美国国家公共电台 NPR Robert Sapolsky: How Much Agency Do We Have Over Our Behavior?

 

GUY RAZ, HOST:

It's the TED¹ Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So most of us think we know ourselves pretty well, right?

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: I'm sort of a hippie pacifist in terms of general persona.

RAZ: That we're good people...

SAPOLSKY: You know, I'm an egg-heady scientist with a large beard and like Birkenstocks.

RAZ: ...Who make good choices.

SAPOLSKY: Give an error of equilibrium³ as much as possible.

RAZ: But do we really know who we are and why we act in certain ways? And do we have any control over that anyway?

SAPOLSKY: Nah.

RAZ: This is Robert Sapolsky. He's a professor of neuroscience at Stanford University.

SAPOLSKY: We have very different potentials and sort of tendencies for behavior lurking⁴ in us. And I think some of the most sort of surprising, shocking, appalling⁵, wonderful cases of sort of human behavior is when one side of it suddenly comes out from a person who never ever expected that. At one extreme, you have the person who suddenly runs into the burning building...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: People running into the fire to save a trapped man.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: (Unintelligible) A dad out there.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Come on.

SAPOLSKY: ...While everyone else is sort of being headless chickens not knowing what to do.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: No, there's a man inside.

SAPOLSKY: Wow, I never knew I had that in me.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Oh, thank god.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Everybody's out.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Here he is. Is this him right here?

SAPOLSKY: At the other extreme, you have people ranging from, like, the Abu Ghraib scandal...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: Disgusted by pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused by American soldiers.

SAPOLSKY: ...To, like, the famed Stanford Prison Experiment...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Prisoner 819 did a bad thing. Prisoner 819 did a bad thing.

SAPOLSKY: ...Where people turn out to do things never in their darkest moments would they've imagined they were capable of.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: And I was dismayed that I could act in a manner so absolutely unaccustomed to anything I would even really dream of doing.

SAPOLSKY: We're capable of a lot of stuff. What is sort of human nature when it comes to these good and bad behaviors? And the answer is going to be it depends - when, where, what you had for breakfast, what you had when you were a fetus⁶ in somebody's womb back when, what your culture has been, little bit of what your genes⁷ are, how your brain is wired up. It depends. It depends enormously on context.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RAZ: So on the show today, we're going to explore a lot of that context - ideas about whether we're hardwired, about what makes us who we are, and why we behave the way we do. How much of that is biological? How much of it is learned? And how much of it, if any, can we change? And as Robert Sapolsky points out, human nature and its whole spectrum⁸ of behaviors is complicated, even for the people who study it because despite his serene⁹ presence...

SAPOLSKY: I'm sort of calming enough that my students regularly nap during my lectures so that must be a good index of that.

RAZ: ...Robert actually has a pretty violent recurring¹⁰ fantasy. Here's how he described it on the TED stage.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

SAPOLSKY: Fantasy always run something like this. I've overpowered his elite¹¹ guard, burst into his secret bunker with my machine gun ready. He lunges for his Luger. I knock it out of his hand. He lunges for his cyanide pill. I knock that out of his hand. He snarls¹², comes at me with other-worldly strength. We grapple. We fight. I manage to pin him down and put on handcuffs. Adolph Hitler, I say, I arrest you for crimes against humanity. Here's where the Medal of Honor version of the fantasy ends and the imagery darkens. What would I do if I had Hitler? And it's not hard to imagine once I allow myself. Sever¹³ his spine¹⁴ at the neck. Take out his eyes with a blunt instrument. Puncture¹⁵ his ear drums. Cut out his tongue. Leave him alive on a respirator, tube fed, not able to speak or move or see or hear, just to feel. And then inject him with something cancerous that's going to fester and postulate¹⁶ until every cell in his body is screaming in agony, until every second feels like an eternity¹⁷ in hell. That's what I would do to Hitler.

RAZ: Wow. Robert, you got like this violent streak¹⁸. You're supposed to be this hippy pacifist. And then you have this very vivid fantasy.

