22. Emergence and Complexity

[@SapienSafari]

I just want to meet him and thank him for being the best teacher I've (n)ever had. That brain really is something.

[@chrispaika8469]

try emailing him!

[@monicaangelini3324]

Same here!

[@renesantana9279]

@@chrispaika8469 what's his address?

[@gelliegelatina]

SAME. E-mail Dr Sapolsky

[@lilyhempt515]

Same!

[@NurilBasri]

i didn't understand the last lecture, nor this one. but at this stage i'm so used to his voice that i just listened. today i listened while cleaning my fan. it has been sitting for years in my room, my fan, i thought i should cleaned it. then i did. it's very satisfying, both the lecture and the clean fan.

[@bobbiellison4315]

There's nothing like a clean fan.

[@billbixly4332]

He has a slightly more Ernest tone of voice than bob ross but just as calming an engaging.

[@LlamasOnJUPITER]

what is it about this lecture that gets us in a cleaning mood lol?? a friend recommended me this video and about 1 minute in i had to pause it to vacuum my room, and then when i came back i ended up cleaning out my closet while the video played, too haha

[@abigailmedlin4750]

Just cleaning out kitchen cabinets while this fabulous man lectures

[@ReneèRose6]

Very fanny.

[@luispmorera]

quarantine and Sapolsky it's all I need. Hands up for this brilliant professor.

[@ThePandemicvideos]

Hahaha ! Right on brother !. I'm watching the whole lecture. I remember him saying that 3 activities decrease the efficiency of the prefrontal cortex : drugs, pornography and social isolation. While the whole planet are turning into fat angry apes, both of us are gonna come out of this quarantine with more education then everyone else. lol

[@luispmorera]

@@ThePandemicvideos hahahah truth has been said! actually im watching language lecture right now!

[@alexlarsen6413]

Same here. This one is probably my favorite lecture in the series thus far. And there are only 2 more left to go

[@russellsantana]

Sounds like a good attraction/repulsion rule to me.

[@ugoc3300]

As good as Netflix.

[@I77AGIC]

this guy is an incredible teacher and i'm grateful to be able to watch this

[@stevemorrison8422]

KZbin U! My second chance at college, even if it is only to know. Deeply grateful.

[@jeniafridlyand4112]

+

[@MS-il3ht]

@Cory Kotonski haha, wtf!? - scam

[@ingenuity168]

Totally

[@jamesmorton7881]

d You end up in a bubble. . . . . . . . . . How big ? More important, what is in that bubble ? The Now (current thoughts unwinding in your forehead, Uh,, Neo Cortex? could be any of the those probabilities) AND the observation that crumpled all the possibilities as in the lone electron showing up where it should. Ah how much do you remember from 10 seconds ago ? There you go. no one will know. Only You. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Change now, redistribute the wealth. We ALL own the resources. Democracy for the 99% who own 1% Socialism for the 1% who own 99% Well ? Are you like Collen ? Who Could have stood up for the 99%. The 1% makes WARs.

[@thanostiliakos3249]

The man has just put in one hour and a half what I have been studying for the last year and a half for my PhD. Feels weird!

[@Tritdry]

Oh really? what's the title of your study? Also can you recommend any books on the subject?

[@thanostiliakos3249]

Electrochemical energy storage - it'll take a long time to explain the connection. Are you interested in specific topics that were covered in the lecture or nonlinear dynamics in general?

[@Tritdry]

Thanos Tiliakos Quantity not quality for more complex brains, nearest neighbour interactions, how generalists work better in these systems that specialists, emergence. Pretty much the whole talk, this 'systems' approach compared to reductionism. Would you say those 2 lectures would fall under the heading nonlinear dynamics? Electrochemical energy storage, not what i was expecting, welcome to elaborate

[@thanostiliakos3249]

Tristan Dry I tend to compile all these under Dynamical Systems, which is not strictly correct: I should be saying Complexity Science. Instead of a book list, let me do the next best thing and recommend a platform of online classes by the Santa Fe Institute, specializing in Complexity - the next class of Intro to Complexity starts on the 31st of March, there's an ongoing class on Chaos & Dynamical Systems right now: www.complexityexplorer.org/ I suspect you'll find what you need there. I usually post my publications on www.academia.edu, with the electrochem one coming up soon. I won't give details on youtube, though, sorry.

