390. The Prisoner's Dilemma, Tit-for-Tat and Game Theory | Robert Sapolsky

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

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Education, Science, Society & Culture

4.6 • 34.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2023

⏱️ 104 minutes

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Summary

Dr. Jordan B Peterson sits down with Neuroendocrinology researcher and author of the upcoming book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Robert Sapolsky. They discuss how Game Theory applies to human behavior across iterative rounds of play, the unexpected success of the tit-for-tat principle, the role of dopamine in the anticipation of the future, and the objective reality of transcendent structures within our biological routines. Robert Sapolsky is an American Neuroendocrinology researcher, author, and communicator. He has spent decades studying primates in the wild, written numerous articles and books, as well as produced multiple video series on the subject. By the age of 12, Sapolsky was writing to well known primatologists as a fan, and had also begun teaching himself swahili with the early ambition of heading to Tanzanian, Mozambique, and Kenya in search of his own primates (Specifically Silverback Gorillas) to study. Not too much later, Sapolsky would make contact with a group of gorillas in Kenya, a group he would visit every year for 25 years, spending 4 months studying them at a time. Sapolsky would go on to become the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor at Stanford University, holding joint appointments in several departments, including Biological Sciences, Neurology & Neurological Sciences, and Neurosurgery. - Links - For Robert Sapolsky: Determined (Book) https://www.amazon.com/Determined-Science-Life-without-Free/dp/B0BVNSX4CQ/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=QFjFx&content-id=amzn1.sym.579192ca-1482-4409-abe7-9e14f17ac827&pf_rd_p=579192ca-1482-4409-abe7-9e14f17ac827&pf_rd_r=138-5878495-9086964&pd_rd_wg=c78OT&pd_rd_r=59b94cd4-c046-4970-af71-a6cd4f439f77&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk Behave (Book) https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/592344/determined-by-robert-m-sapolsky/ Robert Sapolsky on X https://twitter.com/robot_sapolsky?lang=en

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Hello everyone watching and listening. Today I'm speaking with
0:19.5	primatologist neuroendocrinology researcher,
0:23.8	and author of multiple books,
0:25.7	including the upcoming,
0:27.4	Determed A Science of Life without Free Will,
0:30.8	Dr Robert Sapolsky.
0:33.4	We discuss game theory and how it applies to human behavior.
0:38.1	The unexpected success of the tit for tat negotiating principle, the role of the neurochemical dopamine in reward,
0:46.4	reinforcement and the anticipation of the future, and the potentially objective
0:51.6	reality of transcendent ethical structures operating within the biological domain.
0:58.0	So I was reading Behave in some detail. I've read a number of your other books books I've followed your career for a long time I'm very
1:05.2	interested in primatology and in neuroscience so that that makes her interesting reading as far as I'm concerned.
1:12.3	The thing that really struck me in behave is the
1:18.7	are the sections on game theory and I wanted to start talking about game theory because it first of all the
1:26.0	terminology is strange because game theory I mean you could hardly imagine
1:29.7	something that might sound more trivial than that I mean first of all it's games and second
1:34.0	of all its theory but there's absolutely nothing whatsoever that's even minimally
1:38.5	trivial about game theory. It's unbelievably important you know and I kind of
1:42.1	stumbled across it sideways.
1:44.6	I was reading work by Yach Panksep, who did a lot of work with rats, and Panksep showed that if you
1:51.8	paired rats repeatedly together juvenile males and you allowed them to play.
1:58.4	The little rat who had to invite to play once Stormance had been established, he would stop inviting to play once dominance had been established. He would stop inviting to play if the big
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