Robert Sapolsky: Are Humans Just Another Primate?

good evening and welcome to this month's script to lecture in Greg Farrington executive director of the Academy chief penguin is they say was I say I think it's him this is good and identity is ending tonight is my pleasure to do is run Robert Sapolsky faculty from Stanford you've heard of him for good reason he's a John and Cynthia fry gun professor today will show unemployment in biology an erosion and neurological Sciences he's also reaches research associate at the Institute of primate research operated by the National museums of Kenya in Nairobi and a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship most significantly he's an Academy fell he's one of us doctor Sapolsky this he received his BA biological anthropology from Harvard in the Phd Rockefeller University in Durham chronology he's the author of several books including a mile of these titles stress the aging brain and the mechanisms of neuron death a guide to stress related diseases and coping I can't quite decide whether to read it he also regularly contributes in journals such as Discovery Science scientific American Harper's in the New Yorker I hope to read them all no I was before the finals step of the introduction I will say I'm about to walk out the reason simple my wife and I married are son off the east Coast we just got back unresolved so we are going to owe these bundles of neurons are about to collapse and so what you're going to watch this on video ForaTV version later and even though we regret missing this topic this evening as humans are we just another primate are we just a bunch of neurons please join me in welcoming Robert Sapolsky the the the the the the the the will thank you it's a pleasure being here and not being job like so much good thing um it's also the first time I've lectured next door to an indoor rain forest and underneath along so that's good also ok so starting off of I am both a neuro biologist other primatologist list of alternate between thinking about neurons and looking at primates in their natural habitats and you do that long enough and you eventually start looking which humans and strangely you're on you noticed how long guys his canines are for example anything comparatively more like you see somebody ambling down all I know when you think about how much anesthetic it would take the garden and a reader in the down end you know you wonder if that person is a monogamous or polygamous primate we start thinking about humans and its mighty hard to wrestle with this issue of twelve just how much are we just another animal just mammal round of testing of the primate so good to give some thoughts about this season but this is starting off are doing something that's really very impolite he shouldn't be doing start off a lecture by complaining about somebody else's lecture this is a lecturer was that some years ago and this was a conference about Alzheimer's disease and this was a garden caught up who studied fly neuro genetics which can easily enough is enough of it feel to have like warring parties of fly neuro geneticist of the disc I got up and sort of made the argument of what was he doing now Alzheimer's meeting and he went over the fact of how similar flies in humans or And he got up saying basically if any of you know what's right all of you will be studying flies within ten years and years in arguments he made roughly the same number of genes and a lot of cases the identical genes and the neurons are essentially the same the same arresting potentials and neurotransmitters and enzymes so humans have not invented new types of brain cells new types of chemical messengers because the exact same time the flies so he's arguing here and that's why you should start studying flies as far as I was concerned he just proof of why chain that kicks in your transmitters eccentric tell us nothing about what makes humans you it's because we've to show that there's nothing distinctive natural so what I want to try to wrestle with this evening our ways in which we do have insights when are we special and wonder we anything but and broadly I find something useful to think about this in terms of what are the domains in which humans are just like every other animal nothing special one of the domains where we do the same exact thing is every other beast out there but it totally novel context and what new things that we do we're in use with absolutely no precedent out there in the animal Kingdom of the first example just like every other animal health here's the scenario your hamster you're female hamster and what you do is you are ovulate to read for days that's a female hamsters work to your sitting there in your cage on ovulating way every four days and then put in another female hamster what's gonna happen over the subsequent weeks as both of you were going to start when cleaning your cycles and eventually synchronize them so they are both ovulating within a couple of hours each other on the same day then they take the male hamster and put him in strategic review and a completely desynchronizes in short your cycles this is amazing this works coldly this way it's all done by way of pheromones chemical screen passengers you can prove this low tech white just like holding the females Hampster's in those closed for days when you do really elegant late in the studies don't put the male in the cage have the cage an enclosed space and pumped the air from the male cage into this one and has the exact same effect it's olfactory people understand what parts of the brain processes and works in the awards totally cool is when you put two females together it's not random who synchronize the others the socially dominant want tends to drive to synchronize the state so everybody knows this totally well studied and this is seen in canines audience and bovids and felines on who asked you what apparently in Iowa where you can go it was seven eleven and by can of pig ovulatory synchronize in spring and you can go either nor do what he would want to synchronize your pigs are still waiting um grew up in New York neither is a vocation or an application which you can apparently do it there that there's like these that's what's known you can go synchronize your pigs and the amazing thing is it works exactly the same in the nuts were two known as the Wellesley effect the Wellesley effect first describe their study in nineteen seventy of women freshman year roommates over the course of the year synchronize their cycles except for women to a close intimate relations with the a male that were shown its olfactory dependence and it's the exact same thing and this is well studied enough that I can biologists is to brag about I remember during college which sat around the dinner table when someone will be saying when we roomed together this summer the August first that's how bad it is to hang out with biologist because of losses well it tends to be the more extroverted more socially dominant person who synchronous it when she acts like hamsters some of the time though we have the exact same machinery but we use to be completely novel ways it's example here ok you two in humans who are going through this obscure ritual they sit facing each other in a table they don't move don't speak it'll make eye contact and nothing more is happening in every now and that one of them lift their arms and moves a little piece of wood around on the table and if these were the right to human chess Grandmaster is in the middle that warn them that they are maintaining the blood pressure of a marathon runner for hours and hours on it simply thinking simply doing stuff that no other animal can do which is drawn to function in every cell in the body with thoughts and emotions and memories and we've got the same physiology but completely novel ways you look at some zebra are running for its life that have ripped open by a lion and the physiology of what's going on in that zebra is staunchly similar to what's going on and asked when we contemplate mortality or traffic jams or who knows what that's when humans get stress related diseases return on the classic mammalian stress response meant to get you running across the Savannah we turn on for new mortgages thus we see some of the time what we are about he's using just