[@Tritdry]

Thanos Tiliakos Thanks! I will definitely enroll in the intro to complexity course. I recently bought Complexity:A guided tour, and it turns out the author of that book is the instructor of that course, intro to complexity. Thanks for your help, good luck with your research

[@time_g_space]

I am usually off the comment section, but I really believe all humans need to listen to this video. Thank you Stanford University .

[@KipIngram]

1:19:40 - That bit about autism is FASCINATING. And it fits - a way to describe the effects of autism is to say that affected individuals have "trouble grasping the big picture." But they can do incredible, amazing feats of "deep thought" about little specific things. Having the brain connectivity be skewed toward more localism fits that PERFECTLY.

[@SakuraWulf]

Can you see the connection between this concept and Carl Jung's "Anima?"

[@dakrontu]

Sometimes the autist focuses at the system level, the big picture, and understands what others do not. Lots of people with Aspergers are 'system thinkers'. It is how we see, for example, through the propaganda of religious systems and cult leaders and quacks such as snake oil salesmen, and how we debug complex software based on scant forensic clues.

[@giangiuseppecicorioni9164]

@SakuraWulf all I see is the connection between my dick and ur mom

[@CastleHassall]

full on autism leads to people not being able to do deep thought at all..i think these days the terms aspergers and autism are being intermixed when really autism is a very difficult thing to deal with as the person cannot interact with people at all or even think about any complex matters at all and only functions on a very basic, and often COMPLETELY non verbal level and cannot do even basic things like cook ones own food or even dress without supervision or help

[@jadenbroadway173]

I am overwhelmed with gratitude by having access to this level of understanding.

[@rodneymacomber6337]

I quit school at 14 now at 62 I have listened to all his lectures over and over again for a dozen years. I wish I had the text books to follow along with. We live in amazing times thanks to Stanford and Robert I am somewhat edegucated du to there help Now I’m not an idiot thanks for them I’ll keep reviewing all 25 lectures

[@thefitlessinfluencer9771]

2010 - I found a lecture about neural networks. 2020 - Neural networks found a lecture for me :)

[@dakinenz]

This interesting part about this is his comment about quantity over quality to find the best outcome as a lot of leaders in the field of neural networks argue for quality of training models but I'd side more with Sapolsky on this especially after his remark about the random inputs being required to find unexpected outcomes. Very interesting.. time to go play with neural networks..

[@Dogzz13]

@@dakinenz Yes, no doubt the more agents you have the better the algorithm is (take for example the particle swarm algorithm). But you need a very long time to run it. But instead if you have agents with higher quality (with more intelligence about the target) you can achieve the same performance as the algorithm with large number of agents with less time. Maybe thats what the experts are experimenting about.

[@NazriB]

Lies again? Ezlink Card

[@Westnator]

Ayyy gang gang

[@badoem5353]

@@dakinenz since you dabbled in neural network, I'm interested in the similarity of our capabilities to transform impulses into observed after Wich we simulate the world into a perception of the moment recalling life and the planning of the possible future of said past experience, you know life Though I'm definitely not specialized and I'm pretty others should have theorized this but aren't Dna and programming to similar and computers can do individual tasks we do pretty good. Combining abstract thought is more diffucl but abstract thought is the combination of simple things as science explains pretty good. Is the problem computing power or our lack of understanding of individual processes?

[@caglak.8642]

you should enable the option to add subtitles so that we translators can make sure everybody has access to this awesomeness :(

[@theunknown4209]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/hHerdXuZqJl1rLM

[@theunknown4209]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/oXOtep9jmLKKrac

[@golds04]

Anything that comes out of this mans mouth is worthy of deep thinking.Seems to me.Very lucky to have these available.

[@udderhippo]

Great talk, and great lecturer. Also, you've got to admire the physical manifestation of emergent complexity that is the beard.

[@NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself]

I'd approximate his beard's fractal dimension is about 2.6.

[@lindaelarde2692]

Free university from a brilliant professor...love of learning in the age of Corona.

[@Baamthe25th]

Okay, this may be the best lecture of this already great series so far.. I will definetely rewatch it again.

[@VerdantSeeker]

agreed!! my fav

[@lindseylim8026]

Why do I get so excited being nerdily interested in this while not understanding it (yet)? Prof Sapolsky is a great educator. Thank you. Reading his books made me happy too, he's so humourous :D

[@jaykay2218]

The class is so dull, the dude is funny as fuck, but not would even laugh😂😂😂😂

[@kichelmoon6365]

Every time I watch one of his lectures, I'm always fascinated that he is both great at explaining while still being funny and charismatic. There are so many likeable speakers out there that hook you but usually the content is lacking. He just delivers interesting and well thought out ideas by the minute.

