I am 75. Due to circumstances, I was not able to go on to higher education (college). I listen to this wonderful professor and deeply regret this fact of my life. I could listen endlessly, to the way he recreates history. Thanks to all who have made this possible.
Sapolsky is plausibly the best lecturer I’ve ever heard, you’re getting a better lecture listening experience over RUclips than most people ever get at college.
To be fair, most lectures by most professors lack quality authorship and are rather usually just overviews of the reading material. And generally a student is so focused on taking notes, working on assignments, and preparing for exams that there is little time to really enjoy lectures.
It is marvellous that these lectures are so accessible to non- scientists. I've now bought a book by Sapolsky which is equally fascinating and readable.
Dr. Sapolsky's RUclips lectures are truly the most emotionally inspiring, intellectually stimulating, and flat-out entertaining free academic content out there on ANY subject or discipline. This gifted man has a knack for explaining complicated ideas and issues in the most basic and relatable of ways. Such a rhetorical skill is a talent many intelligent minds in the academy sorely lack, much to the detriment of their students' class performance. Thank you, Stanford administration, for making freely available to the public a window into the minds of your most brilliant faculty.
I can’t believe people still pay for education. This is just phenomenal information for free. I am literally a high school drop out in my mid 30’s and I watch Ivy League lectures all day. This is fricking amazing. This is how humanity is meant to be. Stanford is killing it. I’ve seen this guy in documentaries too and his ability to convey information is truly a blessing.
Yeah dude but those people want to get a job in the field and you need qualifications for it. Yeah it’s ridiculous to pay for education but it’s amazing how your next step is not “because it should be free “
3 года назад+7
@@sufimuslimlion4114 or all of us privelleged or lucky enough to get this sort of education could come together and create our own authoritative qualifications, produce things of value in the market, and live happily ever after however inferior or superior the hypothetical qualifications stand.
1. You are ignoring that it is those people in the class who are paying for these lectures and the studies done there. If they did not pay, we would not see this. 2. This information is not updated, it is a good basis to start but a lot has changed. 3. To actually do anything in this field you need a qualification, you need the ability to learn and then be examined on the finer details of what you learnt. So that you can say, yes I do actually know what I am talking about. Look dude I am in the same place as you but education is still important.
Fantastic lecture. I really appreciate that the prof repeats an idea in slightly different words, just incase the first time didn't sink in. Great teacher. Thanks to Stanford for making all these excellent videos readily available.
I found that a little bit annoying that he did repeat himself multiple times over with slight modulation. But I can totally imagine that it would increase the chances of more people understanding it if he did repeat it with slight modulation. Signs of a good teacher, I suppose I should incorporate this technique.
@@measure5141 I suppose a teacher must try and find a balance between being succinct and being easily understood. I do believe the best teachers are the ones who strive to really communicate ideas and tailor for their audience, rather than simply "emitting" knowledge into a room and assuming it will be absorbed.
Repetition is especially important not only for memory but to help offset any inclination in more knowledgeable listeners to start questioning the foundational assumptions, or the extremes of characterization, in the story being told. I wonder when the notion of a hinged book was invented, or a codex instead of a roll, when the stirrup was created, when Bede wrote _De temporum ratione_ with its descriptions of the universe as a working system including eclipses, etc., when _Hildebrandslied_ (Song of Hildebrand) on identity and the self was written, or the work of disabled scientist, Hermann of Reichenau, was done. How could any such things come from such an age and place as described at the beginning? "Unlike dates, periods are not facts. They are retrospective conceptions that we form about past events, useful to focus discussion, but very often leading historical thought astray." (G. M. Trevelyan, historian, 1942)
@@udderhippo A lot of it is being able to gauge when a statement will stick in the head like a rule, and can be recalled word for word and gives you the whole equation, or whether it's a kind of information that needs to be pushed into the brain from a few different angles to get it all the way in. You can pretty much condense high school math into one really large infographic, you only need the equation and if you understand basic rules, you'll have no problem. The kind of information this teacher is trying to convey requires an elastic, abstract understanding of the concepts. Reductionism can be subjective if a person isn't good at it, so they end up going in the wrong direction, and that's why this teacher is working through every example he can to elucidate the concept.
What makes a good teacher? I'll tell you now. I've taught a lot of classes in a lot of subjects. The single most important factor is if the teacher actually understands the subject. Most high school and college teachers only have a surface understanding of their subject. This means that they have a stereotyped presentation of the material. Usually they just explain a question in the same way that it was explained to them. Sapolsky is a really good teacher because for almost everything that he presents he has indeed figured it out for himself. That doesn't mean that he is right about everything, but he has internalized everything he talks about.
patrick, no offense but aren't you the self and not the other you are objectifying as sap all asky? solipsism not in the subject but the object. No offense sir.
Patrick, I agree with you regarding prof. Sapolsky's profound knowledge and perfect command of the science he's talking about, which obviously is not quite common with lower rank teachers; I also agree that Psient's comment is beyond comprehension of ordinary terrestrials. Being a teacher myself I could add, that it seems to me that the best way to try to make sure you understand something fully is to try to explain it to many other people (pupils).
I tried to explain something to my pupils once, but they just sat there in the middle of their irises, with a profoundly blank look. ...I was trying to tell them they were beautiful too, but they knew it was the irises that I loved.
10:00 - Reductionism 19:19 - The failures of reductionism in cognition and neuropsychology.... Why? --> Higher processing (learning eg.) acts out in semi-randomly built neurological and cortical networks through synaptic plasticity (Hebbian theory)... 33:07 Negation of reductionistic theory in all bifurcating systems... - -> Neurological pathways are branched out in bifurcating systems --> higher complex cognition therefore operates through bifurcating (chaotically built) systems in the cortex --> no higher cognitive process looks neurologically the same in 2 people, even though they process the same task (twin studies).... 35:53 "You can't code for bifurcating systems via genoms or "grandmother neurons", there's simply not enough neurons or genoms to do that..." --> Reductionism fails miserably at this attempt... Hubel and Wiesel predicted that, and thus presumably changed direction of research field, in order to not confront their own reductionistic theory, when applying it to the higher cortical layers... 42:33 Westernised reductionistic theory is not applicable in biology as a "theory of everything". Other means of understanding HAS to be brought up to the forefront, in order to understand the emergence and complexity of all bifurcating systems ... 43:46 Chaotic systems --> Non-linear - and non-additive systems... 58:00 The discovery of chaos; When increasing enough amount of force on structured, reductive, linear systems there will eventually be a transition point, where it suddenly goes from high-factored predictable systems with many variables to unpredictable chaotic systems, with no periodicity and no repeating of patterns... 59:02 York's prediction of chaotic transition; Anytime you see periodicity of an odd number, you've just guaranteed that you've entered chaotic terrain... As soon as you see the first evidence of a system beginning to have three components (periods) before the pattern repeats, it's about to disappear into chaoticism - a pattern which never repeats... 1:00:17 The fallacy of negating chaotic systems in science - especially in biology... 1:02:30 Mathematical understanding of tendencies in chaotic systems vs. predictable systems. --> Linear systems have attractor points; when you mess with it, the system will equilibrate and go back to where it was in this stable, perfect exact state (number). Chaotic systems get's pulled by a "strange attractor" creating the butterfly winged pattern in a coordinate system. --> The numbers oscillates around the "strange attractor", but never fully hits the exact "perfect state" before it shifts direction... 1:16:09 Explanation of a fractal.
If anyone is interested the book Professor Sapolsky mentions is "Chaos: Making a New Science" by James Gleick. It introduces the principles and early development of the chaos theory in a general way without complicated mathematics. As an interesting aside: Professor Sapolsky has said the line about it being the first book he'd finished and started again since "Baby Beluga" as well as "Where The Wild Things Are." I guess the etiology of that is to be more relatable to current students. 😊
Dr. Sapolsky refers to a book assigned to his students: "Chaos" by James Gleick . Chaos is the name given to a phenomena/problem that often occurs when a human tries to model (or simulate) a system run by Mother Nature, such as "weather models" (to predict the weather), or the "3-Body problem" in Physics, (to predict the position & velocity of 3 celestial bodies a number of days, months or years after the starting point, t = 0.) For clarity herein, Mother Nature runs "systems" (such as the weather system, or the solar system), and humans run "models" that hopefully mimic or simulate such a system. Models are usually "moved forward" in discrete increments (such as in seconds, minutes, days, months, etc..) Mother Nature seems to move her systems forward continuously, not incrementally. But Mother Nature might also be limited to "increments", if there is such a thing as the Planck time unit. A model's initial conditions are used to calculate the new conditions one cycle (or step, or period) in the future (i.e., a second, day, month, year, etc.), which then become the initial conditions for the next cycle. If errors due to rounding (or truncation) accumulate, then that's probably a chaotic model. (Alternatively, a model could be created with simultaneous equations, if there are enough equations to account for all the variables, however, something like that has not yet been successful, so far as I know.) The problem is that the results are highly dependent on initial conditions. If initial conditions are slightly changed, the end-results change drastically, much as if there were an element of "chaos" in the calculations. Is Mother Nature's system also "highly dependent" on initial conditions? How would we ever know? "Chaos" might be merely an artifact of "moving the model forward" with millions of discrete increments, i.e., millions of seconds, minutes, days, months, etc., whereas "Mother Nature" might move the system forward in a continuous manner, not by discrete increments, but in infinitesimally small units, as in Calculus. (Alternatively, Mother Nature might be restricted by the Planck time unit.) If you vary a chaotic model's starting conditions by a very small amount, the model's (new) predictions will be vastly different a few "cycles" (or "periods") in the (surprisingly) near future. Chaotic Models always (as far as I know) make "period by period" (or cycle by cycle) predictions, whereby the "initial conditions" are the "starting-point" of the first "cycle" or "period" and the next cycle uses the predictions of the previous cycle to make new predictions. Thus, obviously, any small change in the initial conditions is compounded in future cycles. I believe Chaotic models are always thus "self referential". It seems like chaotic Models are "chaotic" simply because our (human) method of making predictions is literally "un-natural". When modeling the 3-Body Problem, you start with each Body's exact mass, position, and velocity (which, of course, includes direction of travel) and then calculate the instantaneous forces acting on each body to predict the position and velocity of each Body an hour later, or a minute later, or a second later, etc. This method could easily require trillions of calculations to move the model significantly into the future. This step-by-step method requires rounding interim results, which means each step "into the future" is merely an "estimate", which become the new starting conditions in the next step. Thus "chaos" might be an "artifact" of our "discrete-cycle & rounded results" methodology, unless Mother Nature's system is also subject to chaos.