plain old off the rack mammalian physiology butt in on recognizable weights finally is the third domain or stuff that we do for which there's simply no precedent to help me give you an example here a shocking example ok you have a cute couple they come home with the ends of the day that are free to enter the topic of the sex the talks more to go to sleep the next day they do the same exact thing the moment are free to go to bed their sex the talks were the good thing to this every single night for thirty days hippos would be repulsed by it it's hardly anybody in the animal kingdom has an on reproductive sex like that and nobody talks about afterward and was suddenly in a very noble terrain here in terms of making sense of loss and some other time when you look at our communication powders six will be the cure or human tendencies times to confuse sexuality with aggression those realm there is no precedent we are on our own ok to that as an organizing way to think about when we're just like the other is partially so or not an audience likes of kids how to begin to think about this so what will look at first are some really interesting domains the theme over and over again where we have some of the building blocks exactly the same but we use it in ways that are just decompress now a lot of this over the years has consisted of war were initially shocking findings oh my god chimps make tools Jane Goodall reporting that the seventies an eye for an entire redefinition of what humans are what makes a steamy mobile see here is that business about softening the barrier between what we are in other species has gone all sorts of directions nonetheless in each case us using things in the very know what first example any of us when we were brought up on all blues like National Geographic specials and those ones on some animal species they would always be the same likes and Korean our reader at the end I can manage the only animal that kill for pleasure and light that was one of our defining thinks it is people a ton more more primate all it is clear we are not the only species that kills all sorts of occurrences in other species where it could be violent cold blooded hot blooded premeditated planned can be machiavellian in terms of its strategic consequences he could be savagely bludgeoning he could be just like we do when we kill another member of our own species and most remarkably it's not even unique to us anymore to have organized violence here's one example from one of the troops of baboons that I study and this is a male who had joined one of the toops a few weeks before as an adolescent the only way to describe this guy's he had her terrible political skills and he was hassling all sorts of guys get new business going anywhere near and one evening a coalition of six of them getting tough on him and this is what was left in the morning we are not the only species that kills and in this organized way in even more dramatic example this is a bunch of chimps and caring am starting off what is called the border patrol be sure all the males of one group and on occasion with the do is get into a theory agitated sort of a mostly cuz he just stayed up going and checking out the border their territory and the encounter another chimp from the next valley over they will attack and kill him total premeditated behavior and was very significant it is almost certainly all of these male chimps are brothers are close cousins be released here on the males in the next valley over getting along with each other he's just maybe one concepts which groups most remarkable reported by Goodall isn't at least one of these instances the males in this group managed to eradicate every member of the neighboring crew and this is a crucial example of genocide killing individuals not for who they are but for what group they belong to so we are most definitely not the only species that kills and even an organized way so what's special about us absolutely some other time we are doing nothing more subtle than what chimps are doing when they make weapons bludgeoning each other but some of the time we can be aggressive passively some other time we care to look the other way we can pretend we didn't hear some of the time we can do nothing more physically taxing than pulling the trigger some of the time wheat and damn with faint praise we can be aggressive and all sorts an awful way here is an astonishing example because this isn't all that is possible to do Mrs jaw for a handful of people living just outside last day these are people who in the morning to get up and they make sure they get your kids off to school and as they head out the Vermont it don't forget to pick up the dry cleaning and they get caught in a traffic jam and are all anxious about going to work late that in the traffic clears the gift or just on time it all works out ok and then they start their job which is sitting in a little pocket simulator and controlling a drone bomber in Iraq running on bombing runs this is done at this Air Force base just outside Las Vegas what people there to use the stick and they operate sort of drones in Iraq releasing coal fired missiles there and they spend the day killing people on the other side of the planet at the end of the day they packed up and they draw upon home and we're in a rush because they want to get to their little girls ballet performance and afterward the conquering can't believe they can love somebody this mosque and the next day the girl off sending helpful or Knesset that Amy and no surprise there are astonishingly high rates of psychiatric problems among these people this is like no other species now so we shift to another domain theory of mine theory of mine is a very hot topic among sell psychologist developmental psychologist the whole business about understanding and author individual has different information from you and that he will be a strategically in a way of reflecting last class of developmental psychology when do kids first art show here is Molly developmentally there's all sorts of tests were you could say so I moved the little girl comes home where she can look for her toys in this rumor that room and when does a kid first distinguish between what they know about where the corners and Tuesday were just pull something it was off to preschool and was a little kid knows when is the first time they realized that somebody else is a separate entity separate knowledge and typically theory of mine starts appearing between like ages three and five my kids got in on their third birthdays so that was very good at what you see is this is really impressive and lots of Rome's this is viewed as a defining feature of humans but it turns out that he read minds is not unique to us all sorts of stuff one style here you take two chimps from a social group with their pranks known and you put them on either side of this group includes her and their boats were kept off the side there and in the middle there is a screen at one point you've got a low ranking chimp your human comes out puts a bandana down just on the side of this great half the time the screen is transparent half the time this green is solid in other words half the time that higher ranking gone I can see better than that it was just put their half the time he can't then you let both chimps come out and you asked is this unfortunate might try to get the damn thing you see the chimps have a whole theory of mind over it the low ranking by what he does as if that be gone a scary thought I was able to see the banana be with their little guy doesn't even bother trying to get it because the stock can have the chance if the solid screen was up he knew it the other is gone he dosen't know it's there he goes and grabs the better or suppose a high ranking scary guy was that there has seen the inadequate there but then he's taken out in a different high ranking scary God has put a low ranking tycoons the band that he understands that guy news tourists abandoned or destroyed us and he understands that another chip has different thoughts and compact strategically to take advantage of that it's totally wild this completely blue sort of developmental period Moines few people out of the water so we're not so unique where are we need though in the capacity to do what's called second