[@anthonyourbrother]

What a brilliant teaching style and wonderful professor. He has a way of making complex subject matter easy to access and make sense of. I am honored and grateful to be able to be part of this classroom. How lucky we all are to be able to sit in and learn from such brilliant academics at the top of their game. Thank you sir.

[@anthonyourbrother]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/amKsgJ6Mn95mg68

[@mikeypeinado383]

Enjoy that debt lol

[@wendellbabin6457]

These lectures should be "required?" as part of any education program where their graduates and/or grad students, TA's etc will be required to teach anyone as a condition of obtaining a degree. Especially "Education" majors going to primary education. AKA school teachers. As a blind, if they cannot finish them, they get booted out of the program in the first semester for good because they probably shouldn't be ALLOWED to teach anyone.

[@anthonyourbrother]

@mikeypeinado383 what does that mean?

[@anthonyourbrother]

@wendellbabin6457 With gratitude, thanks for the reply... 🙏 Regardless of content. The gratitude that was thrown up here seems to be relating to the professor's teaching style, nothing more. There is no foundation for my opinion to matter here, for far too many reasons. Not only am I not a college graduate, but just don't feel qualified to say. What impressed me was that such prestigious schools post up courses such as these, for us, free of charge to learn from. What it appears that was being expressed here, months ago, was simple gratitude for the opportunity to be a part of this class. Perhaps then, selfishly, we can see me stoked on understanding some of the content. Thanks to the way the information was being presented. It could be dishonest of me to say the content doesn't interest me. It's very rare to see, if at all, me comment or post on any platforms. It's foolish. Perhaps due to changes in the ways of seeing. Today, engaging in the act of living and being present in the feelings have become more important today.. Plus, There are probably dozens of thoughts that pass through on the daily where the following week, one can notice himself with a whole different outlook or take on things. What I do love is learning. This class must have caught me of gaurd as did the reply, in this early A.M. as one, lol, babbles on. (Ah geeze...) Education is essential for growth... We are lucky and blessed to have opportunities, for free, are we not? Can't learning be engaging and enjoyable. See, the comment above says simply, "enjoy the debt lol..." Literally, if I am being perfectly honest,... -no clue 🤷‍♂️ ...seriously at a loss, as to what that even means,... The "private-hilarity..." of this world's "comment-section-spaces..." is beyond me, so much metaphorical-candor usually, strange or off-beat comical, I guess I just don't get it. 🤔 Thank you again, as one notices himself laugh'n at his own foolishness. Still, education is important. Is it not? Can't it be fun, engaging, adaptable... all students are not built the same... See... [Yesterday A.M. was brilliant, beautiful, difficult and so worth it. The simple feeling of sharing coffee with a special someone. That class session left me speechless and peaceful, with the lessons still synching in... Again, that is a "brilliant professor," If some of us "slow-learner's" were less chatty and more... 🤔[...ahh geeze... lost ma train of 😆] ....dang it:) ...perhaps the world just needs more engaging professors? ..or maybe a smoother curriculum for specific students, especially grad students¿ And again, yesterday mornings engineering course was worth more than all the words and lessons in all the classrooms in all the world🌎. Slow-learners can be in fact to smart for their own good. As cliche as that statement is. How can we help them? Lecture after lecture especially opinion based format can suck. Kids in the back can have hearing problems, ...schools with budget cuts won't allow headsets for all the students. It's as if the system doesn't even understand it can lose even more money when a student has to retake a course because of hearing issues, misunderstandings or no tuduring options...? How can we engage more, feel more... fun, be an inspiration more... to be able to feel engaged in a debate-able conversation about education can be enjoyable. Maybe not as enjoyable as a classroom that offers coffee sessions and snacks. Yet, and agian, being as humble as one can here, if we are that unwilling to see students as individuals, therefore NOT involving them in their own learning... What if we are missing out on some future leaders, future teachers... The same dull lectures, barely audible, for some kids... class after class,.. How can the information absorb? It's not for me to say. This was DEFINITELY NOT the case here nor was it personally, yesterday A.M., See, the engineering class had an incredible instructor, with only a few dull, irrelevant, "comment-section-snark," the whole class. There were more than one of us who could see some of the students ears shut-off for those fee moments. Then turn on again instant once it stopped. Totally worth it... It's a shame that some kids still need a course on being able to speak and understand in their own tounge, or rather the language of the collegiate. But is it not more of a shame that their are NO courses, no-one willing to teach this? Looking back at one's own or even another's comment's can be misunderstood and even, often harsh. What I think the comment from @anthonyourbrother was expressing was simply, gratitude for understanding more in this class and more EVERY session... with the professor serving coffee cake ☕️ If it were possible, I'd love to take any course that professor dishes out. Professor's like her can set up a student for success for the whole day... then, even the maditory lecture noise can maybe absorb better... 🙂🙏⚕️ The thing is,.. Humbly drawing only from personal experience. So please take these words as simple (opinion-based-nonsense ma-friend, above all else...) non certainly, there is a lesson, one could say (masterclass lesson) whether it be..., "physical - chemistry ("physio")or psychologically based" where-in a person is in the dee p process of... learning,... after passing the pre-requisite courses, the "private study," where a Personal-Tudor or sponsorship IS mandatory programming/ "de-programming," [social-structurally sensitive learning...] Leadership/Grad-School- [(important stuff)] Involving "one-on-one" based learning in the home involves deception-based equations, solutions and services for student based specifics, personal to that students needs. What if we could fast-track this ever evolving format a lil smoother? What if more classrooms could get their students charged-up for learning? They don't ALL.. have to offer snacks, do they? That may be too costly...¿ but then, what reasons would there be to say it's too costly? And again, WHO is saying this? And where is this funding going....? But one could argue that the school' community-based comment section itself in all it's clever-metaphorical humor... and gosh, the effort it must take to craft-dis-assemble, funding and programming that's hurtful to children. Rather than be inspirational, allowing valued students, honor-students to achieve success, keep the senses focused for wherever the day takes them. Again, not for me to say. But this man's as well as the engineering teachers approach, not perfect man, but who the hell is? At least they engage with their students one on one, repeating things to help the info download. These are teachers that care. They make a difference. I'm grateful for them, and perhaps ignorant forever to comments devoid of gratitude or.... ¿ To all those out there who believe in a better way. Let's help each other, feel-good,... about change, forgive, accept, open-up, encourage, innovate. Those who want to continue to vomit cost issues. We can restructure. The simplest thing's can lead to great solutions. When we shoot our mouths off the make sure we know where we are aiming and help others when they don't. Thanks ⚕️