@Yankee Yakuza Then, obviously, you would've already proven whether space and time are discrete or continuous, or which one is, and which isn't. Unless of course the flux only allows time-travel forward, which is trivial. I'm doing that every day, and so is everyone else
So basically the universe is a very complex deterministic system with too many fast changing variables for the human mind to understand. So really, it's not chaos, it's just complex order, but we cant prove that because it's so complex, so we call it chaos.
My autoplay always brings me to these lectures, in order. I fall asleep to Alan Watts every night; I wake up multiple times a night during interesting parts of the lectures, my dreams have been very interesting.
Thanks to Sapolsky and Stanford for these lectures. I have learned so much from them. The most notable thing I can remark on is that learning about neurobiology and neuroscience through Sapolsky, that living with major depression has gone from something delusional akin to an external agency meddling in my life to the understanding that, 'Oh my brain is doing this again.' It has really helped create some psychological and psycho epistemic space to manage it better and develop better tools.
Both the awesome professor and this Stanford initiative give us hope that one day knowledge will become common rather than the object of monopolistic licensing.
Knowledge is totally common and not at all the object of "monopolistic licensing". (I'm not enthusiastic about capitalism, either). What you get at university is guidance from experts, but you can learn on your own. It's all out there. University, viewed cynically, provides credentialing rather than education, necessarily. Viewed idealistically, university and gaining knowledge generally is not for "getting a job" but for the sheer interest and joy of learning and understanding at a deeper level; a university is a community dedicated to learning, where ideas spark other ideas. That's one thing you can't do on your own.
Yes... but then how do people get paid to create the material - the Systems- to begin with or to propagate them with continuing content? See 'free music' - which is most decidedly Not free, & free films : again decidedly Not free. Some system Has to be in place & Used [paid] - to allow for all the things that say allowed This very content / lecture to be given away 'free'.
Exactly. Even at my comminity (turned 4 year.) College you had to buy expensive books every semester. (Not as much as a problem if they have more pertinent info but a lot of the times they were just adding something or changing something to charge more. I actually think the reason the ethics dept wrote their own book was because it was cheaper for staff, school and students in the long run. Great ethics and honors undergraduate professors there.
This kinda stuff should be taught in public school IMO. Can you imagine how different some people would be if they were exposed to these different perspectives at a younger age? The world could be so different if people considered things in a more systematic view, non linear view, non periodic view, etc It’s super fucking important to gain different perspectives IMO and I think that’s in a painfully short supply throughout the vast majority of society. We’d all be better off if we realized our intuitions are so often wrong and that we cannot understand something without a thorough and nuanced examination, that we need a wide array of perspectives to come to a more objective understanding, etc. Whoever was a part of making this be available on RUclips, you’re doing a beautiful thing IMO. Thank you, truly.
If only the government didn’t think education was useless forcing people to withhold this info because they’re tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from pursuing higher education. But if I’m a big corporation like Amazon I can just hire some lawyers and not pay billions due in taxes 🤦♂️
The article he references at the end is: Reduction and variability in data: A Meta-Analysis [in] Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1996 Vol 39 Issue 2 pp 193-203. If that's right then the crazy obsessive undergrad that did most of the work is called Steven Balt. What a legend
Man I wish I was going to University in the USA just to learn stuff from this Professor .. on another note I'm 47 but have more hunger for learning than when I was in my late teens and 20's. I have a sense of enormous value for knowledge now
Maybe you should answer that appetite of learning, I am 26 have a master degree in Microelectronics and I feel like I didn't learn much, so I am planning to relearn maths and physics then enroll in college again to understand the topics in depth.
@@PCWorld2ady im 36. going into immunology after teaching biology for couple of years and skating/traveling before then. do many things. it's worth it.
You still can. 47 is not old. I glanced at your profile, and I know that the UK has a different culture than we do, but it is a world leader in academics. I've uploaded some biking-to-work videos in San Francisco on RUclips as well, so we might have some common ground!
Gratitude fills my heart: thanks to Stanford for providing Dr. Sapolsky the opportunity to make his course available to a wide variety of students. I'm a retired psychologist and simply love to learn. I just ordered "Behave" and "Zebras," and next month at least two more from his library. Dr. Sapolsky is the best professor I've had the privilege of learning from. Dr. Bobbi
I would love if more universities recorded and uploaded their entire semesters’ lectures like this. I listen to this over and over instead because I can’t find anything else like it. There’s watered down lectures for the masses like Ted Talks, but I want the actual education. If I run into a problem then I’ll look it up.
Then people could get educated for free. Can’t have that kind of thing in this world. Need to keep people dumb to manipulate, and make insane amounts of money from the ones that want to be “smarter”. Our societal system of behavior is a scam…
@@ismthI have one of his books but I haven’t been able to read it yet. I heard he recently deleted his Twitter or something. He may just need some time to be alone. Cleaning his room is a good idea though 😺.
That "can't teach an old dog new tricks" attitude (not that you're old, or a dog) is nonsense. I know there are biological issues with neuroelasticity decreasing with age but I feel like that attitude contributes to a lot of suffering, where people feel literally incapable of adapting to change in society or tackling an unfamiliar topic because cliches like that suggest that after a certain age people are intellectually helpless. I'm glad you decided to approach a video you didn't think you'd understand, to learn that you're absolutely still able to experience the sense of awe and beauty that goes with introducing oneself to a novel set of ideas.
when teaching is delivering a message not holding it hostage this Prof has us gripped/held in his most knowledgeable focus we are his eager students love this style of giving an education
The fact that we can access college level lectures at any point in our lives is incredible and makes up for the lack of useful information being taught in secondary schools. Sincerely, a very intellectually frustrated high schooler
oh my god thank you so much for sharing this! i love the proper use of social media. this really enhances our brains. i have not had the chance to be in school in a while and this is just what my brain needs. thank you thank you thank you
Most audiences of our Incredibly Learned Professor are bewitched by his style of lecturing - his habit of avoiding too much precision about terribly complex systems, relegating marginal facts to rapid asides, or burdening his public with puzzling nomenclature, in order to focus his energy on his main idea. It may be part of the entertaining hippie image he likes to project, or a genuine personal disinclination (most likely both). For, at heart our Incredibly Learned Professor is a bit of a comedian, a performer, delighting in his Hippie looks and showmanship, his sweeping hand gestures, his amusing mimicry, the artful modulation of his bass voice, coupled with a sharp, insightful mind. And so, when it comes to the subject itself, he never shies away from navigating the enormous complexity and scope with his customary ease, following the landmarks of his notes spread on the desk in front of him. More, he delights in his acting ability, carried away by his unstoppable torrent of loquacity, sometimes amusingly losing the arc of his main idea when tempted by a tangential development, but quickly correcting himself and rejecting the digression. No doubt, his cortex is loaded with intricate networks of fractal bifurcations that he needs to control by following the overall rule highlighted by Lewis Carroll (in his famous poem "Phantasmagoria") to combat the ever-present risk of losing one's way in complex arguments: "But, keeping still the end in view To which I hoped to come I strove to prove the matter true By putting everything I knew Into an axiom." This highly flexible cortex navigation is the basis of our Incredibly Learned Professor's impressive mental skills. All the synapses in his brain are working extremely well and he usually manages, avoiding the enticing traps of branching out sideways, to resolutely keep his ship towards its main goal.
Depression. 4am. Yes I've watched more of the lectures. Sapolsky is good. Stanford should put more of his lectures online. Imagine if a racist or stigmatising person had exposure to this.
Fascinating. I have suffered with mental illness for over twenty years and have come to the conclusion that the brain cannot be entirely understood in terms of reductionism Your lectures are all fascinating. Top Class. If I hadn't got mentally ill I would have gone into science in more depth.
One of the best books in the world , there is more book ny same author "the information" you should read that too if you haven't I think u would love it
This came up in my autoplay (that's the kind of algorithm youtube gleans from my watches haha). I had to drop out of school due to money and health. But I will never stop loving educating myself. I have adhd but when something draws me in I laser focus. This was one of those things and I am so thankful this info is out for free. Being able to educate onesself without being wealthy is so important. Now I want to get that book, it sounds fascinating. I wish I could be in this man's classes!