theory theory lot to understand that individual doesn't know that that individual knows that individual understand something unusual she wanted getting is this is why we can make it through performance of mid summer's night dream and she kept trying to keep straight of weight who knows what about who and what happened when and chimps would not put up with this because they can't do second theory theory of mine to weed and initially were seating not quite so unique and then we're taking a basic primary attribute and putting into very awful row next Golden rule virtually universal in every culture unfair to others and do or don't do it on her says he would want them to you and what game theorists a formalized in the ways of how do you maximize play to maximize cooperation and what you see is the most efficient strategies often are built around the Golden rule type interactions tit for tat u can still mathematically in terms of these games like the prisoner's dilemma what you have most of the efficacious Lee is you begin by cooperating with the other individual cooperate you continue to cooperate with the chief against you the next time you cheat in return if they've gone back to cooperate and you do this well be due respect for tax strategy and this is something the mathematics of this study bike game theorist and columnists and war strategy people on that and it's all built around we are rational enough to come up with ways of maximizing different strategies then it turns out we're not the only species that this kit for ten first example here we have this terrifying nightmarish creature the fam higher that haunts our nightmares the vampire but in actuality what is now drinking the blood of something or other is actually a female just getting food for her babies because the vampire bats are in actually drinking the blood or storing it in from sac they fly back to their nest distort the blood to feed their babies here's the interesting thing which is the vampire bats have communal naps whole Wednesday for females have their infants in there and the females come back in to scorch the blood and feed everybody skit everybody's keeping everybody else's kids it's a system of stable Rasa process now make a batch think that one of them is cheating on that one of them is holding back the flies out and you get it back bring it down what you do is to pump up the fruit snack which bears the fruit snack is standing way out and forged a new push that back into the nest there and everybody is nursing all night how much you like she's got there and she's not feeding my kid and the next time around nobody sees her child they do it for tax strategy even more amazing example in part because of the species has been so funeral is here really the mountains behind and talking about it fishing classic research groups to call back ok make it go back to believe that its territory is being invaded when you do you and you are up against the side of the tank and within seconds this attack and sinister know you make the fish believe it has a coalition partner here's what you do you take a second there and put it perpendicular to it and now what's happening is a free time these ones to forward his reflection a student there and say I've no idea who that guy is but he's great to see every time he's keeping the other guy out there and this is a great week that the stable partnership the eighteenth now know make the fish to his partner is cheating in their social contract take the mirror and angle it back to sue the image is deflected pass or so now he's sitting and he's going it is in the series sees gone when four but he sees the costs of moving forward that must be suggesting that bastard I can't believe that here we are humbled the streamlined lips year against his lips and weird the way that works but on the Pentagon said oh yes he's just pretending to go forward with icy sparkle are always there he believes his partner has cheated on him and the next time he sees his image he doesn't attack he stood for turning back so we are not the only species that is capable of doing that sort of optimization what is unique about us though he is at the very subtle elaboration on the golden rule is that for having known to others is you have and continue when do you deal with the fact that one individual may have different desires and another one as to what counts as what is reciprocity and no animal out there could understand what's going on in this world built around that not all humans have the same goal so yes were not the only ones with some variant on the golden rule when we are vastly more softball in terms of how to think about and what we do with it next to me one of these areas that seems just to find that we human empathy the capability of feeling someone else's pain that is the core of so much of what makes this team and at what is clear is we are not the only species wonderful work and a lot of Rome's some of the best by private colleges king prawns default Emory University and what he shows me is something that chore looks like champ empathy here's what the ship's captain animals one scenario some low ranking guy PBR likely challenges some high ranking mail when it counted second scenario low ranking by sitting here minding his own business high ranking by isn't a bad mood and those first days ago I asked for a second case in this advice that what to call his show is in the aftermath of this the other chimps are far more likely the common room with the light was the innocent bystander and gone from started the trouble and was asking for they understand intentionality and they understand that this guy did nothing wrong and they do what is the chimps equivalent of consoling someone else the groom someone else all sorts of suggestions that we are not the only species with him what about us where to we wanted to see it in very unique ways that we transcend chance to see who it is feared that a group based on whether or not they've been in since August when we do is send it into an area of abstraction like no other species let me give you an example here ok so you look at this picture this picture of this dawn crisp laws because some sort of trap it's come often across a new recent years oh my God uses to which to some illegal poaching was the summer the use of August for animal you are feeling empathy forty member of an altar species that is essentially unprecedented out there in the animal world you are feeling badly you were feeling pain for this dark room isn't of your species we can take it further so we looked at for example or classic paintings last entry and we focus in on the center and we'd look of course they're in Guernica in knowing that this was recording the historical offensive the fascists fire bombing of Guernica the Lawrence burning animal stuff inside and here is just the personification of terror and this course and we sit here and we feel badly for this course this horse whose painted on canvas who doesn't even exist we feel badly for this course caught in this imaginary paint an arm bar and during this fire bombing this is the realm of him with the unmatched we could take it even further this is a painting by the expression is German painter Franz Marc shortly after World War one who like many in his generation had his small and in everything else melted in the trench warfare at a painting he did courtly after work and this painting was called the fate of the animals what we see in the very center is this animal surrounded by the sheer chaos of perhaps trench warfare this and will stop in the middle of sheer chaos this and will be at the moon in terror and pain the adult it's not even obvious what species it is it's of no known species you are not feeling badly for this animal you were fat and feeling badly for the animals the fate of the animals an abstraction on that level by contemplating the pain of a member of the species that only exists when painted these are roles of empathy that are unmatched ok another domain how we anticipate six pleasure anticipation of pleasure and what we've learned is the brain chemistry this is remarkably similar in awesome all sorts of other were an alien species and it's got tons to do with this neurotransmitter called to open don't mean it is all about were warned to open