Robert Sapolsky is Determined to be Wrong

Robert Sapolsky’s, Behave, published in 2017, provides evidence that when it comes to moral and social matters, the dorso lateral prefrontal cortex, the “decider” part of the brain, must be combined with the ventro medial prefrontal cortex which reaches down into the limbic system. Without the contributions of the vmPFC, people turn into coldblooded consequentialists willing to sacrifice anyone if the outcome seems desirable, including all of their blood relatives. Transcranial magnetic stimulation can be used to turn brain areas on and off to prove this. He notes that even Stalin was disgusted at some teenager in 1932 who denounced his father for supposed black marketeering, leading to the father’s quick arrest and execution. The teen’s relatives swiftly killed him for his disloyalty. When Stalin was told, he had the same attitude as the relatives, commenting, “What a little pig, to have done such a thing to his own family.”

Science fiction writer, Cordwainer Smith, convincingly depicted the fatal role of overly rational, emotionlessness in moral decision making in Do Scanners Live In Vain? without needing evidence from brain scans. Sapolsky himself agrees with this point, complaining that many senators only took PTSD seriously when brain scans revealed measurable changes to the brains of PTSD sufferers. Until then, apparently many expressed the same skepticism often directed at WWI’s “shell shock” sufferers who were frequently considered malingerers and fakers. One suspects that their lack of manly fortitude also played into this. We do not need neuroscience to restate what we can see with our own eyes. The sometimes worshipful attitude to science can have us oohing and aahing when it simply recapitulates something known and commented on for thousands of years, such as, “love is blind.”

Sapolsky notes that certain other creatures, notably, the highly social, also display the ability to recognize certain moral truths – though he does not call them that. Morality does not apply on a desert island, there being no one around to be either moral or immoral towards. Solitary predators, for instance, have no use for morality. But, social rats will not eat if they can see that eating means another rat will get electric shocks. Communal chimps will share their food with another chimp or groom him, if the other chimp has shared his food with him or groomed him that morning. Capuchin monkeys will get mad if they receive a piece of cucumber while another monkey gets a grape for doing the same “work.” But, in some kind of solidarity, frequently the grape recipient will refuse it if he sees the other guy is getting only cucumber. Dogs do not care if they get bread or a sausage for doing the same work (shaking hands/paws). They will get mad if the reward stops, however. The monkey will never forgive the failure of payment, refusing ever to work again, while apparently all dogs can eventually be won over to resume the paw shaking.

This extension of moral intuition down into the animal kingdom can be interpreted in two ways. For Sapolsky, it means morality has no divine or transcendent quality, with sermons on the topic being meaningless. This expresses contempt for animal moral perception. The opposite attitude would be that God’s grace extends down to our animal cousins, providing some of them with a limited but genuine moral insight. Rather than seeing human abilities marvelously displayed by God’s other creatures in a restricted manner, Sapolsky takes it as evidence that it is we who resemble the dumb animals.

So much for the relatively good news. In episode 693 of the podcast Modern Wisdom, Sapolsky, brought up an Orthodox Jew, reveals that at the age of fourteen he realized categorically that determinism is true, there is no purpose, and that there is no God. This bleak conclusion has never left him. This is the kind of age where one might consider the possibility that one’s parents and other people are actually robots and that solipsistically, one could be the only conscious actual human; whether other people are really seeing the same colors as you, and so on. Such puerile speculations normally recede into oblivion. Not for Sapolsky.

Sapolsky has just spent five years writing Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. In his discussion of the book with Chris Williamson, host of Modern Wisdom, it turns out that he intends his thesis not to be merely a metaphysical treatise, but as something for all human beings to embrace in the name of ethics. What are the ethical points he wishes to spread? To be incredibly charitable, something similar to the Biblical injunctions: “Judge not lest ye be judged.” “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3-5) And, “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”” (Matthew 18: 21-22) So far so good, but, his justification for this is unique to him.

Sapolsky, having had the thought, “There, but for the grace of God, go I,” instead of forgiving a fellow creature of God, made in the image of God, like you, we are to forgive our fellow man because he is a “broken machine.” I have written about this manner of thinking before by fellow determinist, Sam Harris, and also the comedian Whitney Cummings. Both have talked about using dehumanizing mental tricks in order to forgive people and avoiding losing one’s temper. They recommend thinking something along the lines of, “This biological robot is malfunctioning. His amygdala has got the better of him. Getting angry is pointless.”