So much content, and ai has connected these truths with conciousness. Listen and then just look from these perspectives being presented, and all complexities become simple. Thanks for this video and this professor!
Just getting goosebumps during the explanation of strange attractor. Somehow the fact that there is no single pure answer and "this IS the phenomenon" hits me so hard and emotional. A lot of psychology and philosophy here.
Spain was called Al-Andalus (Land of the vandals), not Alhambra (the red one) which is the name of a palace-fortress in the city and province of Granada. Toledo is further north. Otherwise fantastic lecture! Love Sapolsky.
THANX SO MUCH,WHAT A LEGEND,AND PRICELESS TO SHARE FOR SOME WHO TOOK THE LONG,HIDDEN FROM YOU,MOST THINK YOUR NUTS,EVEN WHEN THE PIECES CREATE THE ART OF LIFE,THANK YOU FROM SOMEONE WHO JUST STARTED THE BEGINING OF A TRUE ADVENTURE...
1:09:39 By continuity there do exist many points of EXACT intersection. But just because the position is the same at a certain time doesn't mean it will be forever more--you need to look at its current velocity as well. Even though they intersect, they will likely (with probability 1) not have the same velocity.
It's worth noting that the butterfly shape as he's representing it, in two dimensions, is not possible, since it's impossible for two continuous lines to cross each other in two dimensions without ever sharing an exact same value. A system like that requires a third parameter and third dimension, like in a Lorenz System, and then follows the behavior he describes.
Stanford actually offers financial aid to the majority of students. It's getting accepted into Stanford that's the hard part, money is less of an issue
If you are a resident in the city where Stanford is you can just show up, as long as there are open seats you can go to classes. Its called Auditing. You don't get the degree or any credits, but you get the info. Much like watching these RUclips videos. Edit: the reason for this is because they get funding from the city, which if you pay taxes to. Means you are funding the university which gives you the right to go to classes if there are open seats.
This doesn't really apply to the scenarios the prof puts forth. Bc in every scenario thats suggested, not all the parts are known, hence the chance and randomness of the system. He's basically just talking about situations when reductionism is improperly used.
Hey, I'm 64, with 7 years of community colleehere. (2 degrees, misc courses), I'm fina!ly going to transfer to a Cal State University. San Bernardino actually doesn't charge tuition for people 60 and older! This guy, and Jordan Peterson's older lectures made my change my major to biological psychology.
at 24:14 To hear this explained in such a manner is incredible. We've been in search of this type of explanation for quite some time; thank you! • and so, watching you explain it and illustrate it, increased our useable terminology and overall understanding. That's so valuable. • its like an interplay of dimensional information, in relation to cognition & experience; that leads to (perhaps?) dual representations & communications with or without mass? ...so I'm not exactly sure in which order but... chaos & reductionism/reductionism & chaos ... yields order & (elements of the) meta consciousness?
Fact-checking: Toledo is a city in the province of Toledo in Spain and is not the same thing as the Alhambra, a fortress in the city of Granada in the province of Granada in Andalusia, Spain. Toledo is 230 miles (370 km) from the Alhambra.
Thank you Stanford and Dr. Robert Sapolsky for allowing me to be a life-long learner! Ha, ha, I can enjoy these amazingly enlightening lectures while smoking weed to alleviate my stress and expand my mind! I even made stacks of flash cards!
It’s wonderful to teach a subject matter that you don’t quite understand; manufacturing degrees and layers of unfolding chaos in a reductionist attempt. The hidden beauty of it stems from the fact that the quest for the ‘simple’ doesn’t always equate with ‘easy’, and certain functors map into the quasi-undefinable’s - albeit, in a categorically pragmatic spirit.
I've just recently finished the book, it's really good, it really makes you reconsider the whole approach of science to problems and it's effectiveness, and Sapolsky's explanation is really good at capturing the feeling of how this is such a blow to your whole world view if you're used to good old science, this guy and Walter Lewin are probably the two best professors I've had so far, although I've never met them.
Question : Are Stanford student houses heated by central campfires ? How Robert Sapolsky ignores the constant coughing is quite impressive. I'd keep a jar of lozenges by the door. W/a sign on it : (Hint,Hint)
Well here in San Diego you would be thrown in jail and fined for not wearing a mask and quarantibed. Serves 'em right. Self quarantine everytime you feel sick.
I watched these lectures as I began my psychology degree, now I’m re watching them as I’m beginning my nursing degree. I just realized his statement about using reductionism to fix a clock is a great counter argument to a point made by a thinker who compared the universe to a clock when I was studying religion, years and years before all of this. Who knows where I’ll be, or what I’ll be studying next time I re watch this. What new piece of info I’ll get from it in a few years?
Same here. I come back maybe every other year and re-listen and pick up on new things, based on what I'm dealing with at the time. Would be awesome to hear him do a 2020 (post-COVID) version.
The deterministic aperiodic system is sometimes also called a computationally irreducible system, there's no lookahead rule, the amount of computational work to get the final answer is not reducible.
About 20 years before this lecture a friend was living Nevada next to some researchers on the genome project there. They kept telling her that there didn't appear to be enough information in the genes to produce humans. They were expecting more. It was a conundrum for them. That is a loose end finally explained. I'm glad I have lived this long.
In the 70's I would drop/take ace (LSD). What Pro. R Sapolsky is describing/talking is almost similar to the effects of this 'trip'. The experience is lost into my brain memory of past times, but with this lecture memory is coming back...Wow
Speak for yourself Myles. (Standish) I majored in Math as an undergraduate because it was the easiest and then did my graduate work in math. I was an idiot in foreign languages and most of them avoided any STEM courses. There are two cycle and four cycle motorcycles. Different strokes for different folks. AMEN RA!
I read the book. I think it should have been a lot shorter. There are too many unnecessary "fillers" to make it read like prose... But by the end of the book though, you will be able to run Winamp's Milkdrop Visualization and every now and then go: - There's the Lorenz Attractor again...or: - There's the Mandelbrot Set. Guaranteed to give a lay person a rather unique perspective of what Life is.
+winston smith thanks for that, the way it kept getting discussed without stating the title was driving me nuts. strewf: I don't know about you but I seem to retain the ability to think for myself even after reading books. Crazy stuff, I know
Well, lets take a look at following function: f(x) = sin(2 * pi * x) + sin(sqrt(3) * 2 * pi * x) This function is a sum of 2 periodic functions, but never repeats its pattern. This is an example of "almost periodic function". There are actually ways to analyse things that look somewhat periodic in physics. I remember 2 special courses on non-linear and mesoscopic physics.
A few months ago, sharp-eyed commenter Z.S nicely caught our Incredibly Learned Professor’s fuzzy naming of Spain as “Alhambra” (the red one), the name of a superlative palace-fortress in the city and province of Granada, instead of Al-Andalus (Land of the vandals), effectively Spain. Its effective administrative center was Cordoba, and not Toledo, which is further north. The Wikipedia article on Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), and some of its sources, note that each major Muslim city, including Toledo, had its share of libraries, mostly privately owned by the rich aristocrats, with a few public libraries. But the largest book collections (mostly private) and public library were in Cordoba, not Toledo. However Toledo had built a reputation as the major center of intellectual activity in Al-Andalus., mostly for writers, research, translation (a huge business, then, involving Greek, Muslim and Jewish texts rendered into Castilian and Latin.), publishing, and marketing the new books. The buyers of those books remained the richest collectors, the owners of the largest private libraries, in Cordoba and elsewhere. The conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI of Castile in 1085 marked the first time a major city in Al-Andalus was captured by Christian forces. The reputation of Toledo as a scholarly and publishing center continued unabated.
Several mistakes on the first digression about the Dark Ages. Toledo wasn't named Alhambra, it was named Tulaytulah. Alhambra is a palace in a different Spanish city. Several monasteries had libraries during Early Medieval times like Monte Cassino in Italy, established in 529, Luxeuil in France in 550, Canterbury in England in 597 and Reichenau in Germany in 724. The monks there dedicated their laves to copying old texts and preserving ancient knowledge while monasteries with big libraries lent their books to other monasteries and even to secular public, so in a sense monasteries performed the function of public libraries. He claims the big turning point was the capture of the library of Toledo in 1085 when only three years later, in 1088, the amassed knowledge in an entire different country was such that it led to the opening of the university of Bologna and in 1096 the opening of the University of Oxford. Just because knowledge had been more centralized and restricted than before the Roman Empire collapsed it doesn't mean everyone was ignorant and the sudden discovery of a library in Toledo. What about Constantinople?, it was still a massive cultural hub during that time famous for its libraries. Or Paris? Important logicians works like Boethius were widely copied throughout Europe (also, most of Aristotle's work was copied, translated and commented by him and those were the copies that circulated throughout Europe at the time). Monks like Constantine the African translated important translations from Arabic treatises before 1085. Europeans didn't lost access to reason or knowledge for 600 years. Widespread education was lost and that's what distinguishes the Early Middle Ages from the Gothic period.
The opening historical introduction to the Middle Ages is inaccurate and based on outdated scholarship. Not only did the empire continue in the East as the Byzantine Empire, with its own vibrant cultural production, the fallen Western half of the Roman Empire still had remarkable intellectual activities both under smaller empires such as the Carolingian Empire and in individual monasteries.