mean when it's released in certain circuits in the brain me it's a lot of her ward who came to work some do mean your aunt's causing them to release the opening also to you for into this well don't mean this about pleasure that's what people use to she received an experiment like this you take a monkey and from out of nowhere you just give it a report in this case forgotten where you just get a food reward money shown here but he just gets a reward from nowhere and that part of the brain releases do that's not how it actually works one news now set up an experiment this fall this monkey has been trained and that's when the light comes on it's one of those sessions where I can now get food and it knows that if I press the Slipper ten times after a little bit of it away I'll get some food if I press the lever ten more times on its more food it understands the tax so what are we have here we have first signal the light coming on saying it's one of those sessions were starting one of us than the money goes to work and then with the delay the kids report from what everyone initially thought was don't mean would go up after the reward that's not what goes on it goes up when the signal comes on what's this this is a monkey they're sitting and saying I know this I know that your line of Islam on top of this this is the B grade I know right now this completely perfect hundred percent I'm going for today don't mean is not about pleasure it's about the anticipation of pleasure it's about the pursuit of happiness rather than happiness itself what's most remarkable is experimentally if you bought that rises to the mean from occurring you don't get to work you don't get to be the year this is not only the anticipation but this is what is capable of eliciting goal directed behavior I'm easing elaboration on this which now begins to tell us something we will know it ok so in this study collaboration rather than this design you press the lever or whatever time she can reward to the working toward hundred percent of the time that's how it works now instead shift to where you get to report only fifty percent of the top you do the work and only about half the time you get to wear walked to what happens to do from the levels there this is what they do they go through the roof because what if you just aren't used introduced the word maybe into the equation and maybe this could get it like an often else out there the light comes on and you during the I know how this works this can be great but I screwed up last time because I think the food but this time I'm feeling good today but I'm a total screw up an automatic written in junior high school it was terrible welcome but maybe this time the smile in pictures that's legal and police will we see here is to open mean comes pouring out like mad it's the uncertainty of the report here's the really elegant and they didn't study an hour instead of the fifty percent and were great under twenty five percent or seventy five percent these are diametrically opposite state's worst news better news the only thing we have in common is you decrease the level of unpredictability and the raw rice until the meat once a being halfway between the fifty percent and the Hunter and what's this this is the world are really in social engineering by human say in Las Vegas who understand how to design a place to take a curb or somebody has a zillion from one percent chance of getting an award and making you think because it's this special day in this casino and you especially are so much tilted to the right that you are going to get that humans are profoundly minute to him on this well and it turns out so were other species the exact same euro chemistry to walk once again unique about us what you see is which humans it's that time dimension you get the signal you do the work you get the report the question becomes how much time lag time can there be between work and the reward still listen to the behavior to still get the work coming out and we've just intrigued uniquely human terrain they are very simple reason that probably most of us breaking eyes which is somewhere along the way to almost all of us working very hard in school to get a good essay cheese course begins with the colors your east into grad school to get a jaunty in the nursing school home of our choice there soon and what we see is this astonishing ability of humans to keep the scope of the levels up for decades and decades of waiting for the reward and in the most bizarre unique realm of this in humans sometimes we can maintain it with a belief system where the reward us in common our lifestyle after our death the reward comes an hour after life the reward comes onto the next generations and there's no one key after he's willing to lever pressed all the time because of what St Peter's didn't think somewhere down the law so that is unique about this another domain culture culture know if you're climatologist and use anywhere in the past if you ever said were called treaty which instantly Tony tenure because you obviously were not serious and couldn't understand the difference between Tuesday wildlife cartoon and the real world and these days the two hottest words in primate Auntie our culture and personnel culture in terms of the known genetic transmission of learned behavior on your intro for inter generational divide that classic rule of social anthropology we are not the only species that has culture we have champs who not only have twenty twenty five different ways of making tools but they are young to learn from their mothers how to do this this is passing on of the sculpture and one particularly great study what were shown it was our munchkins daughters learn the techniques much better than sons because when that little disgruntled way too distracted to pay attention to what mom's doing with the termites take their daughters learn the new techniques much faster this is called for transmission social anthropologist connections over this but this meets the formal definition an animal cultures can be even more subtle than the new year passing on of the information of how you make your termite stick and this is some work that my wife and I did some years ago studying in our bedroom is at an East Africa showing a very unique taste of cultural transmission in a different species this was a troop of baboons we were starving in East Africa where just happened to neighboring troop had with his territory the two worst launched with a garbage dump and the bedrooms and that may bring troops than most other day just order forging on the left over food in this garbage that really charming and in fact some studies on those animals they would get elevated cholesterol levels insulin levels triglycerides teeth DK why I want that severe feasting there aren't too westernized aren't they all seek in the first markers of metabolic syndrome and severe ever find time to review the leftover British desserts from the first large and Daddy brought us a subset of emails our troop going over in the morning to do to say a one point and he was an outbreak of tuberculosis which turned out to be due to contaminated meat at the tourist lodge which was winding up in this garbage dump TB ghost like wildfire in nonhuman primates it is not festering here for years war you can be Thomas mom Brighton thousand word novels about it it goes through groups of primates like wildfire and killed most of the animals is true and a cure all the animals from our troops that were going over there before it's ok to fifty percent of the males in the street just to kill critically it was not rant in which males dark but sort of males would be doing next number one it had to be the most aggressive males from the truth because you're going over to the neighbors to fight your way in the money twice as many males to try to get some of your garbage some of their core seconds baboons to most of their social grooming and gossiping and the first thing in the morning if these guys were picking up to read over and fight for garbage instead these were the least socially affiliated next to suddenly what you have is a true quarter of the surviving males are the least aggressive most socially affiliated point and has transformed the atmosphere of this true they became far more social the average