Sapolsky’s theory of Human Behavioral Biology claims that behind
every behaviour , is a biological process that is the product of natural selection.
If Sapolsky is right, this implies that to truly understand human behavior,
we would have to know exactly what happens in the 100 trillion connections of the brain a nanosecond
before the behaviour occurs. And consider what took place about 5 million years ago when humans
and chimpanzees shared their last common ancestor. And all of the stuff that happened in between.
For example: when we see someone who has just done something wonderful and altruistic
or something brutal and savage, we can ask ourselves: why did he do that just now?"
And when we ask that, we are asking something about what
neurons in different parts of their brain did a fraction of a second ago.
But we are also asking about what environmental
stimuli in the previous seconds, to minutes, triggered those neurons.
And we are also asking what did hormone levels that morning have
to do with making those neurons more or less sensitive to those triggers.
And then we are often running in neuro-plasticity,
how his experience changed these neurons in previous months.
Then you are back to adolescence and childhood and all the way back to his fetal life,
which has a huge amount to do with what sort of brain we are going to have as adults
And even further back genes come in and culture because the way you were raised
within minutes of birth reflects the culture that your ancestors were coming up with centuries ago
And at the bottom of the barrel, why we evolved into this kind of species instead of that kind.
If you trust Sapolsky’s theory of behavioral biology you may, at this point, realize that
things are much more complicated. While a simple “she did A, so he did B” may fulfill your need to
bring order into this chaotic world, it is likely not going to be the full explanation.
Sapolsky was born in New York, and he spent his youth reading about and
imagining living with silverback gorillas. By age 12, he was writing fan letters
to primatologists and during high school he taught himself Swahili.
Later he spent twenty-five years observing the same group of baboons in Africa every summer
and then went on to study and teach behavioral biology at Stanford University.
Sapolsky left for those who try to understand others the following advice:
"We are complicated! So you better be really sure
and really careful and really cautious before you decide you
understand why somebody did something, especially if that is something you are judging harshly.
It's like trying to judge how a movie got to its conclusion by watching only 30 seconds of it.”
What do you think? Is his theory solid and can we actually never really explain
a behavior without taking the full picture into consideration? Or is there something like a
soul that takes decisions regardless of what happens to us biologically?