Behave (book)

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🔼Topic:: Biology (MOC) 🔼Topic:: Human Nature (MOC)

✒️ Note-Making

💡Clarify

🔈 Summary of main ideas there is no single thing that explains behavior, it is a combination of biology, culture and context. it is more accurate to say that in most cases, biology increases our sensitivity to outside stimuli rather than actually making us behave a certain way.

1. Instant responses - some of our decisions are highly impacted by automatic systems that are beyond our conscious control. The amygdala specifically is highly tuned to stimulus to create fight-flight responses that take control of our reaction to avoid danger, or alternatively to dopamine hits (aka pleasure)
2. Habitual responses - The next layer where we have some yet not obvious control over is our hormones, which increase our likelihood of acting in certain ways. For example testosterone increases the desire for social status and confidence, while oxytocin increases care and closeness to others.
3. Programmable responses - While our brain determines our response, we can also affect the structure of our brain. Neurons that wire together, fire together. Based on our habits, thoughts and actions, our brain "learns" to connect between stimulus and appropriate response, which means we can program our behavior in the long run.
4. Childhood matters - at the first years of our lives, up until mid twenties, we develop our behavior based on what we see around us, especially we learn from our parents. Good parenting could lead to empathic, holistic growth, while negative parenting can perpetuate abusive behavior and mental issues.
5. Culture matters - The norms, perspectives and values we grow up and live in have a huge effect on our behavior.

🗒️Relate

⛓ Life lessons, action items Biology is not as rigid as I thought, we are capable of change in a much higher rate.

🔍Critique

✅ by following this method, what will happen?

❌ the logical jumps, holes or simply cases where it is wrong... the book is full of examples, but sometimes at a cost of not really explaining the relevance or giving enough emphasis to the core ideas of each chapter, or just making it unnecessarily long. also, in the second part of the book, when its no longer chronological, there is no clear sense of logical order of the chapters, like a long appendix. while he claims that interdisciplinary is key, in most cases it is clear that he is a biologist, since all other explanations are shallow and not clearly written.

🧱 Implementations and limitations of it are...

🗨️Review

💭 my opinions on the book, the writers style... this is one of the more in-depth books I've read, and this could have been an easy 5 with some minor modification. There is an attempt for interdisciplinary which is truly appreciated.

🖼️Outline

📒 Notes

Intro

To really understand human behavior, we must go back. its not just our biology, culture or psychology, its a mix. a complex process for a complex problem. Complexity one aspect we must consider is time. a behavior is caused by a variety of factors, some more immediate than others.

One Second Before

Intro

the "one second before" is the realm of the Human Brain. some background: a simplistic model - the brain is divided into 3 sections:

1. body regulation - flow of blood, frequency of breath, body temperature, etc... exists in every animal
2. "emotional" upgrade. if i see something frightening, I wish to run away, which triggers muscles preparation in section 1.
3. higher level thinking - philosophy, values, etc...

its simplistic because it's not top down, it's interconnected and parts didn't evolve separately. also - the brain is not divided into "centers" for specific behaviors, for example being aroused is triggered in several places.

Brain Structure

the hypothalamus is a system that connects between section 2 and section 1. It is the intersection of limbic roads, (bodily inputs such as scent), and other sections - for example to trigger feeling fear when you see something frightening, but also to prepare the muscles. so section 1 + hypothalamus are the basis for the autonomic nervous system, which is consisted of two parts - "Sympathetic nervous system" (or SNS), for example the famous fight or flight, and the "parasympathetic nervous system" (PNS"). while SNS causes escalation in the body (such as fight or flight), the PNS calms us down, for example shutting down unnecessary functions when the main goal is running away from a threat.

if hypothalamus connects between levels 1-2, the cortex connects between levels 2-3. the cortex is the "outer layer" of the brain, and is composed of several lobes. the amygdala, which connects between level 2-3 is the center for fear, anger and anxiety. it has both innate properties (such as the innate fear of cats for rats), but can also "learn" new fears through conditioning. Amygdala when there are repeated cues and negative outcomes, such as a tune followed by a shock, the amygdala neurons "learn" to associate the two, thus making them more easily triggered when we receive the Cue (i.e. hear the tune again). The habit loop

but as we learn, we can also re-learn. this is not by Forgetting the past - the amygdala neurons are as easily triggered as before, rather the frontal cortex fires its own neurons with a new message of "calm down". so we don't forget as much as we cover up with new knowledge. Layering

studies have shown that our amygdala supports trust and honesty as default, and all our hostility is learned through negative experience/interactions with others. humans are good as default. the amygdala has 2 shortcuts, for inputs and outputs. this helps in terms of speed but at the price of accuracy. for example - when you jump when you see a snake, both the input "i think its a snake!" and the output "I should get back!" happen through these shortcuts, instead of running through the level 3 system which "cleans" and filters the inputs/outputs, i.e the things we are "aware" of (both inputs and actions). Instincts