distance between them decrease the whole lot far less aggression use e mails carrying infants around all over the place these critical eye emails you see something extraordinary if you are a primate all just about knowledge is this picture is more shocking that if this was like chewing baboons flying rebuke from synthetic or these are two male baboons socially grooming each other male baboons do not prune each other they try to rip each other's faces don't think it is true the male grooming shop and you have is completely different atmosphere and what qualifies this sculpture is as new mails showing the true males growing up elsewhere and transferring his adolescence it takes in about six months to take on the speech Stalin he does this transmission of culture so we are not the only ones in ways that are previously thought to be unique to us so what's unique about human culture is just sheer mass hysteria the complexity of the fact that there is no other species on earth would ever dream of trying to do something like this we just do stuff hopefully that just leaves the others in the dust not only things like this but not only are we able to kill not only are we able to kill them organized he made it great that uniquely we are able to kill an ideology and theology of the fall in on a tiara and that's a real mall called true like nothing else out there chimps me eradicate their neighbors chimps will not do so because the neighbors have a different economic system or believe there's a difference were gone listening to their prayers and that roam our whole trip or attributes are absolutely unique ok so that no brain systems were realm where represent all of the stuff about we have the same basic building blocks is every species and fearful we used uniquely now looking in rooms where there's simply no press nothing else out there do this the sort of stuff that we did and getting two examples first one is personified in the personification on this piece or two quotes from this wonderful book by Ruth gambler the book of qualities which each page is this personification of the different emotion and the wonderful their parade and what you have all of these like very strange ways of talking about compassion or anxiety lenient and we understand what she's talking about we understand because we do things like have symbols and metaphors and parables and analogies and figures of speech and this is something that no other species has helped we can certainly understand all sorts of things we know that when the captain of the ship is asking for more than just can't squeeze asking for the hands to be on deck we know that the hands represent something we understand that half his metamorphosis was not a book about entomology we understand that a piece of cloth can represent deep deep societal values and it can be deeply offensive to some heels is trying to burn the flat and we also understand that the right person putting the right collection of ink on a piece of paper and what that music stands for is Napoleon getting his ass kicked outside of Moscow we also understand is that phrase Napoleon getting kicked their outside Moscow what that actually stands for thousands and thousands of soldiers going cold and hungry for home we can do things that first punishing and unique in the realm of metaphor what's most interesting about this is how our brain processes because we have in some ways a classic mammalian brain we can handle something utterly un president to hear the notion of metaphors and symbols such as the brain to deterrence out in a very unexpected way ok first example you and in this case you could be virtually any mammal on earth you have just eaten a piece of food that is a lot and it has spoiled it is that it is God knows what it tastes absolutely disgusting and in the process of spitting it out there's a party or brain that activates of the insular cortex which has a lot to do with ghost a Tory process and it tells you when you've just eaten something disgusting also activates if you smell something discussed he also activates uniquely ours if we think about something we find to be guns that were really disgusting and suddenly you can have people activating your insulin easily in bringing scanning machines when they contemplate the all sorts of stuff making your particular culture Celts is discussed and Mrs are mediated by this part of the brain the insulin which is just underneath the surface of one of the court sees there and is totally cool and is connected with gusto Tori and that's what nots but then we did contemplate be disgusted by something else we contemplate being disgusted by what humans are willing to do to reach out and we wallow in it and we think about it and we come up with ideas like just hearing about this makes me sick to my stomach no when people can do things like that makes me wanna puke makes me feel queasy I just happened during the tasting my not so scared and we do have a metaphor with that and when we are contemplating moral disgust the same part of the brain activity to use if somebody down and get them to recount a moral failing there is and is part of the brain activity we not only didn't cost of three discussed we do moral disgust with the same part of the brain how could that be because when we called this capacity for moral discussed we can come up with the new brain region which has forced the scenes look to expand its portfolio and in some way the brain handled this very abstract concept it is coldly literal way this is another version of eating disgusting spoiled food stir in concrete Mr and how the brain apples next example somebody thinks your finger with a pen and it hurts and is also supports your brain are activated tell you things like you're sick and rather than my fingers on fire there's other parts think it was her finger wrapping your toe he was telling you the intensity all sorts of like he knew me you'd are very concrete areas but then there's a part of the brain called the anterior single egg which is more involved in the town you wouldn't expect what does it mean that I'm in this day where sit and contemplate right now your finger being like that and think and you will have to think you're into her anterior singular he would be this part of the brain the kids active and the response not only tube being in pain but you're imagining your being and pay matter what you do instead is ask the person to sit and contemplate the finger of their beloved and being able to hand the same part of the brain active it's on a very literal concrete loved this part of the brain feels someone else's pain this is a part of the brain to see more of them didn't know it is a good part of a brain tells you whether you are being eaten by trauma center feeder with her shoes are too tight this part of brain tells you his kidneys are really bad news in all was time to stop this part of the brain tells you when somebody else's feelings and when we came up with this metaphor of psychic pain we jammed it into the same old place where we had palaces in sending information of Torquay insects and very interesting link this part of the brain is hyper active in people with major clinical depression people or pass along prickly feeling the pains of everything a fascinating League there's a neurotransmitter called substance he and substance P has a whole lot to do with interiors singular function and it's got something to do with pain passport is in Aries known this for centuries and there are drugs which will block the action of substance P and they often have anti depressant action here we have the party your brain that has physical pain when we develop abstract capacity to read about refugees on the other side of the planet and psychic pain gets processed in the same way more examples some really interesting work totally amazing study that was done recently here's what's done researchers Dr volunteers to come in and in the first scenario the last person to tell them something about what their high school was like or some such thing as part of this site and afterward they say what we can't see you for doing this just has a token you want this new fountain pen or if you want this package attempts and those of the two kilos and you know fifty fifty now instead the subjects come in and their