Sapolsky acknowledges that thinking of people as biological machines is “terribly demoralizing.” Yes, it is. It is a terrible idea with probable counterproductive consequences. “I married a biological machine.” “My children are biological machines.” “The greatest writer who ever lived turned out to be a biological machine.” “I used to love my wife and children until I realized they were just biological machines.” And, of course, “I am merely a biological machine.” This kind of thinking exhibits that sense of unreality schizophrenics tend to have about themselves and other people. As you think of someone, so shall you see and treat him. This idea is simply a restatement of his fourteen-year-old self’s supposed discovery of determinism, Godlessness and purposelessness.

Sapolsky says that it is demoralizing because it would mean no agency; a “me” in control of a sense of well-being, and health. He is right. That would indeed be the end of any possibility of having a worthwhile life. Demoralizing, indeed. There can be no actions without agency. There are simply events. One becomes indistinguishable from them. One cannot actually do anything. Life is over. It is interesting that he recognizes one of the worst consequences of determinism, the end of persons and “me’s” because many do not. Instead of thus rejecting determinism he just embraces its implications – something one can always do with reductio ad absurdum arguments, which present the repulsive and absurd consequences of adopting a certain position; a position which one is free to reject.

He claims that his students immediately leap to the conclusion that all hell would break loose if determinism is accepted to be true, because determinism means, no me, no agency and thus the end of moral responsibility. Thus, all would be permitted. It is very strange that the students immediately go in that direction. It is one thing to note that determinism would make it impossible to hold other people morally responsible for their actions, and it is another to imagine absolute pandemonium breaking out upon being exposed to the idea, with oneself as a participant. He is suggesting that it is a hop, skip and a jump from determinism, and thus to no agency, to, “Let’s go on a rampage!” Is Sapolsky currently restraining himself from just going crazy? After all, he is a determinist. Are his students? They seem easily provoked. No student of mine has suggested he might go on a crime spree after merely contemplating determinism.

The whole scenario is preposterous and should never occur to a serious thinker. If determinism were to be true, we must do what, according to Sapolsky, biology and the environment make us do. We cannot decide whether or not to tell students the truth about determinism. There are no “decisions” in determinism; any appearance of one is just an illusion. He has also already stated that there are no “me’s.” Thus, there are no “we’s” either. There only events, not agents. If the debate is meaningful: if the conundrum is worth contemplating; then determinism is false, and we have nothing truthful to reveal to these easy to spook students. We cannot step outside determinism and choose what we should do; there being no shoulds in determinism. But, it seems all determinists wish to do precisely that. Contemplating the truth of determinism and making up our minds based on reason and logic, and not merely biology and the environment, means that the conclusion is staring us in the face. Determinism is a lie. It is a denial of mind.

If pandemonium is to occur, we can neither cause it nor prevent it from any decision to say or not say anything. “We” cannot cause anything, if “we” do not exist. And, the whole point of determinism, is that decisions are not made by us and we do not cause anything. So, let us forgo the charade of debating the pros and cons of a decision. Or, if determinism has determined that we are to have this debate, let us not take the debate and its results seriously. And if we are determined to take it seriously, let us hang our heads in shame at what wretched machines we are. Events simply occur as biology and the environment see fit. The results of a debate might be true or false, but it is not truth or falsity determining anything, according to determinism. If truth and its obverse are in fact determining rhetorical outcomes, not determinism, then determinism is false.

Sapolsky knows that believing in determinism has immediately negative consequences. He mentions that if we unconsciously prime people not to believe in free will, they are more likely to cheat at a game. However, Sapolsky claims, those who do not believe in free will or God long enough, are just as ethical as those who do. Sapolsky later admits he is completely unable to adhere to the determinist doctrine in practice. All other long-term determinists do the same thing. All determinists admit that they are unable to actually live as though there is no free will, and that would make their merely lip service adherence to determinism a nonfactor in their ethical behavior. They live as though free will exists, purpose exists, and since God is necessary for free will to exist, as though God exists. No wonder they are just as moral as the rest of us! The only point of philosophizing is to live what one preaches. The hypocrite philosopher is a waste of time.