The second important organ is the prefrontal cortex, the "decider of tough choices", this involves topics such as willpower, strategizing, moral or social dilemmas, rules and regulation we follow as a person. This was the last part to evolve in humans, and it's not fully developed until the mid twenties. it takes a lot of energy to run, being one of the most metabolic consuming region in the brain. People with damage to this part are more "inhuman" either by being more "feral" that do and say whatever they want, or a complete "analytical robot" with no consideration for emotions, depending on the part that was damaged. the vmPFC is the "emotional" side, while the dlPFC is the "rational side". interestingly, those without the vm are able to verbally recognize the better strategy, but change less since they cant "feel" the loss from keeping the status quo, while those without the dl tend to make good decisions based on their "gut", but they cant rationalize why they chose it. those without the vm tend to have less "tact", and make poorer decisions when choosing friends and partners (sounds familiar?). Morality is both rational and emotional this sides aren't always opposites but rather sync together the more a decision is complicated and involves multiple considerations.

The Dopamine System

dopamine is pleasure-producing, usually associated with rewards and satisfaction such as food, sex, etc... dopamine is based on the relative difference between the reward and the current situation, in a diminishing way and not based on the "absolute" properties of the reward. Meaning the value we get from the first reward is always higher than the second if they are the same. accordingly, we shall get more pleasure from eating when we're hungry compared to when we are full. also, dopamine peaks higher when we anticipate reward rather than when we actually get it. "the mind makes it better than the reality". Dopamine is also tide to the probability of the result, when it's a maybe we value the reward higher than when it's certain. Dopamine could become the reward itself in certain situations. Expectations

Dopamine is also linking between the reward and the action we need to do to receive it, meaning this is the source for our motivation to get things done. chemical motivation Lastly, the dopamine has a discounted rate for future reward. The more we have to wait the less we value the reward now (i.e to do the work necessary to get it). The rate of discount is depended on our FPC, the stronger it is the longer we can delay the gratification. Present Bias

One Second Before

• There really aren’t “centers” in the brain “for” particular behaviors.
• The hypothalamus, a limbic structure, is the interface between layers 1 and 2, between core regulatory and emotional parts of the brain.
• The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) mediates the body’s response to arousing circumstances, for example, producing the famed “fight or flight” stress response.
• Emotions filter the nature and accuracy of what is remembered.
• While the hypothalamus dwells at the interface of layers 1 and 2, it is the incredibly interesting frontal cortex that is the interface between layers 2 and 3.
• In different circumstances the frontal cortex and limbic system stimulate or inhibit each other, collaborate and coordinate, or bicker and work at cross-purposes.
• Crucially, the brain region most involved in feeling afraid and anxious is most involved in generating aggression.
• When we stop fearing something, it isn’t because some amygdaloid neurons have lost their excitability. We don’t passively forget that something is scary. We actively learn that it isn’t anymore.*
• the default state is to trust, and what the amygdala does is learn vigilance and distrust.
• the amygdala isn’t about the pleasure of experiencing pleasure. It’s about the uncertain, unsettled yearning for a potential pleasure, the anxiety and fear and anger that the reward may be smaller than anticipated, or may not even happen.
• the amygdala can be informed about something scary before the cortex has a clue. Moreover, thanks to the extreme excitability of this pathway, the amygdala can respond to stimuli that are too fleeting or faint for the cortex to note.
• The hippocampus decides whether a factoid is worth filing away, depending on whether the amygdala has gotten worked up over it.
• the frontal cortex makes you do the harder thing when it’s the right thing to do.
• Willpower is more than just a metaphor; self-control is a finite resource. Frontal neurons are expensive cells, and expensive cells are vulnerable cells.
• social complexity expands the frontal cortex.
• Without a vmPFC, you may know the meaning of negative feedback, but you don’t know the feeling of it in your gut and thus don’t shift behavior.
• without the dlPFC, the metaphorical superego is gone, resulting in individuals who are now hyperaggressive, hypersexual ids.
• while emotion and cognition can be somewhat separable, they’re rarely in opposition. Instead they are intertwined in a collaborative relationship needed for normal function, and as tasks with both emotive and cognitive components become more difficult (making an increasingly complex economic decision in a setting that is increasingly unfair), activity in the two structures becomes more synchronized.
• Punishing norm violations is satisfying.
• Dopaminergic responses to reward, rather than being absolute, are relative to the reward value of alternative outcomes.
• get what you expected, and there’s a steady-state dribble of dopamine. Get more reward and/or get it sooner than expected, and there’s a big burst; less and/or later, a decrease.
• once reward contingencies are learned, dopamine is less about reward than about its anticipation.
• anticipatory dopamine release peaks with the greatest uncertainty as to whether a reward will occur.
• what is perceived to be well-calibrated risk is addictive, while ambiguity is just agitating.
• dopamine is not about the happiness of reward. It’s about the happiness of pursuit of reward that has a decent chance of occurring.
• the brain is not where a behavior “begins.” It’s merely the final common pathway by which all the factors in the chapters to come converge and create behavior.

