"Robert Sapolsky at Edge Foundation"

“Robert Sapolsky : profile at Stanford School of Medicine”

“We're only a couple of hundreds of years into understanding that epilepsy is a neurological disease and not a demonic possession. We're only about 50 years into understanding that certain types of learning disabilities are micro malformations in the cortex in people with dyslexia and not laziness or lack of motivation. The vast majority of these factoids are 10, 20 years old, and all that's gonna happen is we're gonna learn more and more of that stuff. And what we're going to learn more and more is to recognise extents to which we're biological organisms and our behaviours have to be evaluated in that realm. For my money, what that eventually does is make words like "soul" or "evil" utterly absurd and medieval, but it also makes words like "punishment" or "justice" very questionable, as well. I think it will require an enormous reshaping of how we think we deal with the most damaging of human behaviours, because none of it can be thought of outside the context of biology.”

“Western religions, all the leading religions, have this schizotypalism shot through them from top to bottom. It's that same exact principle: it's great having one of these guys, but we sure wouldn't want to have three of them in our tribe. Overdo it, and our schizotypalism in the Western religious setting is what we call a "cult," and there you are in the realm of a Charles Manson or a David Koresh or a Jim Jones. You can only do post-hoc forensic psychiatry on Koresh and Jones, but Charles Manson is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. But get it just right, and people are gonna get the day off from work on your birthday for millennia to come. This is great! I think this is the first time I've ever said that line without somebody getting up and leaving in a huff from the audience. It's very nice being here.”

“We are not getting our ulcers being chased by Saber-tooth tigers, we're inventing our social stressors — and if some baboons are good at dealing with this, we should be able to as well. Insofar as we're smart enough to have invented this stuff and stupid enough to fall for it, we have the potential to be wise enough to keep the stuff in perspective.”

“If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble.”

“Get it wrong, and we call it a cult. Get it right, in the right time and the right place, and maybe, for the next few millennia, people won't have to go to work on your birthday.”