@@Komandie a highly praised overview of medieval development and trajectory is Christopher Wickam's book: The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 he's said to be a Marxist historian, which I was curious about at first, but while reading his book, I realized it's actually the same form of material history taught in public school a nice introduction to the vibrancy of the Eastern Roman Empire, the key European counterargument of everything Sapolsky said here, is Mark Whittow's: The Making of Byzantium: 600-1025
Hello from Europe... Exactly my thoughts... Don't really like how he simplifies this jump of 700 years between the collapse of Western Roman Empire and the encounter with Africa/Muslim world...as if the Mediterranean wasn't vibrant throughout all these centuries aswell as those before and after. Besides where does the name Mediterranean come from? Also those so called "dark ages" are the times when the universities started to emerge. So that old notion of Middle ages as some primitive, dark, illiterate times is long gone in historical thinking of the past. Sorry to repeat your words basically, just couldn't help it..
doi:10.1353/pbm.1996.0057 Reductionism and Variability in Data: A Meta-Analysis.. research mentioned at 1:30:00 it was so amazing , all should read it.
Also, his discussion of chance as a point against reductionism kind of assumes that what we call "chance" isn't just really determinism that we can't see (like a coin flip)? Quantum mechanics is exempt from this, I'll grant that, but mitochondria distribution can't really be chalked up to quantum fluctuations as far as I understand them.
I really appreciate his work, his fantastic knowledge of the field, and his quite entertaining style of lecturing... But I suggest for anything concerning the first 10 minutes about the history of knowledge, philosophy and anything really you may not want to take him so seriously on that and rather refer to a textbook, or wikipedia, or professionals in that field instead, which would paint a less caricatural and bizarrely dark image of the age and thinking. ^^
Haha couldn't agree more! The picture of the middle ages he presents is very cringeworthy. And the transition too sensational. The middle ages were far more complicated and nuanced and the rupture is not as sudden as it is typically portrayed. But then again, at least he is going beyond his discipline to explore it. That's worth appreciating.
Does anyone know what history books talk about what he talks about in the first 5-7 minutes of the video? e.g. the finding of the giant library in Spain which had all of those books, and the dark ages?
Yes as an historian this was the only part that upset me! It is an excruciatingly primitive, largely off-based and inaccurate view of Europe, post Rome! (In ALL other respects this professor is TOP KNOTCH! A natural educator!)
If anyone is interested in the paper Dr Sapolsky developed with his student on testosterone and aggression and the reductionest approach. The title is "Reductionism and Variability in Data: A Meta-Analysis" by Dr Robert Sapolsky and Dr Steven Balt.
There is a flaw in Reducing a study of a particular evolving bio-logical system or objective to component events, (even if you can pick the woods from the trees, is there anything wrong with the mixture?), ..because of the Quantum Fields Modulation Mechanism of Phys-Chem involved. The reducing of complex states into logical steps is in the "Punctuated Equilibrium" pulsed format, (pulses in a holistic, stratified spectrum, are equivalent to the "leaky brane" holographic concept of QM-Time), so only those aspects of constant, consistent-continuity are visible, unless each transition of form is measured and observable by experiment. Whatever possibilities are in "darkness" can only be treated by "Emergent" symptoms. The converse of reduction is expansion or inflation (construction by Timing-spacing), calculations of possibilities that led to the observable probability. Complex and messy. Reduction to Principle is optimal. Chaos, the scattered stages of change still here-now in our environment is a "universe of parallels", co-existing in the current "sum of all history", and it's not intended to be a clear presentation of the evidence of linear development that everyone hoped for. (You can elect Representatives of the component elements to choose "rule of thumb" policies, but it's a guarantee of inflexibility of practical purposes) Everyone's life is a unique composition of infinite complexities. Optimising a course through it requires comprehensive Navigational techniques, and continuous learning to adapt. Watch all Prof Sapolsky's lectures.
3:23, 8:23, 18:46, 28:00, 33:55 (image recognition scale invariant?), 35:15, 1:01:00, 1:13:52 (human mind seeks patterns), 1:15:21 (one has to define the topology of solutions first then convergence, for systems with deterministic evolution, the short term patterns will “coincide better” with closer initial conditions), 1:20:22, 1:27:01 (what about variability for variability? Correlation not causation, could be high variability studies won’t get published.), 1:29:46, 1:33:54, 1:37:03
9:30pm Sunday 19th January 2020...Watched 2 hours of a video plus a Joe Rogan Podcast. Too tired to focus on this one now. He is an excellent teacher. His voice resonates with me and is very soothing!
I am 75. Due to circumstances, I was not able to go on to higher education (college). I listen to this wonderful professor and deeply regret this fact of my life. I could listen endlessly, to the way he recreates history. Thanks to all who have made this possible.
One becomes old if he stops learning.
So you are 75 but you are not old bcoz you still like to learn
Stay young forever
Sapolsky is plausibly the best lecturer I’ve ever heard, you’re getting a better lecture listening experience over RUclips than most people ever get at college.
To be fair, most lectures by most professors lack quality authorship and are rather usually just overviews of the reading material. And generally a student is so focused on taking notes, working on assignments, and preparing for exams that there is little time to really enjoy lectures.
❤️
It is marvellous that these lectures are so accessible to non- scientists. I've now bought a book by Sapolsky which is equally fascinating and readable.
Dr. Sapolsky's RUclips lectures are truly the most emotionally inspiring, intellectually stimulating, and flat-out entertaining free academic content out there on ANY subject or discipline. This gifted man has a knack for explaining complicated ideas and issues in the most basic and relatable of ways. Such a rhetorical skill is a talent many intelligent minds in the academy sorely lack, much to the detriment of their students' class performance. Thank you, Stanford administration, for making freely available to the public a window into the minds of your most brilliant faculty.
O hi hi guy
Well said!
Since people keep asking, the book he mentions at the beginning is Chaos by James Gleick.
Thank you - I'm down here in the comments early to find that out. :-)
Sorry people,it takes intelligence to grasp this lecture otherwise your in the wrong place.
You Rock ✊
One of the best books I've ever read. If I recommend one book, this is it.
Amazing Book-changes the way you look at the world.
Dr. Sapolsky has a great sense of humor and a soothing delivery. One of my favorite professors.
I can’t believe people still pay for education. This is just phenomenal information for free. I am literally a high school drop out in my mid 30’s and I watch Ivy League lectures all day. This is fricking amazing. This is how humanity is meant to be. Stanford is killing it. I’ve seen this guy in documentaries too and his ability to convey information is truly a blessing.
Yeah dude but those people want to get a job in the field and you need qualifications for it. Yeah it’s ridiculous to pay for education but it’s amazing how your next step is not “because it should be free “
@@sufimuslimlion4114 or all of us privelleged or lucky enough to get this sort of education could come together and create our own authoritative qualifications, produce things of value in the market, and live happily ever after however inferior or superior the hypothetical qualifications stand.
1. You are ignoring that it is those people in the class who are paying for these lectures and the studies done there. If they did not pay, we would not see this.
2. This information is not updated, it is a good basis to start but a lot has changed.
3. To actually do anything in this field you need a qualification, you need the ability to learn and then be examined on the finer details of what you learnt. So that you can say, yes I do actually know what I am talking about.
Look dude I am in the same place as you but education is still important.
Fam this literally from a college
@Martin Čelko Incoherent. Read more, then you can stop using so many words to say so little.
Fantastic lecture. I really appreciate that the prof repeats an idea in slightly different words, just incase the first time didn't sink in. Great teacher. Thanks to Stanford for making all these excellent videos readily available.
I found that a little bit annoying that he did repeat himself multiple times over with slight modulation. But I can totally imagine that it would increase the chances of more people understanding it if he did repeat it with slight modulation. Signs of a good teacher, I suppose I should incorporate this technique.
@@measure5141 I suppose a teacher must try and find a balance between being succinct and being easily understood. I do believe the best teachers are the ones who strive to really communicate ideas and tailor for their audience, rather than simply "emitting" knowledge into a room and assuming it will be absorbed.
Repetition is especially important not only for memory but to help offset any inclination in more knowledgeable listeners to start questioning the foundational assumptions, or the extremes of characterization, in the story being told. I wonder when the notion of a hinged book was invented, or a codex instead of a roll, when the stirrup was created, when Bede wrote _De temporum ratione_ with its descriptions of the universe as a working system including eclipses, etc., when _Hildebrandslied_ (Song of Hildebrand) on identity and the self was written, or the work of disabled scientist, Hermann of Reichenau, was done. How could any such things come from such an age and place as described at the beginning? "Unlike dates, periods are not facts. They are retrospective conceptions that we form about past events, useful to focus discussion, but very often leading historical thought astray." (G. M. Trevelyan, historian, 1942)
It's fab. In a way the original intent (also) of the Internet.
@@udderhippo A lot of it is being able to gauge when a statement will stick in the head like a rule, and can be recalled word for word and gives you the whole equation, or whether it's a kind of information that needs to be pushed into the brain from a few different angles to get it all the way in. You can pretty much condense high school math into one really large infographic, you only need the equation and if you understand basic rules, you'll have no problem. The kind of information this teacher is trying to convey requires an elastic, abstract understanding of the concepts. Reductionism can be subjective if a person isn't good at it, so they end up going in the wrong direction, and that's why this teacher is working through every example he can to elucidate the concept.