Seconds to Minutes before (stimulus)

Our decisions are determined by the stimulus we receive from the environment. External Influence Outside stimuli can be sights such as people's faces or skin color. It can be sounds such as screams or the national anthem to make you more patriotic, it can be the smell of food to make us hungry, or trash to make us more unagreeable. Even words can trigger emotions or different states in us. Remind them of their race, Asian women tend to be better in math than when reminding them of their gender. Usually certain stimulus comes with an implicit bias for races, genders, etc... For example we are more likely to think that black men hold guns compared to white. The stimulus runs directly to the amygdala. implicit bias 2bc

The stimulus can also be internal such as when we're more angry when we're in pain, or hungry.

Seconds to Minutes Before

• pain makes aggressive people more aggressive, while doing the opposite to unaggressive individuals.
• sensory information streaming toward your brain from both the outside world and your body can rapidly, powerfully, and automatically alter behavior.
• The bystander effect does occur in nondangerous situations, where the price of stepping forward is inconvenience. However, in dangerous situations, the more people present, the more likely individuals are to step forward.
• the wealth of information streaming into the brain influences the likelihood of pro- or antisocial acts.

Hours to Days before (hormones)

Hormones Don't cause behavior as much as they increase the chances of behavior for people who are predisposed to that behavior (i.e testosterone makes violent people more aggressive, but not other people). Similarity these effects happen if you believe that these hormones should affect you that way (the mind makes it real), for example being drunk will make you more aggressive only If you believe it does. Self fulfilling prophecy

We are affected by our hormones. Usual suspect is testosterone, which is allegedly tied to aggression. But research shows other factors are in play, and especially that aggression is not only produced by hormones, but also the product of learning (so it's semi independent).

so testosterone makes us fearless, over confidence and delusional, but it doesn't make us more aggressive. it depends on the context and strengthens the desire in us to maintain our social status. in cultures that use aggression as a status symbol, that would be correlated. but actually in cultures of cooperation and kindness, testosterone can improve these kinds of behaviors.

Oxytocin is another such hormone, one that increases us vs them behavior. Meaning we are more nice, loving, trusting, protective, caring, cooperative with who we consider as out ingroup, but more hostile to the outside group. Again behavior is depended on context.

Stress is good when facing an immediate physical challenge. It prepares our body in the cost of shutting down higher thinking and any long term care of the body, also reduces Empathy and accuracy in social context. We even enjoy short term low levels of stress, for example in a theme park. The problem is that today we're experiencing constant psychological stress, which hurts us physically and mentally in the long run. Unfortunately, one of the easiest ways to reduce stress is to hurt others.

Hours to Days Before

• testosterone is far less relevant to aggression than usually assumed.
• the more experience a male had being aggressive prior to castration, the more aggression continues afterward. In other words, the less his being aggressive in the future requires testosterone and the more it’s a function of social learning.
• aggression is typically more about social learning than about testosterone, and differing levels of testosterone generally can’t explain why some individuals are more aggressive than others.
• Testosterone makes people cocky, egocentric, and narcissistic.
• testosterone’s actions are contingent and amplifying, exacerbating preexisting tendencies toward aggression rather than creating aggression out of thin air.
• Testosterone makes us more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status. And the key point is what it takes. Engineer social circumstances right, and boosting testosterone levels during a challenge would make people compete like crazy to do the most acts of random kindness. In our world riddled with male violence, the problem isn’t that testosterone can increase levels of aggression. The problem is the frequency with which we reward aggression.
• Oxytocin, the luv hormone, makes us more prosocial to Us and worse to everyone else.
• It is a rare human who sickens because they can’t activate the stress response when it is needed. Instead, we get sick from activating the stress response too often, too long, and for purely psychological reasons.

Days to Months

We are affected by our mind's Neuroplasticity. The structure and connection between different neurons. Meaning what our mind's "remember" or is good at doing easily. "Neurons that fire together are wired together".

There is a threshold that determines when a repetitive exposure is translated into learning spaced repetition (the biological explanation to my sensation that things have to be repeated to actually learned, for example message of a book vs reading a summary).

