Behave

Human behavior is much more complicated than you might have thought. Or maybe you already figured it was complicated. Well, it's still probably more complicated than even that. Perhaps you are attracted to facile descriptions of behavior that are motivated by your political leanings such as genetic determinism or social construction? There's a very good chance it's actually a swirling interplay of the two. Nearly all of our best and worst actions turn out to be some result of gene-environment interaction, and delineating the two takes some solid scientific work to get right.

Much (perhaps too much) of the book is spent on “humans at our worst”. Why are we violent and aggressive to each other? It's a mix of hormones, social interaction, evolution, socioeconomic stratification, in vitro conditions, pollution, genes, gender, political forces, religion, luck, and many other factors. There's just no easy answer here despite many peoples' attempts to pin it on their pet theories. This isn't to say it's not worth trying to figure out because that's how progress is made. It requires an open mind and some scientific curiosity.

Sapolsky builds a moral framework towards the end that I mostly agree with, though he seems to let up on the academic rigor that is evident in the earlier parts of the book. This is the same criticism I have of other science books such as Sean Carroll's The Big Picture. Amazing detail, citation, dispassion, and patience explaining the hard science of their field ...and then a breezy approach to laying philosophy and social science on the table. It's to be expected, though I'm left in serious doubt when he presents the case that the biology is this decades-long battle of competing research but that a single psychology experiment is able to explain a murky aspect of cognition.

In the end his takeaway is valuable. We should be skeptical of the unseen homunculus in peoples' heads pulling the levers of “free will” and causing them to be an evil Other of the out-group. It's easy to heap undue moral scorn on someone who might just be the equivalent of a 17th century “witch” who is actually just suffering from epilepsy. Give your political enemies the benefit of the doubt. Show compassion towards folks with even the most repugnant behavior. You have no idea what they've been through.