When it comes to murderers, we should not think harsh thoughts about them, says Sapolsky. They are not depraved, deserving of being locked up. They do not have a “crappy soul.” They are a “broken machine” which we should “quarantine.” But, calling someone “a broken machine” is undoubtedly also harsh. Holding someone responsible for his actions is not nearly as demeaning. One can imagine a murderer wanting to take credit for his viciousness, “You better watch out for me, I’m a stone-cold killer,” and Sapolsky answering, “No. I would compare you more to a bacterial infestation in a poorly maintained humidifier.” Much more humane, don’t you think?

The thing is, once we think of people as broken machines, then we are free to treat them as such. We scrap broken machines. We decommission them. And, if we feel like it and it makes economic sense, we recycle them for parts (apparently, the Chinese government, adopting roughly this point of view, likes to do that, I believe without bothering to administer anesthetic, or so it has been reported.)

One of Sapolsky’s big concerns is the current liberal obsession with “privilege” and feeling “entitled.” In order to combat this, a belief in determinism must supplant devotion to meritocracy, he says. Chris Williamson points out, thanks to Alain de Botton, that Ancient Greeks called beggars “unfortunates,” rather than losers. Fortunates and unfortunates are the recipients of Lady Fortuna, as Boethius deemed her, neither being able to take credit nor to be subject to discredit. Meritocracy, for a determinist, is thus irrational and should be junked. A neurosurgeon is smart and has worked hard. But, if he takes any pride in that, and thinks he should be rewarded, he is wrong. Instead, he should take pleasure in gratitude. He is one of the lucky ones. (Unlike the current DEI idea, Sapolsky is decent enough to acknowledge that the incompetent should be prevented from hurting people and should not be allowed to become surgeons.)

Williamson notes in the interview that surely incentives must enter the picture, i.e., some acknowledgement of the basic facts of human nature. Who will bother training to be a surgeon, specializing after having completed one’s MD; representing years of extra time and effort and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt? And his reward is to thank his lucky stars for being so blessed and fortunate? What is he supposed to be so grateful for, once money and prestige are removed from the equation? Merely the ability to be useful? Most doctors do not fancy the idea of being a surgeon, especially women. One’s patients are unconscious, they have to do rather gruesome things to them with a sharp knife, and the consequences for making a mistake can be horrendous, crippling or killing the patient. The hours are awful, surgery often being required at all times of day and night. One brain surgeon said that constantly dealing with matters of life and death makes every other thing in his life, including anything to do with his wife or children, seem absolutely trivial and frivolous. He was not happy about it and said that it made it hell to live with him.

Under communism, there will always be a few idealists earning a pittance and willing to adhere to “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” but most people are not such heroes. We know that farmers working on collective farms are much less motivated and productive when they know that any extra work they undertake will not benefit them or their families but only “the common good.” It turns out that it is more in keeping with “the common good” to privatize and allow farmers to make a profit, benefiting directly from any extra effort. There ends up being more food for everyone at a lower cost, thanks to the laws of supply and demand.

In another podcast, Econtalk, “Robert Sapolsky on Determinism, Free Will, and Responsibility 10/23/23,” Sapolsky admits that incentives for surgeons must be given (he did not on Modern Wisdom), but not because they deserve them. The concept of an incentive for a determinist does not make sense. It implies that one has a choice about how to behave, and that incentives will alter the behavior in the desired direction. For a determinist, one has no choice about whether to offer an incentive or not, choice being an illusion, and for the recipient of the “incentive,” what he was going to do has been determined since the Big Bang, so the concept of an “incentive” makes no sense in that metaphysical context and must be abandoned. Rocks falling in an avalanche do not have “incentives.” They just fall where the forces of nature determine.

Sapolsky acknowledges that “we are motivated by the desire to obtain power, prestige and respect.” That is true. And so it will always be. Those men who are not will exit the gene pool. Women are hypergamous and they opt for the winners in life who make the best providers and protectors. They do this partly because heavily pregnant women are vulnerable, relatively immobile and, once the children are born, they do better if protected with access to supplies, useful social contacts, etc. High social status goes along with access to plentiful resources. Men know that if they want to be attractive to women, they must have a good job and be high in the social hierarchy. Those men not motivated by power, prestige and respect are not sexually selected. Their stock has reached the end of the line. This has been true of men since humanity has existed. Even lobsters, existing for the last 600 million years, follow these rules. The winners of pincer battles get to pass on their genes by being sexually selected by the female lobsters who sit back and watch the competition. The losers do not. Their body language is deflationary and their serotonin levels drop in discouragement, just like people. And, the rest of us have benefited from many high achieving people, like neurosurgeons, pursuing those goals. For things to work out reasonably well, there just needs to be socially productive means of achieving status, rather than clawing one’s way up the mafia hierarchy, for instance. But, Sapolsky’s determinism would remove those things and replace them with mere “luck” for which one should be grateful. It is an odd thing that so much hard work and self-discipline is the price for such “luck.” But, since those things are determined too, then c’est la vie.