Experience can cause the connections to strengthen, and it is affected whether by the amygdala is also triggered or not. In the first case, the type of learning is more emotionally associated, for example to fear from a certain stimulus, and in the latter its more of a knowledge learning, such as how does the brain works.

Another type of plasticity is neuron remapping, which is connecting between different parts of the brain. For example blind people have their tactile senses connected to the visual part of the brain when reading brile. Injured sections can be reconnected to new ones. Neurons hate to be in a vacuum.

Days to Months Before

• Forming memories doesn’t require new synapses (let alone new branches or neurons); it requires the strengthening of preexisting synapses.1
• Whether the amygdala is also activated seems to determine whether the hippocampus interprets the glucocorticoids as good or bad stress.
• neurons can form new dendritic branches and spines, increasing the size of their dendritic tree or, in other circumstances, do the opposite; hormones frequently mediate these effects.
• experience alters the number and strength of synapses, the extent of dendritic arbor, and the projection targets of axons.

Adolescence

In adolesance, everything is more extreme - the highs, the lows, our egoism but also our need for social acceptance, and our empathy to others. They are more risk takers, more prone to novelty, less likely to have a strong independent sense of self, and reasoning capabilities in social context.

This is due to 2 reasons:

1. It's hard to know what's right The PFC isn't fully developed yet, In terms of quality. It actually has more neurons than adults do, but they haven't gone through a darwinistic survival where the best neurons are kept. Their layering is not developed yet, and overall structure is still lacking. So on the one side, we are less able to detect and make the best choice "to do what's right".
2. Overflow of hormones - Adolescence is a period of a flood of hormones due to sexual maturity, which as we saw has huge effect on our behavior.

It might be that it takes time for the PFC to develop because it's one of the most important parts of the brain, and the one that is most associated with learning from the environment and adapting, so it can't come "ready from the box". This is where we disconnect ourselves from our genes and become a person.

Adolescence; or, Dude, Where’s My Frontal Cortex?

• First, no part of the adult brain is more shaped by adolescence than the frontal cortex. Second, nothing about adolescence can be understood outside the context of delayed frontocortical maturation.
• By the start of adolescence, there’s a greater volume of gray matter (an indirect measure of the total number of neurons and dendritic branches) and more synapses than in adults; over the next decade, gray-matter thickness declines as less optimal dendritic processes and connections are pruned away.
• frontal cortical maturation during adolescence is about a more efficient brain, not more brain.
• as adolescence dawns, frontal cortical efficiency is diluted with extraneous synapses failing to make the grade, sluggish communication thanks to undermyelination, and a jumble of uncoordinated subregions working at cross-purposes; moreover, while the striatum is trying to help, a pinch hitter for the frontal cortex gets you only so far. Finally, the frontal cortex is being pickled in that ebb and flow of gonadal hormones.
• Adolescence is characterized not only by more risking but by more novelty seeking as well.
• in adolescents strong rewards produce exaggerated dopaminergic signaling, and nice sensible rewards for prudent actions feel lousy. The immature frontal cortex hasn’t a prayer to counteract a dopamine system like this.
• This intensity is no surprise, being at the intersection of many facets of adolescence. There are the abundant emotions and limbic gyrations. The highs are higher, the lows lower, empathic pain scalds, and the glow of doing the right thing makes it seem plausible that we are here for a purpose.
• Adult life is filled with consequential forks in the road where the right thing is definitely harder. Navigating these successfully is the portfolio of the frontal cortex, and developing the ability to do this right in each context requires profound shaping by experience.

Back to the Crib

Children tend to develop a sense of empathy, Theory of Mind and a sense of self during their childhood. A theory of mind can develop from "everyone knows what I know" to "people can have different information than I do" to "people can have different preferences and feelings than I do. Similarly, empathy develops from "he and I are the same, if he hurts than my finger hurts too" to "I feel that they are in pain". The sense of self develops from being an extension of the mother to an individual. Usually kids are egalitarian, but initially from a perspective of "everyone should be treated as I do " to a more complex view of "we should be treated according to our merits or law abiding " Similarly morality develops from an egoistic view to a more generalized abstract "right or wrong".

The marshmallow test is a strong predictor of future success.

Types of Parenting

Mothers are needed not only for the biological wellbeing of the child, but mostly the emotions. As we've seen in the monkey experiment. A child would choose warmth and love over food.

the stimulus we are exposed to as a child, especially from the mother are registered as positive even if they're negative. this could explain abusive parents that their child still loves them, what happens in our first few weeks becomes our norm. Role Models

Stress and Childhood

excessive stress during the childhood is hurtful for the development, it increases the size of the amygdala over the PFC, meaning they are less capable of making and doing the right thing, and are more hypersensitive and susceptible and easily triggered by the environment. usually it involves an increase in aggression. things like poverty, bullying, malnourishment, abuse, exposure to violence (either real or fake) and neglect can cause these symptoms.

