- by robert sapolsky
- what influences our best and worst behavior?
- brain(amygdala, frontal cortex, mesolimbic dopamine pathway)
- external stimuli(including subliminal ones, such as mentioning about race)
- hormone, testosterone(strengthening existing tendency, maintaing social status), auxitocin(us/them differently), glococorticoids(damaging if prolonged)
- synapse, enhanced, rewire, and newly-forming, though not much
- adolescents(more amygdala activation) and childhood,
- parenthood, peers(play),
- culture, indiviualistic & collevtivist, culture of honor, more hierarchial or not, city dwellers & hunter gatherer(not inherently violent)
- heritability(fingers and earing), gene environment interaction
- evolution, individual selection(infanticide), kin selection, reciprocal altruism(game theory, why cooperation)
- us/them, hard to eliminate, but individuating helps
- hierarchy, being lower is stressful for baboon too, conformity(milgram game, and prisoner game)
- morality, is it reasoning or from heart? it’s both, but from heart is more automatic
- empathy, starting from heart, but needs reasoning to act out
- free will, no such thing as long as we could figure every mechanism and variables that influence specific actions (bit weird to hear)