We seem to be seeing the consequences of many men giving up a desire for power, prestige, and respect: to be winners in sexual selection. Porn and video games offer the false sensation of being successful and popular with the fairer sex – though the harem is but two-dimensional. And then there are higher earning women in no need of a provider and with minds poisoned by rampant misandry; thoughts of toxic masculinity, and all that.

But, it is not the successful Sapolsky cares about. He derides fellow determinist Daniel Dennett for being concerned about losing any credit for his “prizes,” regarding the concern silly. Instead, Sapolsky expresses his concern that the poor and downtrodden might feel badly about themselves. Determinism can take care of that, he suggests. The downside is that no one can feel good about themselves either. But, since failures outnumber successes, certainly on a worldwide scale, the sacrifice is worth it, Sapolsky thinks in a utilitarian manner. He himself has obtained power, prestige and respect, as a professor at Stanford, about which he is suitably conflicted, he says. In his utopia, no one is responsible for anything. Somehow, if the poor can be persuaded to think of themselves as merely unlucky, they will feel much better about themselves, though no remedy is provided for their situation. As one is drowning and freezing, clinging to a life preserver after the Titanic has gone down, a voice calls out, “Don’t worry. Don’t take it personally. You’re just unlucky.” It would be a little ray of much needed sunshine and spur a little smile, assuming one’s facial muscles were still functioning. This line of thought indicates that Sapolsky is a truly dreadful psychologist and has little idea how human beings actually function. “I am at the bottom of the social hierarchy, my amygdala firing off unpleasant signals, met with contempt by my neighbors. But, now that Robert Sapolsky, egghead and high social status Stanford professor, has informed me that I am unlucky, I can hold my head up high and feel truly good about myself. How lucky I am to have someone as thoughtful and caring as he to bring me up to his towering level, by reducing all to chance, and not merit. If that is the case, is there some way I can be the Stanford professor and he the crack addict living under a bridge?”

Resentment is a corrosive toxin for the soul. People are liable to resent those more successful than themselves, for whatever reason. If we come to believe that success is mere luck, and nothing but luck, then the unsuccessful have especially strong grounds for feeling resentful. There is a current political movement to deem those higher on the social hierarchy as “oppressors” who have attained their status due to their “privilege,” as though the whole thing is some plot against the poor. Even being fortunate enough to inherit a strong work ethic is thus regarded as a privilege. Privilege has definite overtones of undeserved success and also of complete passivity. All the privileged need to do is to sit back and wait for the good things of life to come to them. They are recipients, not actors. The people who use this word intend such negative connotations. Deeming all fruitful effort that results in high status as a sign of an unwarranted privilege is counterproductive. We want people to succeed. The most successful are often the most productive and the rest of us ultimately share in that productivity. Talk of privilege associates shame with achieving anything. Sapolsky’s deterministic universe supports this by calling any achievement, no matter how hard to garner, a matter of mere chance. If he succeeds in getting the poor to feel better about themselves for being unlucky, he will give them reason to hate and resent those in a better social position than them. Won’t the net effect, psychologically, be a wash? Hatred and resentment are painful emotions, and what an awful lot of that there will be to go around, as though there isn’t enough already.

This way of thinking, reframing oneself as merely unlucky for failure, strongly resembles the “self-esteem” movement of the 1990s which has now been widely recognized as misguided. In fact, Sapolsky’s agenda is a sub-species of this movement. It was claimed that adolescent girls, in particular, tended to have low self-esteem. Specially paid speakers were sent round high schools trying to instill self-esteem from thin air. In fact, millions of dollars was spent on this goal. There was a particularly awful misandrist aspect to it, because boys’ academic achievement was on a steep decline, their performance still being abysmal, while the girls’ was not, but no concern was shown for the boys. Many intelligent people have pointed out that self-esteem can best be improved by achieving something worthwhile: i.e., learning a language, competing and doing well in a science competition, getting really fit, helping the elderly. High self-esteem which is not based on anything meritorious merely makes one narcissistic and unbearable. Words and self-conception should be tied to reality.