[@KingZuluKing]

This lecture is a masterpiece and should be passed further to all our fellow humans so that they can be enlightened not by church and religion but with a real science! Prof. Sapolsky is a hero of 21 Century !

[@karenswanson8313]

Amazing overlap in this discussion by Sapolsky (2011) of the fractal effect on dendritic trees, the degree of interconnectedness and also the biology of autism and comments on Chimpanzee genetics compared with later-emerging (2014) genetic findings on the Neanderthals with primary differences in a very few brain proteins If this topic fascinates you, suggest you also watch and compare "A Neanderthal Perspective": The Neanderthals are the closest extinct relatives of all present-day human and the Neanderthal genome sequence provides unique insights into modern humans origins. Svante Pääbo, a biologist and evolutionary anthropologist, describe the current understanding of the genetic contributions of Neanderthals to present-day humans and to extinct human groups. He also describes preliminary analyses of genomic features that appeared in present-day humans since their divergence from a common ancestor shared with Neanderthals and discusses how they may be functionally analyzed in the future. Pääbo is the Director of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Recorded on 09/10/2014. [11/2014] [Show ID: 28720]. I'm leaving this comment here because maybe it is meaningful to someone else, but I did not write this. KS

[@loldebiteloldebite1607]

That's a very on-point and interesting recommendation, thanks a bunch.

[@aliaxim657]

I don't have anything more than to say, he has a beautiful mind and he knows what the lecturing is about.. a great man so grateful to have people like Professor Robert Sapolsky.

[@mezidvemastromy5546]

I can't help, but I always feel proud when someone abroad speaks about Czech Republic in positive way. (Velvet revolution)

[@richardphilpott1225]

Zappa, King of Freedom!

[@mominsetu]

The deeper the lecture goes the more it gets interesting. Sir Sapolsky, you're a LEGEND!

[@johnnymeditz]

This is one of my favorite lecture out of the series so far. So sad that there is only a few lectures left.

[@dtawantawng5131]

Wow. He tied together this complex, counter-intuitive chaos business really superbly. I can't wait to see what territory these last few concluding lectures steer into.

[@NickleJ]

This particular lecture (along with the preceding) has been really interesting, insightful, and inspiring!

[@CarlosRamirez-ku7by]

i can listen to this man speak all day long. LOVE IT!