What makes a good teacher? I'll tell you now. I've taught a lot of classes in a lot of subjects. The single most important factor is if the teacher actually understands the subject. Most high school and college teachers only have a surface understanding of their subject. This means that they have a stereotyped presentation of the material. Usually they just explain a question in the same way that it was explained to them. Sapolsky is a really good teacher because for almost everything that he presents he has indeed figured it out for himself. That doesn't mean that he is right about everything, but he has internalized everything he talks about.
patrick, no offense but aren't you the self and not the other you are objectifying as sap all asky? solipsism not in the subject but the object. No offense sir.
psient It is refreshing to read a comment that is polite. But alas you are too deep for me. I can't understand your post.
Patrick, I agree with you regarding prof. Sapolsky's profound knowledge and perfect command of the science he's talking about, which obviously is not quite common with lower rank teachers; I also agree that Psient's comment is beyond comprehension of ordinary terrestrials. Being a teacher myself I could add, that it seems to me that the best way to try to make sure you understand something fully is to try to explain it to many other people (pupils).
True, there is saying that the one who teaches has to teach it twice - first himself, then the one whom he is teaching.
I tried to explain something to my pupils once, but they just sat there in the middle of their irises, with a profoundly blank look.
...I was trying to tell them they were beautiful too, but they knew it was the irises that I loved.
10:00 - Reductionism
19:19 - The failures of reductionism in cognition and neuropsychology....
Why? --> Higher processing (learning eg.) acts out in semi-randomly built neurological and cortical networks through synaptic plasticity (Hebbian theory)...
33:07 Negation of reductionistic theory in all bifurcating systems... -
-> Neurological pathways are branched out in bifurcating systems --> higher complex cognition therefore operates through bifurcating (chaotically built) systems in the cortex --> no higher cognitive process looks neurologically the same in 2 people, even though they process the same task (twin studies)....
35:53 "You can't code for bifurcating systems via genoms or "grandmother neurons", there's simply not enough neurons or genoms to do that..." --> Reductionism fails miserably at this attempt...
Hubel and Wiesel predicted that, and thus presumably changed direction of research field, in order to not confront their own reductionistic theory, when applying it to the higher cortical layers...
42:33 Westernised reductionistic theory is not applicable in biology as a "theory of everything". Other means of understanding HAS to be brought up to the forefront, in order to understand the emergence and complexity of all bifurcating systems ...
43:46 Chaotic systems --> Non-linear - and non-additive systems...
58:00 The discovery of chaos; When increasing enough amount of force on structured, reductive, linear systems there will eventually be a transition point, where it suddenly goes from high-factored predictable systems with many variables to unpredictable chaotic systems, with no periodicity and no repeating of patterns...
59:02 York's prediction of chaotic transition; Anytime you see periodicity of an odd number, you've just guaranteed that you've entered chaotic terrain... As soon as you see the first evidence of a system beginning to have three components (periods) before the pattern repeats, it's about to disappear into chaoticism - a pattern which never repeats...
1:00:17 The fallacy of negating chaotic systems in science - especially in biology...
1:02:30 Mathematical understanding of tendencies in chaotic systems vs. predictable systems. -->
Linear systems have attractor points; when you mess with it, the system will equilibrate and go back to where it was in this stable, perfect exact state (number).
Chaotic systems get's pulled by a "strange attractor" creating the butterfly winged pattern in a coordinate system. --> The numbers oscillates around the "strange attractor", but never fully hits the exact "perfect state" before it shifts direction...
1:16:09 Explanation of a fractal.
I shall consider these as spoilers.
Just kidding.
thanks
beautiful! thank you so much for this- i am understanding NOTHING so i'm going to go over this first to see if something sticks haha
Awesome.. Can you do the other lectures too!
Thank you very much
How Sapolsky is fascinated by the things he is explaining is really beautiful to see
Lies again? AO Levels
thats what makes a great professor
If anyone is interested the book Professor Sapolsky mentions is "Chaos: Making a New Science" by James Gleick. It introduces the principles and early development of the chaos theory in a general way without complicated mathematics.
As an interesting aside: Professor Sapolsky has said the line about it being the first book he'd finished and started again since "Baby Beluga" as well as "Where The Wild Things Are." I guess the etiology of that is to be more relatable to current students. 😊
Dr. Sapolsky refers to a book assigned to his students: "Chaos" by James Gleick
. Chaos is the name given to a phenomena/problem that often occurs when a human tries to model (or simulate) a system run by Mother Nature, such as "weather models" (to predict the weather), or the "3-Body problem" in Physics, (to predict the position & velocity of 3 celestial bodies a number of days, months or years after the starting point, t = 0.)
For clarity herein, Mother Nature runs "systems" (such as the weather system, or the solar system), and humans run "models" that hopefully mimic or simulate such a system. Models are usually "moved forward" in discrete increments (such as in seconds, minutes, days, months, etc..) Mother Nature seems to move her systems forward continuously, not incrementally. But Mother Nature might also be limited to "increments", if there is such a thing as the Planck time unit.
A model's initial conditions are used to calculate the new conditions one cycle (or step, or period) in the future (i.e., a second, day, month, year, etc.), which then become the initial conditions for the next cycle. If errors due to rounding (or truncation) accumulate, then that's probably a chaotic model.
(Alternatively, a model could be created with simultaneous equations, if there are enough equations to account for all the variables, however, something like that has not yet been successful, so far as I know.)
The problem is that the results are highly dependent on initial conditions. If initial conditions are slightly changed, the end-results change drastically, much as if there were an element of "chaos" in the calculations. Is Mother Nature's system also "highly dependent" on initial conditions? How would we ever know?
"Chaos" might be merely an artifact of "moving the model forward" with millions of discrete increments, i.e., millions of seconds, minutes, days, months, etc., whereas "Mother Nature" might move the system forward in a continuous manner, not by discrete increments, but in infinitesimally small units, as in Calculus. (Alternatively, Mother Nature might be restricted by the Planck time unit.)
If you vary a chaotic model's starting conditions by a very small amount, the model's (new) predictions will be vastly different a few "cycles" (or "periods") in the (surprisingly) near future.
Chaotic Models always (as far as I know) make "period by period" (or cycle by cycle) predictions, whereby the "initial conditions" are the "starting-point" of the first "cycle" or "period" and the next cycle uses the predictions of the previous cycle to make new predictions. Thus, obviously, any small change in the initial conditions is compounded in future cycles. I believe Chaotic models are always thus "self referential".
It seems like chaotic Models are "chaotic" simply because our (human) method of making predictions is literally "un-natural". When modeling the 3-Body Problem, you start with each Body's exact mass, position, and velocity (which, of course, includes direction of travel) and then calculate the instantaneous forces acting on each body to predict the position and velocity of each Body an hour later, or a minute later, or a second later, etc. This method could easily require trillions of calculations to move the model significantly into the future. This step-by-step method requires rounding interim results, which means each step "into the future" is merely an "estimate", which become the new starting conditions in the next step.
Thus "chaos" might be an "artifact" of our "discrete-cycle & rounded results" methodology, unless Mother Nature's system is also subject to chaos.
James Gleick's book "The Information" is great read also and fits well with his Chaos book.
@@JH-ji6cj Thank you.
i was hoping to find a comment with the author of the "Chaos Book". Thank you :D
@Yankee Yakuza Then, obviously, you would've already proven whether space and time are discrete or continuous, or which one is, and which isn't. Unless of course the flux only allows time-travel forward, which is trivial. I'm doing that every day, and so is everyone else
So basically the universe is a very complex deterministic system with too many fast changing variables for the human mind to understand. So really, it's not chaos, it's just complex order, but we cant prove that because it's so complex, so we call it chaos.
This is the most amazing thing on RUclips.
Decade later: still is
@@princesssilverblood yup
This feels timeless. I would love to be his student. His way with our language is immense. I would love to think and speak like this.
I would say that in a way you are his student.
Less personal and without q&a's but like the rest of us you are here, very far into this series.
My autoplay always brings me to these lectures, in order. I fall asleep to Alan Watts every night; I wake up multiple times a night during interesting parts of the lectures, my dreams have been very interesting.
Im not the only one!!
Same!!
Autoplay for me too....
Thanks to Sapolsky and Stanford for these lectures. I have learned so much from them. The most notable thing I can remark on is that learning about neurobiology and neuroscience through Sapolsky, that living with major depression has gone from something delusional akin to an external agency meddling in my life to the understanding that, 'Oh my brain is doing this again.' It has really helped create some psychological and psycho epistemic space to manage it better and develop better tools.
Humanities and science come together in his lectures, truly enlightening and entertaining.
Dr Sapolsky is amazing speaker. I could listen him for hours. Thank you for sharing his lectures.
i need this man's lectures as a podcast. huge fan, and super grateful for these videos.
Both the awesome professor and this Stanford initiative give us hope that one day knowledge will become common rather than the object of monopolistic licensing.
Knowledge is totally common and not at all the object of "monopolistic licensing". (I'm not enthusiastic about capitalism, either). What you get at university is guidance from experts, but you can learn on your own. It's all out there. University, viewed cynically, provides credentialing rather than education, necessarily. Viewed idealistically, university and gaining knowledge generally is not for "getting a job" but for the sheer interest and joy of learning and understanding at a deeper level; a university is a community dedicated to learning, where ideas spark other ideas. That's one thing you can't do on your own.