Social Environment

we should also consider the effect of culture Social Environment on our behavior, whether the society is more individualistic/communitive. whether its a society with a strong honor culture, the class you are born into, how authorities is your parent etc...

even things that happen during the pregnancy can effect the behavior, it appears that babies have a way to recognize voices, , intonations and other stimulations while in the womb, for example it will recognize its mother even if he hadn't met her yet.

Sex Difference

it appears that different sexes behave different not because of social perceptions, but rather hormonal level during pregnancy/birth.

Summary

prenatal hormones and the environment (such as type of parenting, diet, stimulus) can alter behavior by actually changing the brain, for example turning certain genes on/off.

Back to the Crib, Back to the Womb

• Empathy is shifting from the concrete world of “Her finger must hurt, I’m suddenly conscious of my own finger” to ToM-ish focusing on the pokee’s emotions and experience.
• moral heroism rarely arises from super-duper frontal cortical willpower. Instead, it happens when the right thing isn’t the harder thing.
• What majorly predicts a life of crime? Being born to a mother who, if she could, would have chosen that you not be. What’s the most basic thing provided by a mother? Knowing that she is happy that you exist.
• childhood adversity can atrophy and blunt the functioning of the hippocampus and frontal cortex. But it’s the opposite in the amygdala—lots of adversity and the amygdala becomes larger and hyperreactive. One consequence is increased risk of anxiety disorders; when coupled with the poor frontocortical development, it explains problems with emotion and behavior regulation, especially impulse control.
• What is social play in the young? Writ large, it’s an array of behaviors that train individuals in social competence.
• testosterone has masculinizing prenatal effects in humans,
• adult behavior produces persistent molecular brain changes in offspring, “programming” them to be likely to replicate that distinctive behavior in adulthood.
• While little in childhood determines an adult behavior, virtually everything in childhood changes propensities toward some adult behavior.

Back to when You Were a Fertilized Egg

genes are not as important as we thought, because:

1. No hard coded rules - genes are only 5% of our DNA, the rest is instructions to when to activate which genes. usually the more complex the creature, thus the ratio between instructions/genes is higher.
2. Environment matters - this activation manual is affected by the environment (whether internal - hormones, sugar/oxygen level... or external - stimulus...). thus difference in behavior can result from a difference in activation methods, while the gene themselves are identical. Environmental design
3. Habits matter - some epigenetic properties are possible within humans, i.e activation protocols can change and transfer to the egg/sperm, thus affecting the next generation without a change in the genes themselves Genetic Switches
4. Mutations - the body has a way of mixing up his genes to create new mutations, usually in the immunization system or in the brain, where finding new ways to improve is more important than everything.

Criticism - so it's just a technicality to say that genes don't affect as much, it's more correct to say that the DNA does (when considering the activation instructions), but in any case, inheritance is important.

Definition of inheritance: Two important definitions: inheritance and inheritability. The first impacts the average level, and the second the variability around the average. A case for inherited can be the amount of fingers (5 fingers is of course depended on genes, but we don't see a lot of variance). Bias and Variance An example for the second can be height, the average man can still be the same height, when we suddenly see man much taller or shorter than others)

Since the activation of genes is based on the environment, there is no sense of splitting between "nature" and "nurture", or talking about the effects of genes in a vacuum. It's always about the context, the interaction between the gene and the environment. nature vs nurture

Even when considering this, we currently cannot fully understand the range of possibilities. Most studies of known genes can also explain 1%-2% of variation.

Back to When You Were Just a Fertilized Egg

• the more genomically complex the organism, the larger the percentage of the genome devoted to gene regulation by the environment.
• Genes are not autonomous agents commanding biological events. Instead, genes are regulated by the environment, with “environment” consisting of everything from events inside the cell to the universe. Much of your DNA turns environmental influences into gene transcription, rather than coding for genes themselves; moreover, evolution is heavily about changing regulation of gene transcription, rather than genes themselves. Epigenetics can allow environmental effects to be lifelong, or even multigenerational. And thanks to transposons, neurons contain a mosaic of different genomes.
• genetic influences on behavior often work through very indirect routes,
• a heritability score tells how much variation in a trait is explained by genes in the environment(s) in which it’s been studied. As you study the trait in more environments,
• it’s not meaningful to ask what a gene does, just what it does in a particular environment.
• genes aren’t about inevitability. Instead they’re about context-dependent tendencies, propensities, potentials, and vulnerabilities.

Centuries to Millennia before

Culture is how we perceive and interact with out physical and social environment. This is another faster evolutionary source of learning and adapting, i.e cultural changes happen faster than biological ones. (The book mixes cultural and economical differences sometimes).