cash to tell about a time when they had a great moral failure a time when they did something awful afterward you say a week you choose to enter the head and Kiwi disproportionate percentage past present and what's your feeling dirty after work they want to cleanse themselves and unremarkable elaboration with a mounted in the study which everybody had to comment and tell about their citizens and then afterward half the people were given an opportunity to go to the bathroom and wash up half or not they come back to the room and as things were staged some assistant comes into the room holding a whole stack of papers and trips and drops all of that if you just wash your hands after talking about your sins you are less likely to get up and help this person this stuff up you have washed away your sins you want to wait this incentive to help someone else I was suggesting something about so here it has something to do with how we think about moral failures and what's written in pen or imperatives come out of that absolutely want another example here in this study people were coming up to use some psych department in their university and it is to be some holes will soften previous one and on the roots of them of course the actual experiment took place in the elevator get in the elevator and are simply waiting there ready to get in all soo was holding a whole stack of papers and barely holding on to a drink and a person says he favored can you just hold onto this cuz I like the Cpl piece together and half the cases the person subject was asked to hold a cup of warm coffee and half the cases it is a cup of iced tea coffee hot cuppa were called up Bendigo winner and they do this during pre test and then afterward are asked to assess what was that the tester like I did he feel about them hope the warm calm in your hand when you are more likely to assess this person is having a warm personality we confuse the part of the brain is telling us something about temperature here is some how confusing no rule that a metaphorical more personality this person is a total ice Queen whatever and the resort an already over and just because you were holding the cup of ice and our brain has a lot of trouble telling this apart another example here are some pics were being put through study and they were sitting in the cheer her like the comfy soo on the left or there's still work when I reached there and you're reading some buddies show of resume and or some some scenario and the rest to make assessments afterward sit in the chair on the right and you are more likely to charge the people who read about as being more serious having more gravity about them being more focused you're sitting there and where you're sitting is changing her perception and we have begun asking the study there but I think what we can almost certainly Creek is that people who sat chairs on the right are more likely to see people as being hard and then metaphor is being mixed here's one most fascinating once this was a recent study where people read a stretch of a page about American history and he was alright to review the conventional way or a way that very much personified the United States as an organist he was in America's infancy that it first began to do what it was after the Civil war that America had a growth spurt and ever so are either neutral or in a personified way and in the study before you read this you either read something neutral or you read something about the health risks of bacteria what they showed was if you were thinking about the United States is being personified you've just read about securing bacteria in question years afterward you were more hostile to immigration you are more likely to view immigrants as dangerous pathogens coming in this is an absolutely wild way in which this metaphor stuff is abstract as you can get is inadvertently be processed by the brain in the most concrete little days and outcomes all sorts of ways in which we are subtly being shaped by this phenomena and a lot of researchers in the field of sort of Nora biology of moral behavior note that essentially what we do with our conscious decision making is justified the intuitions in this role responses we already have and some other time this is a disaster us in Rwanda during the crew to genocide against the Tutsis one of the figures propaganda that accrue to use force to seize in on the radio in the newspaper in anything were never refer to as Tutsis they were only referred to as Hawker of chips and you get people to a point we're hearing a reference to an entire other people the act of nature can slip or Texan you got some goodies just waiting to jump in with the pledge some of the time we can use that for a better outcome the political side is Robert Axelrod has written a lot about this and written about the powers of symbols in terms of solving world problems and the power of symbolic concessions what he does ur studies that show with things like he will talk to some really right wing military Israeli leaders and some each or radical Hamas leaders and people can quote them like a homeless person saying if peace is going to go for it the Israelis have to at least once a week got screwed in nineteen forty eight he was not fair that our land was given away and the Israeli Hawks there's an interesting piece is going to go for it they've gotta get that protocols of the elders is I am crap out of their high school textbooks not we need to get a better deal with the water rights were mineral rights for Howard the Palestinian police force can be or any of that but she really about symbol it's only emphasizes is how powerful the symbols are not one to previously warring nations figure out how to shear river when the King of one comes to the funeral of a leader of another and pays attention to the religious symbols of years key huge potential power now the other domain the glass dome and I won't talk about where we have simply no precedent out there isn't some ways even more abstract in this world better they can be summarized here in this way it is this human ability in some settings to gain the strength and the wheels to do something from the irrefutable evidence that something cannot be what a whiny my mommy make this a little bit less abstract and instead a quote from your garden if you subscribe to this particular type of belief system this notion that what religiosity is often about is the ability to hold two contradictory facts in your head at the same time or two contradictory beliefs when we make it a little bit less abstract than that this is an on the name sister Helen Prejean on and lots of people probably saw the movie back when the dead man walking which was about her this is a nun was spent her time ministering to the needs of men on them on to ruin a maximum security prison somewhere down south and inevitably she's been asked by all sorts of people when hearing she has spent her life solid saying these terrifying evil creatures who are as damaging as any humans can be seen how can you do this how can you just enter all went to his age he always has the same answer the less forgivable the fact less forgivable if the person has done the more we must find the means to forgive the last lot of older person is the more we must find the means to love and as East like an atheist the strikes me as one of the most irrational know the magnificent things we are capable of this species them or something cannot be the more we have to make sure it's going to finish up here and lots of ways that is the room where we can to wear a most uniquely human things go out of the danger of this are the human wisdom he says there are a new book good enough about what's going on in the world and you learn enough about that when you become wise about it and here is almost inevitable conclusion that you have to reach which is known of us can make things better because we are too small and they are too big and they are too powerful and it's not in a matter anyway and none of us can make things change and what we have to deal with this notion that the more clearly you refuse to believe in arguably is the case that you cannot make a difference the more that must be the motivation to make a difference that is a moral imperative so he and Emma Jane we too smelly stuff just like