SAPOLSKY: Well, yeah. I've had that one since I was little. A remarkable¹⁹ number of people have now told me that they've had ones along similar lines. And I'm this person who, like, is far from being violent as possible, yet I harbored these thoughts. Yet I'm opposed to the death penalty. Yet there's some people I would certainly like to see removed from the planet. And I like violent movies, but I'm for strict gun control. You know, we're all a confusing mixture of a whole array of impulses. And the biology underlying²⁰ the fact that some of those impulses come to the forefront in some circumstances and the others, you know, in other contexts is this huge challenge biologically. Our nature is to be context-dependent on our behavior.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

SAPOLSKY: So how do you make sense of the biology of our best behaviors, our worst ones and all of those ambiguously in between? The challenge is to understand the biology of the context of our behaviors. And that's real tough. One thing that's clear, though, is you're not going to get anywhere if you think there's going to be the brain region or the hormone²¹ or the gene² or the childhood experience or the evolutionary²² mechanism²³ that explains everything. Instead, every bit of behavior has multiple levels of causality. But to understand that, we have to step back a little bit. What was going on in the environment seconds to minutes before, hours to days before, back years, back, for example, to your adolescence²⁴...

UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: (Singing) Happy birthday to you.

SAPOLSKY: ...Even further back to childhood, back to when you were just a fetus, back to when all you were a collection of genes, back centuries - what were your ancestors up to? - back millions of years because if we're talking about genes, implicitly²⁵, we're now talking about the evolution of genes. Basically, what we're seeing here is if you want to understand a behavior, whether it's an appalling one, a wondrous²⁶ one or confusedly in between - if you want to understand that, you've got to take into account what happened a second before to million years before, everything in between.

RAZ: OK. So if we're just the sum of all these parts, what do we actually control?

SAPOLSKY: Well, just to really take us into (laughter) potentially not-touch-with-a-10-foot-pole territory, my personal bias²⁷ is we've got no agency at all. I don't think there's a shred²⁸ of free will out there. From spending my decades thinking about behavior and the biological influences on it, I'm convinced by now free will is what we call the biology that hasn't been discovered yet. It's just another way of stating that we're biological organisms determined²⁹ by the physical laws of the universe.

RAZ: So everything that you're saying here now and everything that I'm saying to you now and the things I'm going to do for the rest of the day and that you're going to do for the rest - and the interactions you're going to have and I'm going to have, we have very little say in that?

SAPOLSKY: Actually, remarkably³⁰ little sort of conscious access to it. An awful lot of the time, say, if we choose a behavior, it turns out there was some subterranean³¹ emotional tumult³² that led to that. For example, when you put people in positions of making moral judgments³³ about behavior, you see, for example, more emotional parts of the brain activate³⁴ sooner than the cortical parts. I mean, one study that just floors me in that regard was carried out in Israel - all of the judges in Israel hearing parole board hearings over the course of a year, something like 5,000 cases, and then looking at who got granted parole, who got sent back to jail, looking at all sorts of variables - and the strongest predictor of judges' decisions was how many hours it had been since they'd eaten a meal...

RAZ: Wow.

SAPOLSKY: ...Which is boggling, except it's not because there's a biology that explains it. And they're not going to say because I'm hypoglycemic right now, and it's hard to feel empathic towards - they're going to quote some philosopher they had to read in law school or whatever they're going to assume and fill in the void with sort of pretenses³⁵ of pure agency. You know, with every passing year as we learn more and more about every one of these domains³⁶ and what has to do with behavior, the things where we used to say, ah, that's volitional³⁷, ah, that's him and what he chooses or chooses not to do - more and more of that keeps falling by the roadside as we say, ah-ha (ph), no, actually. It turns out that's a psychiatric disorder³⁸ with these genetic³⁹ components⁴⁰. Ah, for example, this is not a child who is lazy and unmotivated. There's little micro abnormalities in that kid's cortex producing learning deficits⁴¹. And, you know, when you look at the space that free will has been getting crammed⁴² into, more and more so, with each passing year of insights into the biology of behavior, got to say, it's going to get really, really crammed in or nonexistent at some point.