One type of important cultural difference is individualistic vs communitive societies. Differences shown to mirror in brain activation. Other could be egalitarian vs hierarchical societies, perhaps originated from farming vs herding communities accordingly Moral Taste Buds. Environment affects our culture, weather and natural boarders can affect the relations between different communities. Social Inequality has an effect on conflict the more the difference is salient, beyond the effects of being poor in itself.

(All in all, this chapter is very similar to gun, germs and steel)

Centuries to Millennia Before

• Culture leaves long-lasting residues—Shiites
• “culture” is how we do and think about things, transmitted by nongenetic means.
• Your life will be unrecognizably different, depending on which culture the stork deposited you into.
• cultures with more income inequality have less social capital.35 Trust requires reciprocity, and reciprocity requires equality, whereas hierarchy is about domination and asymmetry.
• “Peace does not depend on integrated coexistence, but rather on well defined topographical and political boundaries separating groups, allowing for partial autonomy within a single country,”
• The HGs who peopled earth for hundreds of thousands of years were probably no angels, being perfectly capable of murder. However, “war”—both in the sense that haunts our modern world and in the stripped-down sense that haunted our ancestors—seems to have been rare until most humans abandoned the nomadic HG lifestyle.

The Evolution of Behavior

It all comes down to evolution, basic terminology: Individual selection - the desire of the individual to pass down his genes, and evolutionary forces make him better at fertilization, not necessarily survival Sexual selection - the selection of mates based on certain attributes, like a peacock tail, which is harmful for his own survival since it is costly, but this is exactly why he's a good mate, since he survived despite of that. Kin selection - since your genes exist in your relatives, we can see more altruistic behavior among family members. We all have unique markers, more similar amongst relatives that we can actually sense in others, even subconsciously. Our immune system works the same way, identifying cells as foreign if they don't have these markers. Group selection - some genes are beneficial to the group, while harming to the individual

Natural Selection

Cooperation between Non Relatives

There are many examples of Cooperation between members of the same species, usually because being cooperative is useful for the individual as well. Similar to a prisoner's dilemma. How can we make sure the cooperation is reciprocating? Enter the "tit for tat" Game Theory. A strategy that always loses, but wins in the long run. In real life, tit for tat means that we have to implement measures of detecting and punishing defections, which can be costly. That's why we have a cycle of increasing cooperation until someone defects, meaning: Everybody starts with tit for tat, then to a more forgiving version (in case someone makes a mistake, or there's a error in the system), then to a "always cooperating " version, until someone abuses this and defects, starting the cycle again.

How can cooperation start? Using Signaling, if can signal you are trust worthy, you show others that working with you will be better than working with the competitors because you will cooperate. But what if the defectors can copy that signal?

In humans, kin selection is based more on perceived kinship rather than necessarily genetic one. We can feel as kins with members of our nationality, religion, political group or any kind of identifying attribute.

Rate of Evolution

Evolution sometimes works in big leaps, but also in gradual steps, it is usually a matter of perspective and debate.

The Evolution of Behavior

• evolution is about reproduction, passing on copies of genes. An organism living centuries but not reproducing is evolutionarily invisible.
• Animals don’t behave for the good of the species. They behave to maximize the number of copies of their genes passed into the next generation.
• in countless species, whom you cooperate with, compete with, or mate with depends on their degree of relatedness to you.
• Tit for Tat wins. It lost nearly every battle but won the war. Or rather, the peace. In other words, Tit for Tat drives other strategies to extinction. Tit for Tat has four things going for it: Its proclivity is to cooperate (i.e., that’s its starting state). But it isn’t a sucker and punishes defectors. It’s forgiving—if the defector resumes cooperating, so will Tit for Tat. And the strategy is simple.
• when there are signal errors, differing costs to different strategies, and the existence of mutations, a cycle emerges: a heterogeneous population of strategies, including exploitative, noncooperative ones, are replaced by Tit for Tat, then replaced by Forgiving Tit for Tat, then by Always Cooperate—until a mutation reintroduces an exploitative strategy that spreads like wildfire, a wolf among Always Cooperate sheep, starting the cycle all over again.
• neo–group selection fits into multilevel selection—the idea that some heritable traits may be maladaptive for the individual but adaptive for a group.
• we do kin recognition cognitively, by thinking about it. But crucially, not always rationally—as a general rule, we treat people like relatives when they feel like relatives.
• we can be manipulated into feeling more or less related to someone than we actually are.
• Evolution is a tinkerer, not an inventor.” It works with whatever’s available as selective pressures change, producing a result that may not be the most adaptive but is good enough, given the starting materials.
• Instead of causes, biology is repeatedly about propensities, potentials, vulnerabilities, predispositions, proclivities, interactions, modulations, contingencies, if/then clauses, context dependencies, exacerbation or diminution of preexisting tendencies. Circles and loops and spirals and Möbius strips.

