YouSaid · the spoken record

Robert Sapolsky

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57
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2024-02-12
most recent
2024-02-12
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1
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  1. “Yes, yes. I spent the first 10 years annual seasons or so alone out there. And then I met my wife and thank God she liked baboons as well and she was somewhat of an animal behaviorist, a mixture of that and a clinical psychologist. So she came out for eight seasons and wound up doing her doctor on the female baboons. And then as kids were sort of coming along the way, eventually it got to a point where we had one season where the whole family went out there about 12 years ago, which was total heaven and absolutely amazing and unfortunately sort of it became untenable soon after that to continue the work. So that was our one and only family season out there.”

    2024-02-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 59. Robert Sapolsky: The psychology behind Donald Trump, the science of stress, and the illusion of ‘free will’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Well, not uncomfortable in the slightest. I actually made it to 32 annual seasons before sort of the game park political roof caved in there. But I was about eight when I decided I wanted to be a field primatologist. So this is what I was aiming for forever. It was only in college that I got waylaid a bit with deciding that the brain was interesting as well and started oscillating between the two. What you do You live in a tent, you haul water from about 20 miles away, you run stuff on batteries, the cheap battery is used to run the centrifuge, things of that sort. So it's pretty low text stuff.”

    2024-02-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 59. Robert Sapolsky: The psychology behind Donald Trump, the science of stress, and the illusion of ‘free will’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “They know who I am, and there's interesting ways to see what sort of cues they're picking up on. I'm not a fly in the wall. They know I'm there. And sort of with behavioral observation days, yeah, you're hanging out with them eight, ten, 12 hours or so and just sort of picking up the gossip in a hopefully sort of objective scientific way. I'm not a fly on the wall, but I'm not a baboon. something kind of familiar, but clearly not quite the same as them. But every now and then there'll be some sort of communication between one of the baboons and me, which just indicates they know I'm somehow related, but I'm not quite at the top of their list of baboons who come to mind for them.”

    2024-02-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 59. Robert Sapolsky: The psychology behind Donald Trump, the science of stress, and the illusion of ‘free will’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Absolutely. And like a poster child for the pathologies of when dominance sort of goes wrong. Yeah, he's a disaster and there's much about baboon social behavior that seems way too nuanced and sophisticated to compare to him.”

    2024-02-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 59. Robert Sapolsky: The psychology behind Donald Trump, the science of stress, and the illusion of ‘free will’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Caning high rank in male baboon society is all about muscles and aggression and canines and fighting skill and all of that dawn on the savannah type stuff. Once you attain high rank, maintaining it is all about social intelligence and psychological intimidation and manipulation and which provocations you ignore and which challenges you walk away from. And it's absolutely a realm where if you're an alpha male and you're having fights, you're on your way out. If you're a competent alpha male, it's been a year and a half where all you've had to do is look at somebody the wrong way and they cower in terror. That's all you've needed. It's pure social bluff by that point.”

    2024-02-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 59. Robert Sapolsky: The psychology behind Donald Trump, the science of stress, and the illusion of ‘free will’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Well, it's taken some, you know, I started with them when I was about 20 and was way too over impressed with the notion of dominance rank. And it merely took me about a quarter century to realize it was much more interesting to pay attention to sort of social affiliation patterns with these guys and such. But one of the things you see is, okay, male baboons, just reasons why I've studied males rather than females having to do with monitoring their physiology, male baboons, their social ranks change over time. You go away for a year and come back next summer and like the squirrely little kid from last year is now beginning to make waves in the hierarchy and last year's alpha now got his shoulder dislocated in a fight and sort of limping around. It's a very dynamic ranking system. And what you realize is a”

    2024-02-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 59. Robert Sapolsky: The psychology behind Donald Trump, the science of stress, and the illusion of ‘free will’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I think actually a fair amount, predictably. Baboons, first as an introduction, this is grassland, Serengeti East, Africa, big open plains, baboons living in these troops of 50 to 100 animals or so, hierarchical, highly aggressive males dominating females, all of that, the sort of textbook sort of nasty primordial primate society. And you look at them as sort of a defining quality of life for any baboon there is, what's your rank? What's your social rank in the hierarchy? And that has an enormous impact on your quality of life. And I think it doesn't take a whole lot to translate that into sort of political parallels. At least I sure see them.”

    2024-02-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 59. Robert Sapolsky: The psychology behind Donald Trump, the science of stress, and the illusion of ‘free will’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source