[@harrisonhartle3014]

Great lecture! Correction: cantor set (infinite number of disconnected points, zero length total) has dimension between 0 and 1, the dimensions of a point and a line respectively. Likewise, the triangular fractal (infinitely long curve, zero area) has dimension between 1 and 2, the dimensions of a line and a plane.

[@MickeySiller]

All the lecturers have been mind blowing, but these last two are incredible.

[@mryoungcom]

This guy's a pretty good professor. He goes at a fast, consistent pace. Enjoyable videos!

[@anniegaffney8378]

Pretty Good?

[@Alex-js5lg]

​@@anniegaffney8378 my thoughts as well. If this is pretty good, I'd love to see a great lecturer.

[@GEMINI_OLE]

This is not just a university lecture. Awesome stuff. Learned so much about our lives and the universe !

[@forscherr2]

Wow. Just wow. I'm so glad that I stumbled upon this. This made me think in some very unique ways I had never thought before. Mind-blown.

[@patricksochor8743]

Oh did I ever miss an opportunity while in college. I had just got on a research team in synthetic biology and I was just about to make an undergrad research proposal on cell evolution and emergence theory (yes. The migraine was never ending.) when I was placed on a grad student’s project and there remained until graduation. It was an amazing experience and I got a lot out of it but after seeing this, I wish I could have picked up where I left off after we published. Absolutely fascinating!!!

[@laurennicole8092]

This is an amazing lecture! I wish they showed his examples more instead of just following his pacing the entire time. Other than that it's awesome. This information is legit

[@kuri7154]

I'm so so so so so grateful that people in Stanford decided to make this available on KZbin.

[@ZacharyXAE]

Great stuff, I'm learning a lot, and coming back to this series several years later. It holds up well.

[@ScorpiaX]

This man..perfect example (duolinguo).. wisdom of crowd.. Seriously, I could listen to this prof all day..

[@sarangmt]

During med school I was bothered by how complexity is prevalent in every direction in human body and variations leads to chaos as you change to next human. For some example like genetics and heritability Hardy-Weinberg found a way around to unsee complexity and that bothered me most. So I tried to find a way by learning quantum physics as they might be first to accept this complex behaviour and tried to understand. And those lectures lead me here by ocw and unooo I found for same question in bio lectures for what I stared searching for in first place.. thank you.

[@pedrojmorais]

Brutal!!! Thanks a lot! I'm going for the second visualisation in a row. This video gives me a huge positive view of the future, one in which hope is not an illusion.

[@meyerjac]

I've been interested in emergence and complexity just about as long as I've been a student. I agree. This lecture is fantastic and really puts a lot in perspective.

[@swallyswallyoxenfree]

I was in Kenya in '96. I wonder if our paths crossed before. Such a great speaker. Thank you

[@roobookaroo]

Six years ago,, the commenter Lauren Nicole complained: "I wish they showed his examples more instead of just following his pacing the entire time." Yes, Lauren, you were right!. That is one of the major weaknesses of the camera work and still a constant complaint. The operator is always focusing on following our Incredibly Learned Professor's beard, while we're focusing on following his words that describe what he is demonstrating on his diagram. So that our minds are trying to imagine the diagram, WHICH IS NOT SHOWN BY THE CAMERA. We are lucky whenever the camera manages to follow at least our Incredibly Learned Professor's arm, if not the drawing. It depends on which side of the wall the diagram is posted on the blackboard. For instance, when the diagram is on the board to the left of the wall, then our Incredibly Learned Professor faces towards the left with his left shoulder to the audience while being positioned near the right edge of the screen. This is the best for us video viewers, we get the professor, his hand and the diagram all together in the image. However, if the drawing is on the right side of the wall, then the reverse happens. Our Incredibly Learned Professor faces towards the right, with his right shoulder towards the audience, and the hand disappears towards the right, beyond the right edge of the screen where the drawing remains hidden. The worst happens when the drawing is on a board that remains up there, above our Incredibly Learned Professor's head, while he is tilting his head upwards towards the diagram without bringing down the board with the diagram to place it inside the camera's angle. That terribly annoying habit of the camera focusing on the beard rather than on the diagram where the demonstration is being played out, has been going on ever since the very first lectures. With the very worst when the assistants took over for a couple of lectures. Then the diagrams remained out of view most of the time. So frustrating! So amateurish! I find it utterly amazing that the camera operator is not realizing that he is filming a whole oral discussion, with the speaker always shown, but about a diagram or picture THAT IS NOT SHOWN ON THE SCREEN. Go and figure! This is probably due to the fact that the camera is positioned to the right side of the room, taking in the back wall more easily when the action moves towards the left of the back wall, but remains constrained when the action moves back towards the right end of the back wall. What was needed then were TWO cameras. And a more experienced camera operator!