Us Vs Them

we tend to create "us" and "them" categories based on arbitrary details, even when we are aware that these are arbitrary. the separation increases cooperation between the us team and vice versa for the "them" team.

the us/them behavior is deeply rooted in our amygdala, subconsciously, and not the result of rationalization. accordingly - we can easily manipulate us/them divides. the conflict is more about the tension between the team, rather then the actual content of "them". so its more about hierarchy than ideology. also, we prefer to be at a better state than "them", even if overall we're in a worse state (we would pay 1 to make them have 2 less).

We all have multiple identities simultaneously, which different situations can trigger some and ignore others. a human is a community Classification of attitude towards others: a metric of warmth (how much I love them) and competence (how much they are successful)

Us Versus Them

• Merely grouping people activates parochial biases, no matter how tenuous the basis of the grouping. In general, minimal group paradigms enhance our opinion of Us rather than lessening our opinion of Them.
• Thus, the strength of Us/Them-ing is shown by: (a) the speed and minimal sensory stimuli required for the brain to process group differences; (b) the unconscious automaticity of such processes; (c) its presence in other primates and very young humans; and (d) the tendency to group according to arbitrary differences, and to then imbue those markers with power.
• in-group parochialism is often more concerned about Us beating Them than with Us simply doing well.
• When an in-group mocks an out-group, it’s to solidify negative stereotypes and reify the hierarchy.
• Essentialism is all about viewing Them as homogeneous and interchangeable, the idea that while we are individuals, they have a monolithic, immutable, icky essence.
• abrasive Them-ing originates in emotions and automatic processes is that supposed rational cognitions about Thems can be unconsciously manipulated.
• Our feelings about Thems can be shaped by subterranean forces we haven’t a clue about.
• groups with highly hostile interactions with neighbors tend to have minimal internal conflict.
• we have multiple dichotomies in our heads, and ones that seem inevitable and crucial can, under the right circumstances, have their importance evaporate in an instant.
• Thus, in order to lessen the adverse effects of Us/Them-ing, a shopping list would include emphasizing individuation and shared attributes, perspective taking, more benign dichotomies, lessening hierarchical differences, and bringing people together on equal terms with shared goals.
• Keep in mind that what seems like rationality is often just rationalization, playing catch-up with subterranean forces that we never suspect.

Hierarchy and Obedience

Hierarchy is a way to structure social relations and establish rules of dividing material and privileges among the members. Hierarchy is not a yes/no question. There are various ranks and multiple rankings depending on the context. Being highest can also have it's drawbacks compare to the second in command, which has almost the same benefits with less stress. Usually being at the bottom is the worst. In humans hierarchy is usually economical.

Hierarchy, Obedience, and Resistance

• Hierarchies establish a status quo by ritualizing inequalities.
• countries with more brutal socioeconomic hierarchies produce children who enforce their own hierarchies more brutally.
• maintaining the high rank is about social intelligence and impulse control: knowing which provocations to ignore and which coalitions to form, understanding other individuals’ actions.
• Those with the most interest in prestige and power seem least likely to feel for those less fortunate.
• it’s easier to make a liberal think like a conservative than the other way around.35 Or, stated in a familiar way, increasing cognitive load* should make people more conservative.
• on the average, rightists are made more anxious by ambiguity and have a stronger need for closure, dislike novelty, are more comforted by structure and hierarchy, more readily perceive circumstances as threatening, and are more parochial in their empathy.
• political orientation about social issues reflects sensitivity to visceral disgust and strategies for coping with such disgust.
• When pressured to conform and obey, a far higher percentage of perfectly normal people than most would predict succumb and do awful things.

Political Beliefs

the divide between left/right views (or liberal/conservative) is engraved in our biology. it seems that being conservative is a more "primary" mode of thinking, i.e when having to make rash decisions, we tend towards conservatism. This has the amygdala written all over it. it is a tendency/desire to reduce ambiguity, achieve stability, and reduce threats and novelty. it is a "gut" ideology which bases our beliefs on whether we feel disgusted by something or not.

Morality and Doing the Right Thing, Once You’ve Figured Out What That Is

• intuitions discount heavily over space and time. Exactly the myopia about cause and effect you’d expect from a brain system that operates rapidly and automatically. This is the same sort of myopia that makes sins of commission feel worse than those of omission.
• we judge ourselves by our internal motives and everyone else by their external actions.
• our morally tinged cultural institutions—religion, nationalism, ethnic pride, team spirit—bias us toward our best behaviors when we are single shepherds facing a potential tragedy of the commons. They make us less selfish in Me versus Us situations. But they send us hurtling toward our worst behaviors when confronting Thems and their different moralities.

