question, thousands of books. And NOT ONE APPLICATION of all of this brainpower beyond academic hypotheticals and after-the-fact analysis that doesn't provide reliable insight into the future of human behavior - at least not a more reliable insight than someone of average intelligence whose training on reading human behavior was developed by surviving public school.
@@Chris-fn4df The OP is not Sam, and Sam is not going to see your comment. You really don't understand the concept, and that's ok, because it is a difficult one. I suggest you watch more of Robert's videos about it. Start with the one with Alan Alda, as that is the one most suited for a non science trained person. But I would watch all of them.
This is pure abstraction- the source of all neuroticism. This is little more than academic nihilism, and all or nothing absolutism. Nothing exists in a vacuum. "Free" will simply isn't free. It's utterly dependent upon multiplicity. This argument is circular, and that's why people fall for it.
You just confirmed the argument-thinking of course you’re smarter because you smatter in some complicated sounding words. The whole idea is that everything thought and action is circular and dependent on biology, chemistry and environment.
@@dieselphiend You made a claim in your original comment without defining free will. Why are you holding @paulyetman to a different standard than yourself?
@@shakeyj4523 Because they couldn't possibly have the same perception as I. Meaning is in the eye of the beholder. Is it not? As far as I'm concerned "free will" means whatever you think it means.
I enjoyed listening/thinking again to this old repeat, especially in view of my own studies, observation and research. Punishment is Pleasurefull, yes, but encouragement is also Pleasurefull, but, I feel even more so than punishment retribution revenge. Encouragement succeeds where punishment fails. Win win is infinitely better than win lose! Losers pursue and perpetuate unhappiness and all the bad stuff, as we Americans see every day and Israelis feed off for generations and before that. "Old Sparky" never deterred anything. The plasticity of the brain is the most beautiful optimism when we learn and know how to make people better human beings! Perhaps we have a poor definition of "free will". We can change the brain and change behavior. It may not be free will but we can make people better human beings, just not by punishments and coercion and force. Biological drives to do evil and bad behavior can be altered and corrected. Did Whitman desire and want to kill his loved ones and everyone else? His suicide not suggests not! Does Trump/Al Capone enjoy their evil personalities? Perhaps yes, they do/did. Who among us is happiest and more / most happy? Dopamine function anticipation of pleasure means that we might look closer and learn more about the most complicated thing in the universe/multiverse/cosmos and discover how to prevent our impending extinction as a species before it's too late. I personally doubt it very much! WW3 plus Global Heating Climate Emergency puts paid to any future. WAKE UP! (Fat chance of that happening!). Fasten you seat belts ; it's going to be a bumpy ride.