[@patrickjvanhuffel]

I recommend listening to this and looking at all. It's a great audiobook

[@wendellbabin6457]

Classic case of ya gets what you pay for?

[@CastleHassall]

it's a FREE access to a lecture that we would have had to pay tens of thousands of dollars to go to in real life. quit your whine-ing and look at and see how privileged we are to be allowed to watch this when they could just delete the lectures if they wanted Go on the course . there's enough of a quick view of the diagram to get the gist of what he's wanting to convey.. and his words explain it perfectly smh

[@HangedMunchkinTruther]

​@@wendellbabin6457nothing costs more than what you don't pay for

[@zainababdulkareem7746]

Amazing lectures, can't get enough of them, I love you professor Sapolsky ❤️

[@SilicateOverlord]

37:40 Sapolsky: 'So this is this Koch snowflake...' Student who did coke before class: 'HHAAH!!'

[@rogerhyland8283]

Brilliant. One of the great contributions to human understanding.

[@DanielBrownsan]

Thanks to the camera operator who obsessively followed a closeup of his head rather than zooming back so we could see the diagrams.

[@3dlabs99]

What a beautiful mix of education and entertainment. Great lecture!

[@zetetic23]

Maybe you need to pay tuition to see the overhead projections

[@gustawmajewski9911]

Actualy, yes. Its calld going to university. This is KZbin, remember?

[@Q_QQ_Q]

@Gustaw Majewski no this is old video thats why its so . i have seen other stanford videos which has all boards covered .

[@squaretriangle9208]

😂😂😂😂

[@danie7kovacs]

Gustaw Majewski I don’t think any doubted that there is a difference between the two. Maybe should’ve paid attention in university ;)

[@artandculture5262]

High IQ and sense of humor wondrous when they present together.

[@ncedwards1234]

29:35 made me think I had alzheimer's for a second. I was trying to figure out how to say Obama with one syllable.

[@DrBrainTickler]

Oh this is some brain tickling awesomeness! Thank you so much Robert sapolsky and Stanford.

[@MGraczyk]

These lectures were fantastic until lecture 21, but after watching this one I feel like the last 3 hours could have been replaced with two very simple, concise statements. 1. There are systems with non-injective time evolution functions that are sensitive to variations in initial conditions. 2. Such systems are common in biology. Sapolsky also conflates linearity, sensitivity to initial conditions (chaotic), and time-reversibility. He claims that the three are equivalent when in fact there are evolution functions for every yes/no combination of those three properties (except that there are no linear chaotic maps). Some examples: time-irreversible but linear and non-chaotic: y[n+1] = 1 time-reversible and non-chaotic but non-linear: y[n+1] = y[n] ^ 2 What are the true relationships between complexity and the properties he mentions? Far from all three being equivalent, the only general relationship I can think of is that noninearity is a necessary condition for chaos. Additionally, these two lectures complete misrepresent how reductionist science deals with uncertainty. Variations in data are not simply considered "measurement error". Almost all modern scientists use Bayesian inference to reason under uncertainty. Models are built around our lack of knowledge about the physical systems they represent, including measurement errors and unknown details. To use body temperature as an example, a reductionist model need not attribute temperature variations to lack of thermometer quality. Instead, the variations are expected because our model considers "body temperature" to be a probability distribution with expectation equal to 98.6, but with a variance on the order of 1-2 degrees (so 99.6 would not be impossible). That being said, chaotic behavior is a huge problem for Bayesian inference. When probability mass is spread around in unpredictable and analytically unassailable ways, our simple probabilistic models fail. However, that does not mean that reductionist approaches are doomed. We can empirically build models of the chaotic behavior itself! We represent our lack of knowledge about the future evolution of a system using time evolution functions that spread probability mass around an attractor. This is done explicitly and implicitly across all branches of science.

[@oliviad6713]

+Michael Graczyk I don't think Sopolsky is claiming to be an expert in the these areas, this is a general course in biology, and he is only introducing the concepts, to people who have likely heard of these things. Your point is good about the variability, I don't think he was trying to misrepresent but just didn't get into it. Although he might have left the impression that variability was a "bad" thing, when obviously most sensible 'reductionists" understand it is usual, in fact desirable.. one is always wary of data that appears too "clean" ..