Conformity and Obedience

Our social need to belong often makes us go against our beliefs, since the anxiety of being left out is bigger than our core values or beliefs, or the thought of self. conformism, righteousness/epistemological truth. It also leads us to be obedient. It's easier to obey when:

1. There is ambiguity about the effects of your involvement
2. when the victim is abstract
3. when there are no better alternatives or someone else to back your opinion
4. when obeying is easy to preform

In average, normal people are capable of doing horrible things, but the reverse is also true, there are those who will always resist.

Morality

Morality is Context based. It depends on our sense of intentionality (doing is stronger than not doing), it depends on the culture, our mental state, and based on our me-us-them divide. Just World Bias

Empathy

Empathy is the leap from feeling "for" someone's pain, to feeling that pain "as if" it was yours. The brain region responsible is the ACC, which determines pain sensations from stimuli. It is not based on the level of the pain itself, rather on:

1. the gap between expected/actual pain
2. the context of the pain - "good pain" (for example a medicine that will cause some pain) is felt different than "bad pain".

feeling someone's pain is a more powerful way to learn that just know the other is in pain - like the example that to know everything about "red" is not the same as seeing it. experience knowledge Mary's room

to see someone's pain and to make your ACC feel the same requires a cognitive effort. This effort is easier the more him and you are similar, i.e belong to the same US group.

Is empathy good? In a sense, we don't want to feel the other's pain since being in pain as well makes us focus on our own pain rather than theirs, we will try to avoid or treat ourselves rather than do an act of kindness. Also, feeling someone's pain can lead to worse acts. If my child is afraid of a vaccination and I'm deciding to let go of it because I feel his fear, he is worse off than if he got the vaccine. Similarly, we might feel the person whose pain is "the easiest" to feel or to identify with, helping him instead of the one most in need. Therefore, a level of detachment is needed when trying to do an act of kindness. We also need to notice that sometimes feeling empathy doesn't lead to an action at all, we might be content with having felt the pain and consider it sufficient , producing Moral Licensing to not act.

Feeling Someone’s Pain, Understanding Someone’s Pain, Alleviating Someone’s Pain

• Feeling someone else’s pain can be more effective for learning than just knowing that they’re in pain. At its core the ACC is about self-interest, with caring about that other person in pain as an add-on.
• cognitive processes serve as a gatekeeper, deciding whether a particular misfortune is worthy of empathy.
• It is a particularly uphill battle when we are asked to empathize with the pain of people we dislike, whom we morally disapprove of—remember
• empathic states are most likely to produce compassionate acts when we manage a detached distance.
• best that our compassion be driven by the most need rather than by the most readily shared pain.

Metaphors We Kill by

in our brain, metaphors are connected deeply to our actual physical sensation. morally bad deeds (such as murder) make us disgusted, as if we ate something bad. we associate "clean" with moral. the role is also reversed - holding a cold drink can make us "colder" people. Mind-body connection

Metaphors We Kill By

• language is always a metaphor, transferring information from one individual to another by putting thought into words, as if words were shopping bags.

Justice and Free Will

as we've seen, some tendencies can be explain by biology, so in a sense it reduces the amount of "free will" the criminal has on his behavior. same as you cant blame a drive whose car broke down. while we saw that biology tends to increase tendencies and not a guarantee, we will perhaps see less criminalization and punishment as a moral act and more judgment which is "mechanical", same as isolating patients is a result of medical needs, and not the fault of the patients. Determinism

Biology, the Criminal Justice System, and (Oh, Why Not?) Free Will

• If we deny free will when it comes to the worst of our behaviors, the same must also apply to the best.

War and Peace

we have ample examples where relationships and amends are formed between members of the other side. with our current culture and our biology, we tend to have much more positive behavior than negative, and at minimum we have a "tit for tat" relations with our enemies, which is much more mild than outright hatred. We should never forget we are capable of amazing things, and not just terrible ones.

War and Peace

• Compared with the past, we are extraordinarily different in terms of whom we extend rights to and feel empathy for and what global ills we counter. And things are better in terms of fewer people acting violently and societies attempting to contain them. But the bad news is that the reach of the violent few is ever greater.
• It’s not religiosity that stokes intergroup hostility; it’s being surrounded by coreligionists who affirm parochial identity, commitment, and shared loves and hatreds.
• Decreased prejudice about the Thems at work often generalizes to Thems at large, and even sometimes to other types of Thems.
• Rationality may be key to establishing peace, but the irrational importance of sacred values is key to establishing lasting peace.

Epilogue

Epilogue

• The certainty with which we act now might seem ghastly not only to future generations but to our future selves as well.