It has also been widely reported that this way of thinking, that we have been merely unlucky concerning our failures is the norm. We tend to chalk personal failures up to misfortune, and our successes to our own hard work and merits, while we, in small-minded, and uncharitable fashion, do the reverse for others. Their achievements are due to luck, we imagine. And their failures because they truly deserved to fail! What lovely creatures we are! If this is the case, then there is no need for others to tell us that we are not responsible for our failures. The downside of this self-protective, ego preserving gambit is it seems less likely we will learn from our failures. Attributing failure to luck means being helpless to avoid it in the future.

Christianity has sometimes been criticized on the ground that it is a sop to the underprivileged and poor, telling them that though their life on earth is hard, they will be rewarded for being a good person in heaven. Sapolsky’s version of this is that we must just tell the poor that they are unlucky. The idea that this will make them feel significantly better about their lives seems excruciatingly unlikely. His message is indistinguishable from despair. Crucially, there is absolutely nothing that they can do about it, since agency is an illusion on his view. At no point does Sapolsky say anything like, “If you wish to be rich and successful, try to emulate the rich and successful.” Scott Adams read every book he could get his hands on as a young teenager to figure out the secret to riches and fame. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thing were two of them. And, Adams also recommends trying to spend as much time as possible among the rich and successful. Big urban centers and the like present better opportunities for “luck” than rural backwaters. Serving as a bartender in parts of Brooklyn or Manhattan can offer the opportunity to meet computer programming contacts, and gigs as a sound designer amid one’s fellow bartenders, filling in time between jobs. Make oneself useful. Mowing an elderly neighbor’s lawn for nothing might lead to a job offer from someone who notices, and any karmic element would not hurt!

Having admitted that “we are motivated by the desire to obtain power, prestige and respect,” as he has presumably been, concerning the view he is advocating he admits, “I sure can’t think this way most of the time.” He says that he can believe in determinism “less than 1% of the time; that he is a total hypocrite who cannot act on it emotionally.” If he cannot do it, after spending five years writing a book on the topic and deciding that his current mission in life is to proselytize determinism, it seems likely that no significant percentage of the population ever will.

To actually believe something, mere intellectual assent is not enough. One’s heart must concur. One must feel it to be true, too. Without the cooperation of one’s emotions, one will not act on this supposed belief. One can know that flying is safe mentally, but if your emotions violently disagree strongly enough, you will not be getting on an airplane. By this criterion, Sapolsky does not believe in determinism.

Sapolsky’s suggestion is that though truly believing in determinism is impossible, one should just “think that way every now and then.” When one is about to get annoyed with someone, remind yourself that he is a broken machine.

Chris Williamson shared a clip of an interview of his with determinist Sam Harris with a colleague at work. The result was that the colleague sank into a deep depression and did not get out of bed for two weeks. In his misery, he used up an entire year’s worth of sick leave that he could never recover. Williamson and Sapolsky regard this as hilariously funny. Ruining a single evening of someone’s life for no good reason is bad enough, let alone weeks on end. One suspects that the two of them laugh about it because they know that the topic is puerile and asinine. Determinism ought to be one of those passing 14-year-old fancies, not something taken seriously by grown-ups. Actually having it send one to one’s bed for weeks is thus rather silly. If Sapolsky does not believe it over 99% of the time, why should we believe it at all?

Sapolsky’s final comment is that we should engage in random acts of forgiveness. Sapolsky’s ability to contradict himself and to forgo any semblance of logic seems to know no bounds. If determinism is true, there is no moral responsibility. He has already stated this. Thus, there is nothing to forgive. Also, we cannot choose to “engage in random acts” of any kind if determinism is true

It is impossible to believe that coming to regard one’s fellow man as a broken biological machine; dehumanizing him to that extent, just so you can muster up the gumption to forgive him, is a good idea. Contempt for yourself as one lacking any agency or being able to take credit for anything at all, as one of those fellow machines, will not spread love, joy and forgiveness in the world. Love your neighbor as yourself. If you are unlovable, so much the worse for one’s neighbor. If you have given up on life. If you have decided that life is purposeless, there is no God, and we are deterministic machines, have the decency not make it your mission to spread this miserable and unprovable belief. We are fallen creatures living in a fallen world, and life is hard enough with faith and hope, let alone with this kind of nihilism.

