robert-sapolsky

Need to think more about what this video says.
On the surface, it validates a lot of my suspicions around genes being incredibly susceptible to environmental forces, and childhood experiences informing adult behavior by modifying our brain, neurology and hormonal makeup.
- These became super apparent to me personally as an immigrant, moving from one culture that I was primally adapted to (if not intellectually) to one that was very viscerally unfamiliar despite being exposed to the superficial aspects of it all my life. I wonder how much this has to do with my own thought patterns and issues I struggle with
How true are the claims in this video?

Humans - conflicting history with acts of aggression
Amygdala regulates aggression? Amygdala regulates fear
- You can’t make sense of neurobiology of aggression without considering the neurobiology of fear
- Amygdala gets rapid and privileged sensory information that’s often innacurate due to speed
Insula Cortex
- Regulates disgust - handles ingestion of toxic food
  - Also regulates imaginatio of these things
- BUt it also regulates moral disgust - “stomach lurching” at moral transgression
- Obviously, this is intensely context dependent
- Insula is central to human tendency to consider what is different, to be wrong, and tell amygdala about it

Dopamine is about reward, but even more so about the anticipation of reward
- Gets heavily activated when uncertainy/intermittency is introduced in the system of rewards
- Few things activate the dopamine system than the prospect of righteous punishment

Testosterone
- How does it work alongside aggression
- Doesn’t invent new patterns of aggression
- It amplifies existing patterns and lowers the threshold for triggers
- John Wingfield - challenge hypothesis
- Testosterone - when you’re challenged, it makes you do whatever you need to in order to hold on to status
  - Sometimes status is gained by altruism - explains other status-regulating behavior
Oxytocin
- Promotes mother-infant bonding, pair-bonds in monogamous relationships
- Trust, expressibility - promotes prosocial behavior?
- Actually no. It makes us prosocial to people who count as ‘us’
  - Makes us pre-emptively xenophonic

Epigenetics - childhood experiences can turn certain genes on or off, leaving an imprint on your DNA

Geography vs culture
- Desert dwellers more likely to create monotheistic religions
- Favor warfare
- Rainforest dwellers more likely to create polytheistic religions
- More egalitarian

Individual selection - optimize for your own reproductive success (genghis khan?)
Kin selection - invest in the success of those close to us/related to us
Reciprocal Altruism - Optimize for cooperation with other people