RAZ: Yeah. Yeah.

SAPOLSKY: At the same time, I realize I have absolutely no idea how somebody is supposed to really believe that stuff. Intellectually, I believe there's no free will. But I still have absolutely no idea how to get around complimenting somebody on, like, their new hairdo...

RAZ: Of course, of course you would. Yeah.

SAPOLSKY: ...Or being pleased if somebody says something complimentary⁴³ to me.

RAZ: Yeah. Or like a charitable thing that they did. You would say, hey, that was so great.

SAPOLSKY: Yeah.

RAZ: This is so complex. And what's amazing about it is that, I mean, you acknowledge that there are things about this thing even you don't understand.

SAPOLSKY: Oh, yeah. And worse is there's things about it that I understand, which, nonetheless, I have no idea how to incorporate into behavior.

RAZ: So, I mean, can we move past our biology?

SAPOLSKY: Nah. That's all there is. For better or worse and everything in between, there's no little homunculus sitting on our brains there that's inside the brain but not made of brain yuck (ph) and instead is made of, like, gumption⁴⁴ and backbone⁴⁵ and Calvinist self-discipline. It's biology all the way down. There's not a separate thing. We are the sum of all that.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RAZ: Robert Sapolsky. He's a professor of neuroscience at Stanford University. You can see his full talk at TED.com. On the show today, hardwired and in a moment, a different take on whether we can change our biology. I'm Guy Raz. And you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

1 ted   

vt.翻晒，撒，撒开

参考例句：

• The invaders gut ted the village.侵略者把村中财物洗劫一空。
• She often teds the corn when it's sunny.天好的时候她就翻晒玉米。

2 gene   

n.遗传因子，基因

参考例句：

• A single gene may have many effects.单一基因可能具有很多种效应。
• The targeting of gene therapy has been paid close attention.其中基因治疗的靶向性是值得密切关注的问题之一。

3 equilibrium   

n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静

参考例句：

• Change in the world around us disturbs our inner equilibrium.我们周围世界的变化扰乱了我们内心的平静。
• This is best expressed in the form of an equilibrium constant.这最好用平衡常数的形式来表示。

4 lurking   

潜在

参考例句：

• Why are you lurking around outside my house? 你在我房子外面鬼鬼祟祟的，想干什么？
• There is a suspicious man lurking in the shadows. 有一可疑的人躲在阴暗中。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

5 appalling   

adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的

参考例句：

• The search was hampered by appalling weather conditions.恶劣的天气妨碍了搜寻工作。
• Nothing can extenuate such appalling behaviour.这种骇人听闻的行径罪无可恕。

6 fetus   

n.胎，胎儿

参考例句：

• In the fetus,blood cells are formed in different sites at different ages.胎儿的血细胞在不同时期生成在不同的部位。
• No one knows why a fetus is not automatically rejected by the mother's immune system. 没有人知道为什么母亲的免疫系统不会自动排斥胎儿。

7 genes   

n.基因( gene的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• You have good genes from your parents, so you should live a long time. 你从父母那儿获得优良的基因，所以能够活得很长。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Differences will help to reveal the functions of the genes. 它们间的差异将会帮助我们揭开基因多种功能。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 生物技术的世纪

8 spectrum   

n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列

参考例句：

• This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
• We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成，我们已了解不少。

9 serene   

adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的

参考例句：

• He has entered the serene autumn of his life.他已进入了美好的中年时期。
• He didn't speak much,he just smiled with that serene smile of his.他话不多，只是脸上露出他招牌式的淡定的微笑。

10 recurring   

adj.往复的，再次发生的

参考例句：

• This kind of problem is recurring often. 这类问题经常发生。
• For our own country, it has been a time for recurring trial. 就我们国家而言，它经过了一个反复考验的时期。

11 elite   

n.精英阶层；实力集团；adj.杰出的，卓越的

参考例句：

• The power elite inside the government is controlling foreign policy.政府内部的一群握有实权的精英控制着对外政策。
• We have a political elite in this country.我们国家有一群政治精英。