hamsters and we do strange things with our stress hormones but at the end of the day this will realm of being able to take abstractions and turn metaphors and do things his powerful was the most in this world of sensory effects and to do all of this in the context of moral imperatives we are an entirely different from other species disappointed and I guess there's time for questions the the the the the the the the the group Greg mentioned earlier were videotaping this for audiences homes like to have a show of hands and walk around with a microphone that way everybody here and almost able to hear your questions somebody to question the radio work you really want to shout out loud opened the freezer question for everyone else the world with those comments to fry or comments about what makes us unique what would you call that well our ability to constantly confused real with the metaphorical friends to seize our brains evolutionary challenge to come up with something as noble as moral abstractions have talked a bit into some sort of the brain that lizards use and the ability for us to flip back and forth and the ability to build entire worlds of good or bad accent that I know is that differ from the rows of philosophy or religion we all depend on your tastes that's not different in this latest door it's a completely different way of thinking about it it's obviously part of that when you have been known saying things like my simple credo is the last lovable someone is more a must find the means to love them that is the centerpiece of that style of thinking and show dirty can be framed theologically and are shown are lots of other cases it need not be one final question would be hard power that be cultivated the old fence I don't know professor know let's see I think for starters it suggests we should give to her killer meet oh four with the aggressive males are the the the the the the wounded included more questions it I am my sister has a chronic disease and she works in an office with the man with the doc her die and um so certain days she'll feel really awful she doesn't say anything she goes into sin city task in the dark know is that God comes up that I was there Sarah B day that will come up on those days she said it will set under her desk and sometimes put its head on or bullets we need Dempster it somehow feels that what is that it looks like him to be she's giving up something I don't understand but that isn't what the difference is when you say we saw the picture the dogs it seemed it looks alot like the same thing they are very carefully worded the conclusion there saying there's hardly any other species an alternate does that just in preparation for that one this every now and then amazing examples of our lawn and who was killed a gazelle one finds the PB and imprint on the new YouTube is full of those things and that only but they are extremely rare that's going on we are friends from the come to talks very simple reason that we spent twenty thousand years selectively breeding dogs to point the humans were dark into stuff that other apes cannot to take two days following the content that we humans all dogs can do that chimps cannot because we bring them to be fantastically attuned to our emotional states and that's fairly unimpressive and it was really cynical way of reasons for bringing that is part of that dogged him but he stopped me really upset as you are just popping up all the sphere pheromones but just know miserable with that dog and a daughter make you feel better before you stink up the whole world it's probably not quite that cynical it sees more question next question from them my impression is known to man the things you may lose uniquely human I used to the willingness to Nana for elimination process that of abstraction in the world to know what a sight interesting aspects of realities if you don't have the development of language to do that the room those desiring region that sort of thing than Gordon in great bringing the whole issue of language it is absolutely Centro and what a lot of debates about in terms of sorts a carpenter sophistication people as they grow up is built around is it possible to have certain states of mind before you have words for it development things of that sort and things like the norm those with American sign language when they start learning words that are fraught with moral content but I think we have a discussion Islam is calm seas to be the new vocabulary mostly about simple malice and herbs it's a different domain name what you'd call a political scientist philosopher Friedrich and shortly cough Rupert Berkeley has redeemed tons about the symbolic power of words that's a red light even the most successful of sign language chimp studies have not been anywhere near to a thin line which is incredibly important in that regard seeing that their openings with a humans vs animals and disastrously human alarm you not only are we capable of coming up with theologies ideologies not only are we capable in every Coulter coming off the strictures on behavior they are framed ethically or when your come up with the means to you personally invaded over and over and lots of ways you know the really scary individuals for this planet are not the ones he say everybody says access a cruel thing to do but I disagree what's really scary is the person who says everybody's as Texas a cruel thing and I agree here's why on a special case for a nap and what humans are magnificent that is setting up sets of rules and then deciding what you are justified in being freed from them so it is one of the more corrosive spin offs of sort of ignore systems of ethical behavior the notion that it doesn't count with me when I did it mean something different because it's a separate compartment take the next question from the ready I serious about your take on the role of entertainment in human beings and I mean passive entertainment like movies and so on it seems to be something that would feed into exactly what you're saying about the time and fifty the separated and defeat and interactions and curious if there are any forms PUC in an entertainment needs and different animals that might have different manifestations it great question a lot of uses for without the primates are trying to come up with environmental enrichment for them so that they are not quite as crazed in captivity is they wouldn't otherwise and a lot of people discover in their primate centers that various pundits like to watch movies like to watch films often like what they'd like to watch is like graphic special little like chimps killing defenseless person stuff it means for them I don't know but I feel pretty certain it's impossible for each image to get into a state where its beauty really upset about the anti smoker or it's really really upset about what twenty dollars to Georgia the act of war was a chore still any and of mice and men George Cole any ok it's been awhile but they are like other species are a success they are and remember a story from their childhood course the movie and burst into tears because of the empathy there feeling for this punch or pickles up there um it's very unique more questions no running it he just cried a lot of plasticity physiology is it possible that the words we use their experiences in associations with four week come from and was seen determines both form and function of the brain great absolutely capsule a good one and we could talk about child abuse child abuse it's not physical child abuse to securely verbal and a world which kids can grow troll much color his childhood to Roy PTSD all of that from an abusive environment that was entirely a verbally abusive environment had PTSD and uses very characteristic of changes in the brain so there we have the power of the word big time sometimes that hand is more destructive than the sword and today the metaphor went nowhere but yes I'm absolutely it was intact another little to stop the brain and you sing that the interior court and advancing to let yes and there like some things like narrow focus but that enticing in our brains being manipulated with this type of advertisement but what if the kid friendly future but this team over charts when all we had no shortage of people who understand always principles for a long long