Reddit Reddit reviews A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons

We found 11 Reddit comments about A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons
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11 Reddit comments about A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons:

u/aramink · 7 pointsr/science

This is my favorite TED Talk, and there are a LOT of spectacular, amazing TED presentations. I show it to people who say they don't believe in evolution, that animals have no souls, that only humans are capable of abstract or complex thinking, that animals are not homosexual or bisexual, that animals can't use tools like humans do, etc. I also use it to underscore the differences between common chimps and humans - bonobos are the link that definitively prove all of these things. No one who sees Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's lecture fails to be amazed at Kanzi's use of fire or Panbanisha's writing. Even better are the books written about them.

The Great Ape Trust's YouTube channel shows more recent work that is being done with these wonderful apes. See, for example, Kanzi following Dr. Sue's spoken instructions in Kanzi and Novel Sentences. Kanzi's interview with reporter Lisa Ling has even been on Oprah.

Dr. Frans de Waal, a psychology professor and researcher at Emory University, is another prominent primate researcher studying bonobos at the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta.

And for more on the amazing culture - yes, culture - of baboons, I cannot recommend highly enough Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sopolsky's A Primate's Memoir.

edit: punctuation

edit: The Japanese-produced documentary, Kanzi: An Ape of Genius is on YouTube in four parts - I didn't know until a moment ago. Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh mentions it in the TED Talk and shows excerpts from it. I've included the link to part one. You'll see the others in the right sidebar once you navigate to it.

u/Brosef_Stalin_ · 6 pointsr/WTF

This is why I made the comparison.

Also this.

u/gomer11 · 3 pointsr/Buddhism

If you haven't read his book A Primate's Memoir, do it. You're already late to the party.

u/Dicknosed_Shitlicker · 3 pointsr/FloridaMan

The only "fight" I've been in as an adult was with a man holding a baby. He was holding the baby with one arm and attacking a woman with the other. I got between them and he grabbed my throat. I trained in martial arts as a teen/young-adult so I know that someone grabbing your throat isn't a bad position to be in (they leave themselves vulnerable everywhere else). I just wanted to get his attention off of the woman. But I did fix him with a steely stare so he knew I wasn't frightened. He let go and the two of them cussed at each other. I told the woman to call the police or GTFO already. She left. He followed suit. But I was concerned for a moment that he'd actually try to fight me with a baby in his arms. I don't know what I would have done.

Edit: Years later I learned from reading Robert Sapolsky's memoir of working with baboons, that this is a strategy by non-dominant males to avoid fights. They grab a baby and the other male backs off. The first doesn't help his standing in the troop but he avoids a beat-down. That's not what this dude was doing, though. He was just a shit.

u/elperroborrachotoo · 2 pointsr/atheism

That statement usually says a lot more about the person defending it than hmanity in general.

Warning Shes has an ultimate killer argument: "They did it to feel better about themselves.". It's a Russels teapot argument, be prepared.

Rhetorically, there's decent counter: "We have a name for people who care only about themselves: sociopaths.". Might work on the bystanders.

----

Anyway, science:

Mirror neurons. Part of the brain can't tell apart between doing something and watching it happen. It seems to be a key in learning by observing. A fairly recent discovery, so there's naturally some lack of certainty. In PopSci, they have been used to explain a lot from why porn is hot to -- well, altruism: they are considered the "empathy neurons". (sources further down the wikipedia link).

Now, that might be seen as an argument for her: "we are programmed to be altruistic, it's not a choice" is the kind of misunderstanding you'd expect from a mechanistic reductio-ad-absurdum view of the human self.


Some more studies:

http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/06/finding_altruism.php
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/04/psychopaths_and_rational_moral.php

ah well... more from there

aaaand.... wikipedia again, on Altruism. Interestingly, the evolutionary explanations are similar to some of the more elaborate constructs often used to uphold the "selfishness of altruism".


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*edit: If you are interested in that kind of stuff, Sapolsky's A Primates Memoir and monkeyluv are fascinating reads.

u/askingRDT · 1 pointr/todayilearned
u/raatz02 · 1 pointr/suggestmeabook

Sapolsky's book about baboons.

u/Poromenos · 1 pointr/greece

Δεν έχω ιδέα αλλά έπιασα το νόημα και νομίζω ότι εγώ γέλασα σε άλλο σημείο :P Ήταν αστείο βιβλίο τελικά.

Άσχετο, αλλά ένα άλλο πολύ αστείο βιβλίο είναι το A primate's memoir, που είναι για τη ζωή ενός νευροεπιστήμονα στην Αφρική. Γράφει πάρα πολύ αστεία.

u/theora55 · 1 pointr/suggestmeabook

A Primate's Memoir, by Robert Sapolsky. It's not about manhood, per se, but it is funny and very wise.

u/loginregister08 · 1 pointr/AskWomen

A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons

I personally felt this was a super page turner. He is a great story teller, and as a primatologist that went to study baboons in 1960's Africa he has some stories to tell!

u/anodes · 0 pointsr/IAmA

i feel like providing an example may be more illustrative than my previous reply. also, i thought of a good example of the "power" argument.

okay, so my personal example (from a former gf): she was in high school, dating this guy. i think it was their first or second date, and they were parked somewhere in his truck, presumably making out or something. she told him to stop, he wouldn't, and he forcibly raped her. she went on to actually date him as a boyfriend, which i know sounds crazy but i have heard very similar stories from other women.

anyway, we know (from personal experience) that adolescent and young adult males tend to be extremely horny and pursue sexual gratification very assiduously. to me the obvious (and only) conclusion of such a scenario is that the rape was about sex and not "power".

the alternate scenario: i'm re-reading a book called "a primate's memoir" (excellent book btw), in which the writer - a neuroscientist (and field biologist?) - tracks and details the happenings amongst a baboon troop in africa.

he witnesses at one point the "rape" of a female baboon...typically female baboons only mate when they are in estrus, and they consent (and indeed choose) which baboon(s) they are going to mate with. however in this instance a formerly-powerful male had lost a fight and was angry and had beaten up a couple of toddler baboons, then chased down and forcibly had sex with a female who wasn't in heat...she resisted him but was overcome, etc.

this to me does seem like a "power"-rape scenario. i can imagine similar types of exchanges in humans. so i'd like to amend my earlier statement regarding power rapes. probably there are human males who, once they begin such raping do so on a regular basis, so perhaps where the idea of this being the prevalent sort comes from.

still, i do think that the majority of rapes are about sex.