12 snarls   

n.（动物的）龇牙低吼( snarl的名词复数 )；愤怒叫嚷（声）；咆哮（声）；疼痛叫声v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的第三人称单数 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说

参考例句：

• I don't know why my hair snarls easily. 我不知道我的头发为什么容易缠结。 来自辞典例句
• She combed the snarls out of her hair. 她把头发的乱结梳理通。 来自辞典例句

13 sever   

v.切开，割开；断绝，中断

参考例句：

• She wanted to sever all her connections with the firm.她想断绝和那家公司的所有联系。
• We must never sever the cultural vein of our nation.我们不能割断民族的文化血脉。

14 spine   

n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊

参考例句：

• He broke his spine in a fall from a horse.他从马上跌下摔断了脊梁骨。
• His spine developed a slight curve.他的脊柱有点弯曲。

15 puncture   

n.刺孔，穿孔；v.刺穿，刺破

参考例句：

• Failure did not puncture my confidence.失败并没有挫伤我的信心。
• My bicycle had a puncture and needed patching up.我的自行车胎扎了个洞，需要修补。

16 postulate   

n.假定，基本条件；vt.要求，假定

参考例句：

• Let's postulate that she is a cook.我们假定她是一位厨师。
• Freud postulated that we all have a death instinct as well as a life instinct.弗洛伊德曾假定我们所有人都有生存本能和死亡本能。

17 eternity   

n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷

参考例句：

• The dull play seemed to last an eternity.这场乏味的剧似乎演个没完没了。
• Finally,Ying Tai and Shan Bo could be together for all of eternity.英台和山伯终能双宿双飞，永世相随。

18 streak   

n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动

参考例句：

• The Indians used to streak their faces with paint.印第安人过去常用颜料在脸上涂条纹。
• Why did you streak the tree?你为什么在树上刻条纹？

19 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

20 underlying   

adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的

参考例句：

• The underlying theme of the novel is very serious.小说隐含的主题是十分严肃的。
• This word has its underlying meaning.这个单词有它潜在的含义。

21 hormone   

n.荷尔蒙，激素，内分泌

参考例句：

• Hormone implants are used as growth boosters.激素植入物被用作生长辅助剂。
• This hormone interacts closely with other hormones in the body.这种荷尔蒙与体內其他荷尔蒙紧密地相互作用。

22 evolutionary   

adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的

参考例句：

• Life has its own evolutionary process.生命有其自身的进化过程。
• These are fascinating questions to be resolved by the evolutionary studies of plants.这些十分吸引人的问题将在研究植物进化过程中得以解决。

23 mechanism   

n.机械装置；机构，结构

参考例句：

• The bones and muscles are parts of the mechanism of the body.骨骼和肌肉是人体的组成部件。
• The mechanism of the machine is very complicated.这台机器的结构是非常复杂的。

24 adolescence   

n.青春期，青少年

参考例句：

• Adolescence is the process of going from childhood to maturity.青春期是从少年到成年的过渡期。
• The film is about the trials and tribulations of adolescence.这部电影讲述了青春期的麻烦和苦恼。

25 implicitly   

adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地

参考例句：

• Many verbs and many words of other kinds are implicitly causal. 许多动词和许多其他类词都蕴涵着因果关系。
• I can trust Mr. Somerville implicitly, I suppose? 我想，我可以毫无保留地信任萨莫维尔先生吧？

26 wondrous   

adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地

参考例句：

• The internal structure of the Department is wondrous to behold.看一下国务院的内部结构是很有意思的。
• We were driven across this wondrous vast land of lakes and forests.我们乘车穿越这片有着湖泊及森林的广袤而神奇的土地。

27 bias   

n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见

参考例句：

• They are accusing the teacher of political bias in his marking.他们在指控那名教师打分数有政治偏见。
• He had a bias toward the plan.他对这项计划有偏见。

28 shred   

v.撕成碎片，变成碎片；n.碎布条，细片，些少

参考例句：

• There is not a shred of truth in what he says.他说的全是骗人的鬼话。
• The food processor can shred all kinds of vegetables.这架食品加工机可将各种蔬菜切丝切条。

