The Importance of Understanding Root Causes and Implementing Preventative Measures

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

This chapter explores the significance of public health research in understanding the underlying factors behind diseases and violent behavior. It discusses the importance of a quarantine model to contain medically dangerous individuals without blame, and emphasizes the need for preventative measures to address social and environmental contributors to violence, using successful examples from Scandinavian countries.

Meet Jared Diamond and Michael Shermer: https://skeptic.com/event

Robert Sapolsky is the author of A Primate’s Memoir, The Trouble with Testosterone, and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. His most recent book, Behave, was a New York Times bestseller and named a best book of the year by the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. He is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant.” His new book is Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.

Shermer and Sapolsky discuss: free will, determinism, compatibilism, libertarian free will • Christian List’s 3 related capacities for free will • how what people believe about free will and determinism influences their behaviors • the three horsemen of determinism: (1) reductionism (2) predetermination; (3) epiphenomenalism • dualism • punishment • retributive vs. restorative justice •Is the self an illusion? • game theory evolution of punishment • luck • and meaning (or lack thereof).