{"id":431,"date":"2019-10-01T07:29:17","date_gmt":"2019-10-01T12:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liminalearth.net\/?p=431"},"modified":"2019-10-01T07:29:17","modified_gmt":"2019-10-01T12:29:17","slug":"book-challenge-day-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liminalearth.net\/?p=431","title":{"rendered":"Book Challenge: Day 5"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst<\/a><\/em>,<\/a> by Robert Sapolsky<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robert Sapolsky is a primatologist and neurobiologist who\nhas spent his career studying how biology, the brain, the environment, and\ngenes interact to produce animal (and human) behavior. In this engrossing book,\nhe explains some of what he\u2019s learned, in terms a non-expert can understand. (I\nnoticed that Sapolsky was featured in the recent Netflix\/Vox documentary series\non the mind, and I also heard him on Ezra Klein\u2019s podcast a while back. I\nrecommend both of these also!) Behave<\/em> is an absolutely fascinating book\nthat will challenge your ideas about human behavior, and everything that flows\nfrom that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast to McGilchrist, whose book The Master and His Emissary<\/em> I highlighted a couple days ago, Sapolsky says that the divided brain has little effect on behavior. When I first read this, I wondered how this contradiction might be reconciled, since both scientists seem to know what they\u2019re talking about. I think it would be fascinating to get the two of them in a room together for a conversation. At the moment, the best I can do is to consider that their books address different (although related) questions: Sapolsky is most interested in the biochemistry of brains and behavior, while McGilchrist is interested in how brains process information and how that influences culture. Both books by themselves are intriguing and challenging; taken together, they have pushed me to think deeply about all kinds of questions and issues in what I think are creative ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s one small nugget from Behave:<\/em> Sapolsky spends a chapter or two discussing the relationship between genes and environment and their relative contribution to behavior (the nature vs. nurture debate). The traditional way to talk about this is to assign some percentage to each which adds to 100%, like saying that human potential or behavior or whatever is 60% determined by genes and 40% by environment. Or whatever. Sapolsky makes the crucial point that genes express themselves differently in different environments, meaning that it\u2019s the interaction between the two that produces behavior, not one acting independently of the other. So it might be more accurate to say that behavior is 80% nature *and* 80% nurture. Wow! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, by Robert Sapolsky Robert Sapolsky is a primatologist and neurobiologist who has spent his career studying how biology, the brain, the environment, and genes interact to produce animal (and human) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-been-readin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liminalearth.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liminalearth.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liminalearth.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liminalearth.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liminalearth.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liminalearth.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":432,"href":"https:\/\/www.liminalearth.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions\/432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liminalearth.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liminalearth.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liminalearth.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}