time and often made me very good with things as charismatic religious leaders and government leaders and all it's worth noting that simply has gotten better and better see science here's a word that should give all of the shooters um new word you'd use to be that people would be nursed my interests but now you can be new or columnist and steady human decision making economic to see you can be a new ruling worst you could be and are a philosopher you could be studying new rule market and there are people who study why the have seen people prefer Pepsi year because of certain types of advertising everybody believes they actually prefer Coke can filter one while it's good to not be granted to some cheese fear of being a clone these people and center usual the Pepsi drinkers and ballistic and this is like people are soon to be making with things up understanding how you get marketing things to work on people and it's marketed be anything new we've done it forever just to be more scientific more syllables him next question from the far left studies of the board and stealing or just relate that the students there's no way wish that some animals use that maybe we're just beginning to understand and dolphins elephants since it whatever the family would be so for making our judgments for analysis on the actions of the activities are we missing something or we have yet to learn more about the alignment about me a unique and something more that's going on great time what I would say at this point is what's known about since the release of all communication systems and other species ranging from elephants communicating to each other by the vibration from their footsteps to you electric wish the court other electric fish with electric songs things of that sort you like complexity or two things we do know that no other species to us we can communicate about absolutely abstract States we can talk about existentialism and chimps as far as we know don't we Canucks have the same over the top emotional expressions that all sorts of other species have the week and you are talking about events that occurred two thousand years ago or events occurring on the other side of the planet so we can have far more abstract language where we can use our most emotional cues or anger works in us just like every other species very abstract context that seems absolutely unique the other hand everybody in the field fifty years ago would've had all sorts of things listed are unique to us that no longer are so stay tuned it it it sometimes he sees a certain sort of like an expression of for lack of a better term collective consciousness sort of when we see recently to use Egypt and so on even prior to the first time that this current war on Iraq when prior to the pro war millions ten million people some people estimate around the world on the same day decided they were going to go out and do something so we see as operating even talking alot about how we operate these individuals for this or any sort of conception about why periodically we see people move forward in that way not just preparing for the next Super Bowl but it is a sort of not coming out of the blue we can look at this and why that kind of phenomena and happens it's not exactly unheard response well I'm not sure if one can talk to men that something like that actually occurs at about chest level with the chance occurrences of the just making a big impact in you it is proportionally over value with that sort of thing but I think in a broader sense what I chose is um if you don't understand how a really complex systems work complex systems like a sale or an individual or society one thing is absolutely clear is you can't understand it merely by breaking it down into its component parts and understanding if we lived in component part and just cool mall back together you are never going to understanding human by pink sequins on with their genes you're never going to understand like white cloud presently during the drought a study in under a microscope you can never figure out why a society where even a crowd of people rioting a soccer stadium do with it too but looking at the actions of only a single individual instead we have all these non linear and non emergent properties and that is very vibrant your research complexity her chance but what is she cautioned against Jews this extreme faith in the production is from in my world what that translates into over and over does don't be overly impressed with jeans have to do with the brain see any more questions next question comes from the back of the room in the center this is a little bit similar I was going to ask since there is some small portion of our genes that are unique from the other primates what do we know about what about her behavior up his cousin Claire unique teens ok great question one of these late great urban myths you're stuck and certain types of classes in college back when it is that we share like ninety eight point nine percent of our DNA with chimps and I was quite ridiculous soundbite things a lake yes on installing failed math when he was a kid and there's like alligators in the sewer system in Manhattan demands and the sheer ninety percent of our DNA with chimps as of the sequence the human genome now about a decade ago about five years ago the chimp genome was sequenced and it was possible to know finally since he's too small I along with doubts and see what was in common what turns out that we share like ninety point nine percent of dealing with chimps is absolutely true and was not based on ridiculous guesses in the nineteen eighties when that sound bite for skin that it was based on very solid science and some of his time in Berkeley then the sequence comes out and get some teachers that much overlap of course question then becomes what we are still differences more dollars the genetics of what distinguishes us from chimps two people were starting to us right off the bat about half of the differences in gene expression have to do with genes coding for olfactory receptors chips and a better sense of smell than we do so two teams they have for olfactory receptors we've been activated each worker called pseudo teams what that tells this is a gift like the white power half of the chimps sense of smell and genetically you're halfway there to meet him this is not very impressive ok so what other genes have been identified some having to do with like the slice of the whole thing March the wall copyrighted they don't do this often some of the Turks have to do with Audi here or there covered with fur and it was Lee some humans have liked to pick up this week here on their shoulders are all settling and bruises genetics the assumption that it's about union recognition you know the keel over with it certain diseases that chimps don't we can survive like tuberculosis for years chimps don't they can handle see me and AIDS in ways that we kept the human version source difference is immune function some aspects of reproductive isolation see you're likely to get in human hybrids all that accounts for almost all the genetic differences where are the teams that are relevant to the brain turns out there's hardly any of the few that have been identified make perfect sense because these are not genes that make it possible for us to have metaphor or jeans that because going back to that first line with that same year of the system basically the champs do this only one difference which is we've got like three times as many interrupts him with a genetic differences are our teens have to do with the number of rounds of sales division during fetal brain development essentially what it says is take the chimp forty feet away and let it go to or three more rounds of division in the human brain instead and how calm symphonies ideology and hopscotch and everything else there what that tells you is when enough quantity human equality it's the sheer numbers and added that emerges from this and on linear non productive way all the stuff makes us human whose teams are about is producing the grain human brain of a certain sort of level of quality spinners nothing to do with what particular qualities there are sweet time for one more question the UK or maybe or rapid up there please join me and saying thank you to the the the the the