29 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

30 remarkably   

ad.不同寻常地，相当地

参考例句：

• I thought she was remarkably restrained in the circumstances. 我认为她在那种情况下非常克制。
• He made a remarkably swift recovery. 他康复得相当快。

31 subterranean   

adj.地下的，地表下的

参考例句：

• London has 9 miles of such subterranean passages.伦敦像这样的地下通道有9英里长。
• We wandered through subterranean passages.我们漫游地下通道。

32 tumult   

n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹

参考例句：

• The tumult in the streets awakened everyone in the house.街上的喧哗吵醒了屋子里的每一个人。
• His voice disappeared under growing tumult.他的声音消失在越来越响的喧哗声中。

33 judgments   

判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判

参考例句：

• A peculiar austerity marked his judgments of modern life. 他对现代生活的批评带着一种特殊的苛刻。
• He is swift with his judgments. 他判断迅速。

34 activate   

vt.使活动起来，使开始起作用

参考例句：

• We must activate the youth to study.我们要激励青年去学习。
• These push buttons can activate the elevator.这些按钮能启动电梯。

35 pretenses   

n.借口（pretense的复数形式）

参考例句：

• They obtained money under the false pretenses of patriotism. 他们以虚伪的爱国主义为借口获得金钱。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He obtained money from her under false pretenses. 他巧立名目从她那儿骗钱。 来自辞典例句

36 domains   

n.范围( domain的名词复数 )；领域；版图；地产

参考例句：

• The theory of thermodynamics links the macroscopic and submicroscopic domains. 热力学把宏观世界同亚微观世界联系起来。 来自辞典例句
• All three flow domains are indicated by shading. 所有三个流动区域都是用阴影部分表示的。 来自辞典例句

37 volitional   

adj.意志的，凭意志的，有意志的

参考例句：

• The image consists in our rational,volitional,affective faculties,and in our bodies.神的形象存在于我们的理性、意志，和情感的能力中，也存在于我们的身体内。
• The endurance of setbacks is a standard mat can evaluate the volitional character of a person.挫折承受能力是衡量人的意志品质的一个重要指标。

38 disorder   

n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调

参考例句：

• When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后，他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
• It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。

39 genetic   

adj.遗传的，遗传学的

参考例句：

• It's very difficult to treat genetic diseases.遗传性疾病治疗起来很困难。
• Each daughter cell can receive a full complement of the genetic information.每个子细胞可以收到遗传信息的一个完全补偿物。

40 components   

（机器、设备等的）构成要素，零件，成分； 成分( component的名词复数 )； [物理化学]组分； [数学]分量； （混合物的）组成部分

参考例句：

• the components of a machine 机器部件
• Our chemistry teacher often reduces a compound to its components in lab. 在实验室中化学老师常把化合物分解为各种成分。

41 deficits   

n.不足额( deficit的名词复数 )；赤字；亏空；亏损

参考例句：

• The Ministry of Finance consistently overestimated its budget deficits. 财政部一贯高估预算赤字。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Many of the world's farmers are also incurring economic deficits. 世界上许多农民还在遭受经济上的亏损。 来自辞典例句

42 crammed   

adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式)

参考例句：

• He crammed eight people into his car. 他往他的车里硬塞进八个人。
• All the shelves were crammed with books. 所有的架子上都堆满了书。

43 complimentary   

adj.赠送的，免费的，赞美的，恭维的

参考例句：

• She made some highly complimentary remarks about their school.她对他们的学校给予高度的评价。
• The supermarket operates a complimentary shuttle service.这家超市提供免费购物班车。

44 gumption   

n.才干

参考例句：

• With his gumption he will make a success of himself.凭他的才干，他将大有作为。
• Surely anyone with marketing gumption should be able to sell good books at any time of year.无疑，有经营头脑的人在一年的任何时节都应该能够卖掉好书。

45 backbone   

n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气

参考例句：

• The Chinese people have backbone.中国人民有骨气。
• The backbone is an articulate structure.脊椎骨是一种关节相连的结构。