[@isseka]

+Michael Graczyk Thank you for your comment. It addresses concerns I had about those two lectures and clarifies things.

[@isntitabeautifulday1648]

Ok, but don't forget that the lecture is adressed to pretty young students which some of them are not even science students. When you teach something, you got to somehow adjust your speech to your audience's competence.

[@oliviad6713]

@Beeblebrox One I am certain I have listened to every lecture of his available, most of them more than one time.. the entire lecture of course. I have no idea what you are talking about, but I'm sure I had a reason for saying whatever I said that sparked this reply - speaking of that - it appears that YOU are the one making assumptions and claims, when the truth turns out to be quite the opposite. Perhaps you are projecting?

[@Mufassahehe]

@@oliviad6713 I thought he explained all of that in 21. He said that for the purpose simplicity...and then went into explain what you explained.

[@roamin2139]

Ignorance really is bliss. Watching this is bringing up concepts I experience on a daily basis but never really knew what was happening. I feel like I’m manifesting that which he is explaining

[@waggawaggaful]

Welp. I looked into more of this guy's work and think I'm in love. He's exactly the kind of hierarchy-smashing hippie I'd hope to find in the halls of power, even if that power is somewhat limited within the scope of academia. Although Stanford is an incredibly powerful social institution. Maybe I'll get to attend one of his lectures in-person some day. *sigh* ... I don't mind that the camera is fixated on his face at all. The diagrams aren't nearly as interesting to behold as his hair.

[@leonarbro_davinci]

God dammit Michelle I almost fell for your previous troll comment until i saw this one

[@forscherr2]

There's nothing wrong about hierarchies as such. We need them in order to act in the world (actually, there are emergent property of the conditions of life). However, hierarchies tend to become too steep over time and people can become dispossessed, so we need to have mechanisms to update the hierarchy. And we need meta-mechanisms to update the update-mechanisms.

[@michelekennedy6826]

I have a crush on Robert myself.

[@wendellbabin6457]

​@@forscherr2problem is when they become corrupt, which all do eventually. US founders understood this and made the best attempt to date to decentralize and simplify the US hierarchy as much as the time would allow and didn't even get the first attempt correct. Why amendment process exists and supposed to work, but has gotten too difficult to implement and no one has any decent enough ideas of what to amend, EXACTLY, or what, EXACTLY, to amend anything TO that will still serve the ENTIRE Nation and not some subset of same. Only solution left, really, is to hope to find folks competent, and non-corrupt enough to keep on chipping away at the monster. Unfortunately, those are less and less likely. Not more so. And cancel mobs sniffing through Facebook posts all the way back to BIRTH will only make finding anyone even willing to bother less and less likely.

[@drb021]

One of the best introductory treatments of emergent properties that I've seen. So many great examples to go along with it. This should be intro Biology instead of the standard reductionist approach. Did anyone else find it a bit strange that he was talking about de-institutionalization when the video cuts off? "You don't need to have a source of top-down instruction if you don't need a blueprint. Okay, I'm talking about something [video cuts off]."

[@crby101]

CEO's after watching this lecture: *sweating*

[@AlexBobowski]

*dabs forehead with wad of hundreds*

[@CastleHassall]

"starting state tells us nothing about the mature state" .. there IS Hope that we can make things closer to how we want to, and tiny differences (in action) can lead to huge changes there is hope, as long as we can breathe, think and move good luck folks! Keep on trying to build the good you hope for! Best wishes from Rolland Hassall in Scotland

[@SeanMaroni]

He essentially predicts the Twitter/Egypt revolution at 1:41:10

[@NajibElMokhtari]

That was mind blowing man.. The lecture becomes orgasmically interesting after 1h27..

[@mazedmarky]

I was scrolling down looking for this comment, lol.

[@pritongbabou]

And 6 years later we're seeing this on r/wsb potentially

[@TeddyKrimsony]

which wasn't intelligent

[@Entheos84]

The part of neural connections was so cool. I suddenly realize why I love over studying something when I truly want to understand something. I want to have a broader network of neurons that make more associations for when I want to retrieve the memory from my long term memory. I always found it weird that using mnemonics increases the amount of information that you have to remember so naturally I was thinking: Don't mnemonics make me have to remember more? I guess somehow it works. Now I know how this is happening, by making more connections between those neurons related to the memory that you want to remember. Awesome stuff!

