Of Baboons and Men | Robert Sapolsky | EP 390

Dr. Jordan B Peterson sits down with Neuroendocrinology researcher and author of the upcoming book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Robert Sapolsky. They discuss how Game Theory applies to human behavior across iterative rounds of play, the unexpected success of the tit-for-tat principle, the role of dopamine in the anticipation of the future, and the objective reality of transcendent structures within our biological routines.

Robert Sapolsky is an American Neuroendocrinology researcher, author, and communicator. He has spent decades studying primates in the wild, written numerous articles and books, as well as produced multiple video series on the subject. By the age of 12, Sapolsky was writing to well known primatologists as a fan, and had also begun teaching himself Swahili with the early ambition of heading to Tanzanian, Mozambique, and Kenya in search of his own primates (Specifically Silverback Gorillas) to study. Not too much later, Sapolsky would make contact with a group of gorillas in Kenya, a group he would visit every year for 25 years, spending 4 months studying them at a time. Sapolsky would go on to become 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.

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Ep.390

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For Robert Sapolsky:

Determined (Book)

Behave (Book)

Robert Sapolsky on X

- Chapters -

(0:00) Coming up

(1:08) Intro

(2:05) Game Theory, the logic of our behavior

(6:13) The shadow of the future

(10:31) You are a community across time, Utilitarian thinking

(15:25) Tit-for-tat, iterative game competitions

(18:00) The Prisoner’s Dilemma

(23:11) Tit-for-tat in bats

(24:24) Signal errors, virtualization

(28:57) Radical forgiveness

(31:20) Shared culture, demonizing the foreign

(33:04) Faith in the possibility of humanity

(36:03) Founder populations

(37:41) Abraham, the underlying ethos

(41:20) Religion and retention

(44:08) Cain and Abel, sacrifice, maturity, and dopamine

(47:30) The extension of knowledge into the future

(50:08) The dopaminergic system, future rewards

(53:00) Agency, quasi-predictability, the power of “maybe”

(56:30) The ultimately addictive slot machine

(57:50) Pattern of the hero

(1:01:50) You’re a winner if people want to play with you

(1:03:39) Freedom of association

(1:05:41) The meaning of “store up your treasure in heaven”

(1:08:56) Punishing generosity

(1:12:48) Playing at the edge of additional generosity

(1:14:20) Baboons, anticipation, the range of pleasures

(1:16:21) Refining taste, the tragic implication

(1:18:40) Dostoevsky, "Notes From the Underground"

(1:20:54) You are not built for satiation

(1:23:32) False adventures, pathology and addiction

(1:26:11) What God lacks

(1:28:00) Studying primates for 30 years

(1:31:13) The result of an abundance of females

(1:37:03) Third party enforcers, cultural transmission

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All socials

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Discovering Personality

Self Authoring Suite

Understand Myself (personality test)

// BOOKS //

Beyond Order12 More Rules for Life

12 Rules for LifeAn Antidote to Chaos

Maps of MeaningThe Architecture of Belief

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