Yes... but then how do people get paid to create the material - the Systems- to begin with or to propagate them with continuing content? See 'free music' - which is most decidedly Not free, & free films : again decidedly Not free. Some system Has to be in place & Used [paid] - to allow for all the things that say allowed This very content / lecture to be given away 'free'.
Exactly. Even at my comminity (turned 4 year.) College you had to buy expensive books every semester. (Not as much as a problem if they have more pertinent info but a lot of the times they were just adding something or changing something to charge more. I actually think the reason the ethics dept wrote their own book was because it was cheaper for staff, school and students in the long run. Great ethics and honors undergraduate professors there.
@@slowpainful not bad. life is certainly what you make of it
This kinda stuff should be taught in public school IMO. Can you imagine how different some people would be if they were exposed to these different perspectives at a younger age? The world could be so different if people considered things in a more systematic view, non linear view, non periodic view, etc
It’s super fucking important to gain different perspectives IMO and I think that’s in a painfully short supply throughout the vast majority of society. We’d all be better off if we realized our intuitions are so often wrong and that we cannot understand something without a thorough and nuanced examination, that we need a wide array of perspectives to come to a more objective understanding, etc.
Whoever was a part of making this be available on RUclips, you’re doing a beautiful thing IMO. Thank you, truly.
If only the government didn’t think education was useless forcing people to withhold this info because they’re tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from pursuing higher education. But if I’m a big corporation like Amazon I can just hire some lawyers and not pay billions due in taxes 🤦♂️
Sopolsky delivers in such a comprehensive way. Thank you for the upload Stanford.
I actually took the 5 minute break
I take more than 5min for each video, and usually can't watch more than one per day. It's a lot of information :)
(raises hand...)
I took 2 days
@Beeblebrox One How do you fare with minute rice?
I took a 5 year break. Now I'm back with the same beard and hair to finish the rest.
The article he references at the end is: Reduction and variability in data: A Meta-Analysis [in] Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1996 Vol 39 Issue 2 pp 193-203. If that's right then the crazy obsessive undergrad that did most of the work is called Steven Balt. What a legend
THANK YOU!
Well atleast the crazy obsessive undergrad should have gained some publicity by now.
ruclips.net/video/SEwaEXno-2g/видео.html
Watch at 1: 12: 44.
Yup, here's the pdf: muse.jhu.edu/article/401203/pdf
I was trying to figure out how I was going to find the paper, and here it is! Thanx!
oh thank you!
Man I wish I was going to University in the USA just to learn stuff from this Professor .. on another note I'm 47 but have more hunger for learning than when I was in my late teens and 20's. I have a sense of enormous value for knowledge now
Maybe you should answer that appetite of learning, I am 26 have a master degree in Microelectronics and I feel like I didn't learn much, so I am planning to relearn maths and physics then enroll in college again to understand the topics in depth.
@@PCWorld2ady im 36. going into immunology after teaching biology for couple of years and skating/traveling before then.
do many things. it's worth it.
I had a lot of professors in skool. Very few approached this level.
The older I get (I'm now 60) the more I appreciate knowledge. Maybe it's because we do become wi
ser as we age.
You still can. 47 is not old. I glanced at your profile, and I know that the UK has a different culture than we do, but it is a world leader in academics. I've uploaded some biking-to-work videos in San Francisco on RUclips as well, so we might have some common ground!
This is the best teacher I’ve ever heard speak. Thank you so very much for sharing this...
Agreed. He's extremely articulate -- even more articulate than some of my favorite science communicators.
Gratitude fills my heart: thanks to Stanford for providing Dr. Sapolsky the opportunity to make his course available to a wide variety of students. I'm a retired psychologist and simply love to learn. I just ordered "Behave" and "Zebras," and next month at least two more from his library. Dr. Sapolsky is the best professor I've had the privilege of learning from. Dr. Bobbi
I would love if more universities recorded and uploaded their entire semesters’ lectures like this. I listen to this over and over instead because I can’t find anything else like it. There’s watered down lectures for the masses like Ted Talks, but I want the actual education. If I run into a problem then I’ll look it up.
Then people could get educated for free. Can’t have that kind of thing in this world. Need to keep people dumb to manipulate, and make insane amounts of money from the ones that want to be “smarter”. Our societal system of behavior is a scam…
l love it as well
Jordan Peterson has a full course on RUclips search for 2017 personality series
Agreed, it’d be great. I’d ignore the JP recommendation above though lol
@@ismthI have one of his books but I haven’t been able to read it yet. I heard he recently deleted his Twitter or something. He may just need some time to be alone. Cleaning his room is a good idea though 😺.
Thankyou I'm 50 and didn't think I'd understand these concepts but you explained it very well I got most of it....I will watch it again x
That "can't teach an old dog new tricks" attitude (not that you're old, or a dog) is nonsense. I know there are biological issues with neuroelasticity decreasing with age but I feel like that attitude contributes to a lot of suffering, where people feel literally incapable of adapting to change in society or tackling an unfamiliar topic because cliches like that suggest that after a certain age people are intellectually helpless. I'm glad you decided to approach a video you didn't think you'd understand, to learn that you're absolutely still able to experience the sense of awe and beauty that goes with introducing oneself to a novel set of ideas.
when teaching is delivering a message not holding it hostage this Prof has us gripped/held in his most knowledgeable focus we are his eager students love this style of giving an education
This is the professor I would have loved to have. What a beautiful mind and how he explains difficult concepts in a simple and clear way is so cool
Dear camera operator, it's okay to not always follow his head. Maybe also consider what he's pointing at. Okay, good talk!
do you realize you're talking to a machine?
lol
It would help to have 2 camera guys. I would do it if I get to attend these courses for free 😆
@@ameremortal Just give him a Netflix budget!
@@apetass123 That way, we could have both a great lecture and tiddies at the same time!
Whoever that undergrad research assistant was: you are a bloody champion.
The way he builds off his last points is masterful.
The fact that we can access college level lectures at any point in our lives is incredible and makes up for the lack of useful information being taught in secondary schools. Sincerely, a very intellectually frustrated high schooler
1:32:55 Takes on a whole new level of understanding 11 years later
what a realization
it's basic understanding, I can't believe there are so many people in the world who still don't get it
oh my god thank you so much for sharing this! i love the proper use of social media. this really enhances our brains. i have not had the chance to be in school in a while and this is just what my brain needs. thank you thank you thank you
"The proper use of social media:" Truth.
those kids cough alot
+sinisa majetic You want to hear me during a Conservative Party Political Broadcast on British TV!
Dammit! I didn't notice until you mentioned it!
i know!! wtf. they are so tense they cannot breathe
Me too. *cough* *cough*
sinisa majetic I've noticed this in several of these Human Bio lectures! It's as if there are coordinated sessions of mass coughing scheduled!!
All of Roberts Lectures are amazing.
One of the most interesting things i have ever heard. Much appreciation for everything/-one that contributed to making this accessible.
Most audiences of our Incredibly Learned Professor are bewitched by his style of lecturing - his habit of avoiding too much precision about terribly complex systems, relegating marginal facts to rapid asides, or burdening his public with puzzling nomenclature, in order to focus his energy on his main idea. It may be part of the entertaining hippie image he likes to project, or a genuine personal disinclination (most likely both). For, at heart our Incredibly Learned Professor is a bit of a comedian, a performer, delighting in his Hippie looks and showmanship, his sweeping hand gestures, his amusing mimicry, the artful modulation of his bass voice, coupled with a sharp, insightful mind. And so, when it comes to the subject itself, he never shies away from navigating the enormous complexity and scope with his customary ease, following the landmarks of his notes spread on the desk in front of him.
More, he delights in his acting ability, carried away by his unstoppable torrent of loquacity, sometimes amusingly losing the arc of his main idea when tempted by a tangential development, but quickly correcting himself and rejecting the digression. No doubt, his cortex is loaded with intricate networks of fractal bifurcations that he needs to control by following the overall rule highlighted by Lewis Carroll (in his famous poem "Phantasmagoria") to combat the ever-present risk of losing one's way in complex arguments:
"But, keeping still the end in view
To which I hoped to come
I strove to prove the matter true
By putting everything I knew
Into an axiom."
This highly flexible cortex navigation is the basis of our Incredibly Learned Professor's impressive mental skills. All the synapses in his brain are working extremely well and he usually manages, avoiding the enticing traps of branching out sideways, to resolutely keep his ship towards its main goal.
Who else is watching at 1am on Saturday?
1am on a Wednesday
8pm on saturday
It is 23:11 on Saturday in Yekaterinburg right now.
.Andrew W.
Depression. 4am. Yes I've watched more of the lectures.
Sapolsky is good. Stanford should put more of his lectures online.
Imagine if a racist or stigmatising person had exposure to this.
Fascinating. I have suffered with mental illness for over twenty years and have come to the conclusion that the brain cannot be entirely understood in terms of reductionism
Your lectures are all fascinating. Top Class. If I hadn't got mentally ill I would have gone into science in more depth.
