Oct 16, 2023 · 57 min · 11 segments
This week our guest is Stanford neuroscientist, Robert Sapolsky. You may know Dr. Sapolsky from his incredible 25-part lecture series on Youtube, his triumphant book, Behave, or his guest appearances…
Robert SapolskyGuestStephen PartonHostdecade what's that in i mean it it This is something you talk about a lot in the book, right, is it sounds like you're wanting to see the system kind of be reformed so that maybe it would be more open to to your ideas.
But what what are some of the ways in which that system could be reformed that you think would be beneficial or that come from taking this free will skepticism approach that basically, you know, you talk about in the book, things like quarantining and punishment and the different approaches we could do to kind of reform the system.
Well, just to show how far out in left field I am, I don't think reform is a relevant concept to this.
And I'm not just being like my like Marxist grandparents of like all reform undercuts revolution which this system makes no sense a system of 500 years ago where if there was an unexpected hail storm in the middle of the summer The people did an investigation and figured out what elderly toothless woman was the witch who did it.
And they investigated it and they figured out where the responsibility was and they burned her at the stake.
And about, I don't know, 400 years ago or so, not exactly that, we figured out that's not how it works.
Hailstorms are a realm in which human responsibility can be completely subtracted out, where judgment and blame can be completely subtracted out.
And you know what? Not only didn't the roof cave in once people started believing that, there were a whole lot more elderly women who were not burned to death.
And the same thing when people figured out that like mothers don't cause schizophrenia in their children and you can subtract blame and responsibility and judgment entirely out of that.
Not only didn't the roof fall in, not only didn't society run amok and all of that, but hundreds of thousands of women had terrible lifelong burdens lifted off of them.
So I'm not in favor of reforming the criminal justice system any more than reforming it in terms of the hailstorm stuff.
You saw this old crone like mumble to herself and thus... cavorted with Satan kind of thing.
I mean, sort of the truly challenging implications of all of this are Blame makes no sense ever.
And at the same time, praise makes no sense and reward makes no sense because none of us earned any of this and none of us are entitled to anything.
And all of us are just the end product of... every bit of biology that came before us, which we had no control over, and biology's interaction with every bit of environment that we had no control over.
decade what's that in i mean it it This is something you talk about a lot in the book, right, is it sounds like you're wanting to see the system kind of be reformed so that maybe it would be more open to to your ideas.
But what what are some of the ways in which that system could be reformed that you think would be beneficial or that come from taking this free will skepticism approach that basically, you know, you talk about in the book, things like quarantining and punishment and the different approaches we could do to kind of reform the system.
Well, just to show how far out in left field I am, I don't think reform is a relevant concept to this.
And I'm not just being like my like Marxist grandparents of like all reform undercuts revolution which this system makes no sense a system of 500 years ago where if there was an unexpected hail storm in the middle of the summer The people did an investigation and figured out what elderly toothless woman was the witch who did it.
And they investigated it and they figured out where the responsibility was and they burned her at the stake.
And about, I don't know, 400 years ago or so, not exactly that, we figured out that's not how it works.
Hailstorms are a realm in which human responsibility can be completely subtracted out, where judgment and blame can be completely subtracted out.
And you know what? Not only didn't the roof cave in once people started believing that, there were a whole lot more elderly women who were not burned to death.
And the same thing when people figured out that like mothers don't cause schizophrenia in their children and you can subtract blame and responsibility and judgment entirely out of that.
Not only didn't the roof fall in, not only didn't society run amok and all of that, but hundreds of thousands of women had terrible lifelong burdens lifted off of them.
So I'm not in favor of reforming the criminal justice system any more than reforming it in terms of the hailstorm stuff.
You saw this old crone like mumble to herself and thus... cavorted with Satan kind of thing.
I mean, sort of the truly challenging implications of all of this are Blame makes no sense ever.
And at the same time, praise makes no sense and reward makes no sense because none of us earned any of this and none of us are entitled to anything.
And all of us are just the end product of... every bit of biology that came before us, which we had no control over, and biology's interaction with every bit of environment that we had no control over.
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