And then, there is the little matter of determinism not being something that can be logically, and rationally argued for. We need agency to assess arguments, not physical causation. Here Sapolsky and Williamson ask what they should do, and what they should tell people. There are no “shoulds” in determinism. Determinism is fatalistic. We have no control of our destiny. We cannot decide how prisons should or should not be run, and for what reasons. Determinism is a denial of thinking, not a coherent thought itself. Without agency, and thus action, we are indistinguishable from any other series of events and forces elsewhere in the universe. After much obfuscation and pointless discussion, a recent rhetorical adversary just admitted as much and said, “What’s wrong with that?” If we do not exist, do not give us advice about how to live and how to think. It is one empty shell lecturing another.

The person who recommended Behave to me said, “[Name withheld] and I like to approach things scientifically” [in contrast to you.] I said, “I like to consider some of the contributions of science to the nature of human existence, but I also think art, music, film, philosophy, poetry, and literature should inform one’s views, as should personal experience and religious insight.” So much powerful and insightful thinking about the human condition has occurred within a religious viewpoint over a millennia that to ignore it all, even were one to be an atheist, really is a waste. You owe it to yourself to examine it. Famous atheists like Scott Adams, John Gray, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb all recognize the value of belief, while not achieving it themselves. Adams notes that he is just dispositionally incapable of it. Since there is evidence for a genetic basis for belief or unbelief, he might well be right. This has not stopped him from embracing “the universe is a simulation” hypothesis, complete with creators and the created, so there is some remnants of genuine religious feeling in there.

The recommender describes Sapolsky as “a true scientist.” For him, that phrase denotes the highest possible praise. Instead, when it comes to topics germane to the human condition, it describes the narrow specialist with a single viewpoint. Better to have a “thinker,” or “philosopher” in the broadest sense. Science has nothing to say about value and purpose, meaning and morality. It cannot deal with free will because it has no category called “freedom” within it. And it can only speak about the measurable. The Good and the Beautiful cannot be measured, and only a small aspect of the Truth. The person goes on say that Sapolsky is a gentleman and is not arrogant, while himself being one of the most conceited and arrogant individuals I have ever encountered. Many leftists have no tolerance for the existence of conservatives, while we conservatives have no choice but to tolerate them in the academy. I too have my own arrogance, with a claimed appropriate disposition for considering human affairs, which seems to create an agon with him within myself which is either initiated or reciprocated by him.

It is interesting that one man’s paltry contribution is another man’s deep insight. To him, Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary was interesting, but forgettable. Whereas, for me, it put its finger on something I had intuited for decades and even provided a vocabulary for discussing it, namely, what pathology are analytic philosophers and all those who resemble them suffering from? Presumably, it has to do with one’s felt conception of what it is to be a human being and what kind of reality one is living in, and thus which questions seem interesting and productive to you. Behave, for me, merely replicates in scientific terms a few old insights, and gives additional details about experiments, which were quite useful, about which I was well familiar. Somewhat interesting, but definitely omittable. The few novel items are of no special interest. I first became aware of such disparate attitudes when a philosopher I liked was described in an Amazon review as giving the reviewer the feeling that each minute reading him felt like it was giving him brain damage; making him dumber. That was exactly how I felt about studying analytic philosophy. It took me further away from the kind of insights I was hoping to have.

Behave has some pretty interesting science in it, but when Sapolsky ventures out of the realm of the scientific in his Modern Wisdom interview, he has no wisdom to dispense. His comments about how the successful and the unsuccessful should regard their lives shows an awareness of human motivation, power, money, prestige, and a rejection of it simultaneously. His comments about not paying surgeons more nor awarding them honors have economic consequences which he ignores. He has this tiny idea about offering succor to the dispossessed and it would not work. In the process of not working, it would demean and nullify the significance of being a human being, encouraging us to consider our fellow man a biological machine either functioning well or broken. He wishes to kill a gnat with a Pacific Ocean of DDT, poisoning our perceptions of ourselves and others, nullifying agency and thus ourselves as distinct beings from our environments. This is what one gets with an education too narrow, an epistemology too restricted, and a soul too small – blackened by the dumb thoughts of a 14-year-old who never recovered his equilibrium.

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