Yes and mental 'illness' is a chaotic system is complex and misunderstood and maybe not Illness. :)
Yes taking back my mental health i understand this. Lets keep healing ❤
@@aidan9876 Disorder/s*
Chaos: Making a new science, by james gleick. Wonderful read, just finished it and am going to read through it again!
Don't think he mentioned the title. Are you sure this is the same book
@@theunknown4209 He mentioned the same book in the first lecture itself.
One of the best books in the world , there is more book ny same author "the information" you should read that too if you haven't I think u would love it
Thanks! I now want to read this book.
This came up in my autoplay (that's the kind of algorithm youtube gleans from my watches haha). I had to drop out of school due to money and health. But I will never stop loving educating myself. I have adhd but when something draws me in I laser focus. This was one of those things and I am so thankful this info is out for free. Being able to educate onesself without being wealthy is so important. Now I want to get that book, it sounds fascinating. I wish I could be in this man's classes!
Lit me
This is one of the greatest lectures I've ever heard in my life
Clouds not clocks might be one of the wisest ways I’ve herd to explain when to and to not use reductionism. Absolutely brilliant
Navie-Stocke's equation and Gauß's divergence theorem, mb?
*heard, btw.
So much content, and ai has connected these truths with conciousness. Listen and then just look from these perspectives being presented, and all complexities become simple. Thanks for this video and this professor!
Exceptionally well explained. He is an incredible communicator. A brilliant and talented person!
Just getting goosebumps during the explanation of strange attractor. Somehow the fact that there is no single pure answer and "this IS the phenomenon" hits me so hard and emotional. A lot of psychology and philosophy here.
youtube has been tenaciously recommending me this video for 8 years
do yourself a favor and start with lecture no. 1 of this very course and you'll be amazed forever.
Spain was called Al-Andalus (Land of the vandals), not Alhambra (the red one) which is the name of a palace-fortress in the city and province of Granada. Toledo is further north. Otherwise fantastic lecture! Love Sapolsky.
How do we you’re correct ?
@@vidalskyociosen3326 You don't. You are free to do your due diligence.
It turns out Sapolsky was right all along, too late to many likes already for the commenter.
@@vidalskyociosen3326 If you say so, buddy. You're entitled to your opinion. :)
I truly admire this gentleman of profesor, education is power, God bless.
Such an amazing lecture on the evolution of human thinking and evolving scientific reasoning.
THANX SO MUCH,WHAT A LEGEND,AND PRICELESS TO SHARE FOR SOME WHO TOOK THE LONG,HIDDEN FROM YOU,MOST THINK YOUR NUTS,EVEN WHEN THE PIECES CREATE THE ART OF LIFE,THANK YOU FROM SOMEONE WHO JUST STARTED THE BEGINING OF A TRUE ADVENTURE...
1:09:39 By continuity there do exist many points of EXACT intersection. But just because the position is the same at a certain time doesn't mean it will be forever more--you need to look at its current velocity as well. Even though they intersect, they will likely (with probability 1) not have the same velocity.
It's worth noting that the butterfly shape as he's representing it, in two dimensions, is not possible, since it's impossible for two continuous lines to cross each other in two dimensions without ever sharing an exact same value. A system like that requires a third parameter and third dimension, like in a Lorenz System, and then follows the behavior he describes.
Can you imagine ?
I couldn’t possibly afford to attend Stanford university yet I’m learning from this amazing professor
Stanford actually offers financial aid to the majority of students. It's getting accepted into Stanford that's the hard part, money is less of an issue
If you are a resident in the city where Stanford is you can just show up, as long as there are open seats you can go to classes. Its called Auditing. You don't get the degree or any credits, but you get the info. Much like watching these RUclips videos.
Edit: the reason for this is because they get funding from the city, which if you pay taxes to. Means you are funding the university which gives you the right to go to classes if there are open seats.
What did you learn?
"The whole is more than the sum of its parts" - Aristotle.
only because there's noise in the system
ap4lm tree that’s synergy
This doesn't really apply to the scenarios the prof puts forth. Bc in every scenario thats suggested, not all the parts are known, hence the chance and randomness of the system. He's basically just talking about situations when reductionism is improperly used.
and Leonard Cohen
Maybe more appropriate to say a whole is less than the sum of its parts
Hey, I'm 64, with 7 years of community colleehere. (2 degrees, misc courses), I'm fina!ly going to transfer to a Cal State University. San Bernardino actually doesn't charge tuition for people 60 and older! This guy, and Jordan Peterson's older lectures made my change my major to biological psychology.
at 24:14 To hear this explained in such a manner is incredible. We've been in search of this type of explanation for quite some time; thank you!
• and so, watching you explain it and illustrate it, increased our useable terminology and overall understanding. That's so valuable.
• its like an interplay of dimensional information, in relation to cognition & experience; that leads to (perhaps?) dual representations & communications with or without mass?
...so I'm not exactly sure in which order but... chaos & reductionism/reductionism & chaos ... yields order & (elements of the) meta consciousness?
This is a trancedental, immensly insightful, and properly delivered lecture. Thank you
19:40 Where westernized reductionism failed to work: Complex biological systems. Enlightening!
Fact-checking: Toledo is a city in the province of Toledo in Spain and is not the same thing as the Alhambra, a fortress in the city of Granada in the province of Granada in Andalusia, Spain. Toledo is 230 miles (370 km) from the Alhambra.
I thought he said that Alhambra was the name used to refer to Spain at the time
Thank you Stanford and Dr. Robert Sapolsky for allowing me to be a life-long learner! Ha, ha, I can enjoy these amazingly enlightening lectures while smoking weed to alleviate my stress and expand my mind! I even made stacks of flash cards!
It’s wonderful to teach a subject matter that you don’t quite understand; manufacturing degrees and layers of unfolding chaos in a reductionist attempt. The hidden beauty of it stems from the fact that the quest for the ‘simple’ doesn’t always equate with ‘easy’, and certain functors map into the quasi-undefinable’s - albeit, in a categorically pragmatic spirit.
How awesome would it be to just take his classes and be able to ask questions? Such a great lecturer.
This looks amazing. I saw it on the side while watching Leonard Susskind's lectures. I'll have to get back to see the whole series.
Just come across this brilliant man, loving his lectures.
Brilliant. This is how I figured out certain human experiments. By breaking down all the components and realized it just repeat itself.
I've just recently finished the book, it's really good, it really makes you reconsider the whole approach of science to problems and it's effectiveness, and Sapolsky's explanation is really good at capturing the feeling of how this is such a blow to your whole world view if you're used to good old science, this guy and Walter Lewin are probably the two best professors I've had so far, although I've never met them.
Question : Are Stanford student houses heated by central campfires ? How Robert Sapolsky ignores the constant
coughing is quite impressive. I'd keep a jar of lozenges by the door. W/a sign on it : (Hint,Hint)
YABBAHEY YABBAHEY probably too many bong hits...
I keep wondering if there is mold in the air ducts
lots of smog south of the bay
Well here in San Diego you would be thrown in jail and fined for not wearing a mask and quarantibed. Serves 'em right. Self quarantine everytime you feel sick.
@@shwhitebuffalo9170 nOoOo MaSkS aRe EvIl
I watched these lectures as I began my psychology degree, now I’m re watching them as I’m beginning my nursing degree.
I just realized his statement about using reductionism to fix a clock is a great counter argument to a point made by a thinker who compared the universe to a clock when I was studying religion, years and years before all of this.
Who knows where I’ll be, or what I’ll be studying next time I re watch this. What new piece of info I’ll get from it in a few years?
Same here. I come back maybe every other year and re-listen and pick up on new things, based on what I'm dealing with at the time.
Would be awesome to hear him do a 2020 (post-COVID) version.
This is basically what you can see in Fixpoint-Iteration. Mind blown.
The deterministic aperiodic system is sometimes also called a computationally irreducible system, there's no lookahead rule, the amount of computational work to get the final answer is not reducible.
About 20 years before this lecture a friend was living Nevada next to some researchers on the genome project there. They kept telling her that there didn't appear to be enough information in the genes to produce humans. They were expecting more. It was a conundrum for them. That is a loose end finally explained. I'm glad I have lived this long.
In the 70's I would drop/take ace (LSD). What Pro. R Sapolsky is describing/talking is almost similar to the effects of this 'trip'. The experience is lost into my brain memory of past times, but with this lecture memory is coming back...Wow
If Sapolsky starts with "I'm not sure I truly understand it", then YOU HAVE NO CHANCE.
Speak for yourself Myles. (Standish) I majored in Math as an undergraduate because it was the easiest and then did my graduate work in math.
I was an idiot in foreign languages and most of them avoided any STEM courses.
There are two cycle and four cycle motorcycles. Different strokes for different folks. AMEN RA!
If you watch the end of his last lecture you'll probably get why it doesn't matter.
I read the book. I think it should have been a lot shorter. There are too many unnecessary "fillers" to make it read like prose... But by the end of the book though, you will be able to run Winamp's Milkdrop Visualization and every now and then go: - There's the Lorenz Attractor again...or: - There's the Mandelbrot Set. Guaranteed to give a lay person a rather unique perspective of what Life is.
Could you please tell me what the title of the book is? Thank you.
Simon Böhm
Chaos by James Gleick
+Ben Z Or they could try thinking for themselves.
