Frans de Waal

They, they...

Y- you know, when you look at the work of primatologists, like Frans de Waal, Robert Sapolsky, they talk about how male animals have a much higher need for roughhousing play and loud play, and play that does get you hurt and involves taking risks.

And when we have our kids going into elementary school, where they're now expected to do the, what was the first grade curriculum for us-

Mm-hmm

It can involve doing things that benefit non-humans.

So what about altruism beyond our direct relatives? The primatologist Frans de Waal calls this directed altruism.

This is altruism in response to another's pain, need, or distress.

De Waal argues that directed altruism is still an animal behavior not unique to humans.

And there are great examples of that.

There is an absolutely brilliant video on YouTube, which the primatologist, the Dutch, now recently passed away, Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal talks about, of two macaque monkeys being fed, respectively, either cucumbers or grapes.

They love grapes because they're sweet and delicious.

They just tolerate cucumbers.

Um, and Kohlberg made a lot of progress studying the evolution of how kids think about it.

But my insight, drawing on Antonio Damasio and all these other great people in the '90s, Frans de Waal, um, was basically that Hume was right.

Intuition comes first, and then reasoning comes second, post hoc reasoning.

And so I developed all of these, um, sort of scenarios, interview, uh, scenarios that would pit sort of reasoning against a gut feeling and see which way people go.

It doesn't even work for chimpanzees.

So the gr- the best work that's been done ch- on chimps so far has done, been done by Frans de Waal.

He'd be a very interesting guest, by the way.

He's a very smart Dutch primatologist.

And it's not just that people are afraid of the silverback.

If you read these amazing books on, you know, there's Franz de Waal's book on chimpanzee politics, where he described in great detail how the alpha chimp in this troop that he was following, gained its position and then lost its position based on the coalition of three female chimps that elevated the alpha, defended the alpha against attackers and challengers.

And then when the alpha lost value to them, ran the guy out.

And brought someone else in.

Eu faço, eu vou até mostrar aqui ó, a dedicatória, onde que tá a, a epígrafe do livro.

Tá com o Frans de Waal.

Frans de Waal, é sim.

De gerente, é um primatologista.

Por quê? Porque eu ando lendo exatamente isso, primatologia ou neurobiopsicologia do Sapolsky.