+winston smith thanks for that, the way it kept getting discussed without stating the title was driving me nuts.
strewf: I don't know about you but I seem to retain the ability to think for myself even after reading books. Crazy stuff, I know
Whats the book? Chaos by who?
Well, lets take a look at following function:
f(x) = sin(2 * pi * x) + sin(sqrt(3) * 2 * pi * x)
This function is a sum of 2 periodic functions, but never repeats its pattern. This is an example of "almost periodic function". There are actually ways to analyse things that look somewhat periodic in physics. I remember 2 special courses on non-linear and mesoscopic physics.
The most interesting and well explainer (sic)? lecturer ever. Sapolsky is a god in neuroscience. Aĺl of his talks are beyond.
A few months ago, sharp-eyed commenter Z.S nicely caught our Incredibly Learned Professor’s fuzzy naming of Spain as “Alhambra” (the red one), the name of a superlative palace-fortress in the city and province of Granada, instead of Al-Andalus (Land of the vandals), effectively Spain. Its effective administrative center was Cordoba, and not Toledo, which is further north. The Wikipedia article on Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), and some of its sources, note that each major Muslim city, including Toledo, had its share of libraries, mostly privately owned by the rich aristocrats, with a few public libraries. But the largest book collections (mostly private) and public library were in Cordoba, not Toledo.
However Toledo had built a reputation as the major center of intellectual activity in Al-Andalus., mostly for writers, research, translation (a huge business, then, involving Greek, Muslim and Jewish texts rendered into Castilian and Latin.), publishing, and marketing the new books. The buyers of those books remained the richest collectors, the owners of the largest private libraries, in Cordoba and elsewhere. The conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI of Castile in 1085 marked the first time a major city in Al-Andalus was captured by Christian forces. The reputation of Toledo as a scholarly and publishing center continued unabated.
Several mistakes on the first digression about the Dark Ages. Toledo wasn't named Alhambra, it was named Tulaytulah. Alhambra is a palace in a different Spanish city. Several monasteries had libraries during Early Medieval times like Monte Cassino in Italy, established in 529, Luxeuil in France in 550, Canterbury in England in 597 and Reichenau in Germany in 724. The monks there dedicated their laves to copying old texts and preserving ancient knowledge while monasteries with big libraries lent their books to other monasteries and even to secular public, so in a sense monasteries performed the function of public libraries. He claims the big turning point was the capture of the library of Toledo in 1085 when only three years later, in 1088, the amassed knowledge in an entire different country was such that it led to the opening of the university of Bologna and in 1096 the opening of the University of Oxford. Just because knowledge had been more centralized and restricted than before the Roman Empire collapsed it doesn't mean everyone was ignorant and the sudden discovery of a library in Toledo. What about Constantinople?, it was still a massive cultural hub during that time famous for its libraries. Or Paris? Important logicians works like Boethius were widely copied throughout Europe (also, most of Aristotle's work was copied, translated and commented by him and those were the copies that circulated throughout Europe at the time). Monks like Constantine the African translated important translations from Arabic treatises before 1085. Europeans didn't lost access to reason or knowledge for 600 years. Widespread education was lost and that's what distinguishes the Early Middle Ages from the Gothic period.
The opening historical introduction to the Middle Ages is inaccurate and based on outdated scholarship. Not only did the empire continue in the East as the Byzantine Empire, with its own vibrant cultural production, the fallen Western half of the Roman Empire still had remarkable intellectual activities both under smaller empires such as the Carolingian Empire and in individual monasteries.
i did have issue with that too tbh, but i'll attempt to simply pay attention to the point he's trying to make from it
What books would you recommend for someone interested in this?
@@Komandie a highly praised overview of medieval development and trajectory is Christopher Wickam's book:
The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000
he's said to be a Marxist historian, which I was curious about at first, but while reading his book, I realized it's actually the same form of material history taught in public school
a nice introduction to the vibrancy of the Eastern Roman Empire, the key European counterargument of everything Sapolsky said here, is Mark Whittow's:
The Making of Byzantium: 600-1025
Hello from Europe... Exactly my thoughts... Don't really like how he simplifies this jump of 700 years between the collapse of Western Roman Empire and the encounter with Africa/Muslim world...as if the Mediterranean wasn't vibrant throughout all these centuries aswell as those before and after. Besides where does the name Mediterranean come from? Also those so called "dark ages" are the times when the universities started to emerge. So that old notion of Middle ages as some primitive, dark, illiterate times is long gone in historical thinking of the past. Sorry to repeat your words basically, just couldn't help it..
doi:10.1353/pbm.1996.0057 Reductionism and Variability in Data: A Meta-Analysis..
research mentioned at 1:30:00
it was so amazing , all should read it.
Thank you so much man, I was looking everywhere for this for MONTHS!
The paper he refers to is Reductionism and Variability in Data: A Meta-Analysis, co-authored with Steven Balt in 1996.
Also, his discussion of chance as a point against reductionism kind of assumes that what we call "chance" isn't just really determinism that we can't see (like a coin flip)? Quantum mechanics is exempt from this, I'll grant that, but mitochondria distribution can't really be chalked up to quantum fluctuations as far as I understand them.
I really appreciate his work, his fantastic knowledge of the field, and his quite entertaining style of lecturing... But I suggest for anything concerning the first 10 minutes about the history of knowledge, philosophy and anything really you may not want to take him so seriously on that and rather refer to a textbook, or wikipedia, or professionals in that field instead, which would paint a less caricatural and bizarrely dark image of the age and thinking. ^^
Haha couldn't agree more! The picture of the middle ages he presents is very cringeworthy. And the transition too sensational. The middle ages were far more complicated and nuanced and the rupture is not as sudden as it is typically portrayed. But then again, at least he is going beyond his discipline to explore it. That's worth appreciating.
Does anyone know what history books talk about what he talks about in the first 5-7 minutes of the video? e.g. the finding of the giant library in Spain which had all of those books, and the dark ages?
Yes as an historian this was the only part that upset me! It is an excruciatingly primitive, largely off-based and inaccurate view of Europe, post Rome! (In ALL other respects this professor is TOP KNOTCH! A natural educator!)
If anyone is interested in the paper Dr Sapolsky developed with his student on testosterone and aggression and the reductionest approach. The title is "Reductionism and Variability in Data: A Meta-Analysis" by Dr Robert Sapolsky and Dr Steven Balt.
Thank you Stanford for making it public for free for all, indeed.
Read and seen many explanations of chaos and this trumps them all.
There is a flaw in Reducing a study of a particular evolving bio-logical system or objective to component events, (even if you can pick the woods from the trees, is there anything wrong with the mixture?), ..because of the Quantum Fields Modulation Mechanism of Phys-Chem involved. The reducing of complex states into logical steps is in the "Punctuated Equilibrium" pulsed format, (pulses in a holistic, stratified spectrum, are equivalent to the "leaky brane" holographic concept of QM-Time), so only those aspects of constant, consistent-continuity are visible, unless each transition of form is measured and observable by experiment. Whatever possibilities are in "darkness" can only be treated by "Emergent" symptoms.
The converse of reduction is expansion or inflation (construction by Timing-spacing), calculations of possibilities that led to the observable probability. Complex and messy. Reduction to Principle is optimal.
Chaos, the scattered stages of change still here-now in our environment is a "universe of parallels", co-existing in the current "sum of all history", and it's not intended to be a clear presentation of the evidence of linear development that everyone hoped for. (You can elect Representatives of the component elements to choose "rule of thumb" policies, but it's a guarantee of inflexibility of practical purposes)
Everyone's life is a unique composition of infinite complexities. Optimising a course through it requires comprehensive Navigational techniques, and continuous learning to adapt. Watch all Prof Sapolsky's lectures.
Expansion is so much more fun to research and write about but it's definitely more complicated and messy, as you stated
This is ai-generated technobabbel?
I love this lecture. I think the audio quality is abrasive though--- Can only handle for like 45 mins.
Sapolsky is an amazing lecturer -- so engaging!
3:23, 8:23, 18:46, 28:00, 33:55 (image recognition scale invariant?), 35:15, 1:01:00, 1:13:52 (human mind seeks patterns), 1:15:21 (one has to define the topology of solutions first then convergence, for systems with deterministic evolution, the short term patterns will “coincide better” with closer initial conditions), 1:20:22, 1:27:01 (what about variability for variability? Correlation not causation, could be high variability studies won’t get published.), 1:29:46, 1:33:54, 1:37:03
it's funny how the infinity symbol looks alot like the choatic graph
Whoaa
Yes and like an atom and electrons.
one of the things that sounds awesome but means nothing
@@boyizheng6913 you don't know that it doesn't mean anything, man
Anyone know of the book on chaos has referencing at the beginning?
Could be Chaos by james gleick?
@@mungus530 Jup, that's exactly right. He mentions it in some of the earlier lessons.
@@mazedmarky thank you for clarifying
10:23 pm , Friday 8th November 2019 ........I watched him again . ❣
9:30pm Sunday 19th January 2020...Watched 2 hours of a video plus a Joe Rogan Podcast. Too tired to focus on this one now. He is an excellent teacher. His voice resonates with me and is very soothing!
@@bluewaters3100 Thankyou for the suggestion....I will sure listen to him .
I can't believe the anecdote Sapolsky narrated towards the end. Those findings are so cool. Oh wait.
Things could also be in the exact same spot, but have a different velocity, which is also a different state.