[@iljavs]

as I just watched part 21 I was like "hold on, I remember seeing this stuff in a new kind of science" so I pull up the book as I start watching part 22 and kinda start flipping through it as I try to still watch part 22 (yea, trying to do 2 things at once goes about as good as you'd imagine) and almost 18 minutes in, Robert talks about this book, as it is right in front of me and I'm flipping through it :)

[@MrStrigori]

Robert Sapolsky is an amazing man and i really enjoy listening to him. Glad this is here on youtube.

[@Xasperato]

I wonder to what degree might scale-free fractal behaviors reach in our universe, what kind of quality might emerge from the quantity of behaviors on ever-larger scales? From atoms and their components with proportionally enormous degrees of spacial separation, to molecules, to cells, to thinking organisms, to what next? Inter-connectivity is powerful, enough so in a sense to effectively ignore spacial separation.

[@Geroskop]

+A certain Ghork quantum entanglement dude.....

[@waggawaggaful]

Gorgeous stuff to think about...

[@georgeuberti6140]

Isn't the ray Kurtzweil concept of "the Singularity" the only real potential outcome of this as human population and technological advancement continue to scale up? That's not to say that all potential future Singularities are equivalent, but it is to say that whatever the future will hold it will have to continue the scaling up of how human intelligence presents itself. A new iteration of sentience collectively derived from the coordinated metadata of all human activity maybe? If sentience is thinking about thoughts then it's information about information, which sounds like the definition of metadata to me.

[@pappulaabo]

One of the most inspiring lectures I have ever seen

[@michaelsanchez7798]

So many film people just focus on the speaker in lectures. They don't seem to understand what it means to be a student. Students need to see the images that are being spoken about when they are being spoken about. Please stop hiring film majors to do the filming and start hiring students that know how to film. This is so common in otherwise great lectures and it sucks.

[@bwagu8785]

This dick aint free!!!!!!!

[@nishaadrao7584]

My word is the camera work annoying. Takes away from a brilliant lecture when one cannot see what the lecturer is pointing at on the board/screen.

[@michaelamist8703]

Absolutely fantastic he has a way of talking and it just lets you know what he means. Thank you

[@KipIngram]

25:16 - Well, wait a minute. Computers *can* do those things - since you can *implement* neural networks in software. To the extent you can *understand* the process, computers can do it. I think this distinction is important, because I *do* think there are things we can do that computers can't. Godel's work touches on this sort of thing - the human mind can "perceive the truth" of certain statements of logic that cannot be proven using the normal proof procedure. I also believe it will prove to be the case that computers can't actually feel emotions, or have true self-awareness. These things are the purview of living minds. I know some people claim that in times computers will achieve those things, but no one has the slightest inkling how and I just don't think it's going to happen. I think we'll become very good at "faking it" (i.e., having computers "behave as though" they are achieving these things.) So that means we'll get to ARGUE about it endlessly. None of us can PROVE to one another that we have real, true subjective inner experiences. It won't be possible to PROVE computers are having them either.

[@nitewalker11]

you have to take into account that these lectures were recorded over 10 years ago when the field was in its nascency. i think i agree about your uniqueness of the human mind stuff, very similar to the chinese room argument

[@ChetUber-vg8hb]

This is a great lecture. My only problem is the videographer rarely shows the overhead projections. Luckily this one is for me about my favorite topic of late complexity and emergence. 43:01

[@sparhopper]

Nice to listen to, horrible to watch. Because watching a teacher point to unseen examples (because the videographer would rather get close ups of his beard rather than the acknowledged), and necessary slides is no good.

[@waggawaggaful]

I disagree. He's not bad-looking. Though my preferences are strange.

[@celso6454]

The teacher kept looking over at the camera as if conveying that the student filming should be pointing at the screen and not HIM. It is great that I’m able to access these lectures for free, but it makes it much more difficult to fully understand what the lecturer is teaching if one can’t see the visual examples which are necessary for full understanding of the idea.

[@iamofflineyesreally]

@Chip Mahgilify How delusional are you? Just because it's free doesn't mean it can't be critiqued. It's a video of a lecture but some of the very important visual examples are missing. What the fuck is up with your binary way of thinking? Do we really have sugar coat every bit of criticism? Jesus, and you call us the sensitive ones

[@danielholtzman2582]

Given that all of his lectures from this same semester online are filmed in the exact same way, I would bet the professor asked his likely unpaid students filming to keep the camera close up and on him primarily. If they were just lazy or incompetent it would simply be much easier to get a static shot of the overhead or a static long shot of the professor, or one with both. Not to mention that these likely were recorded specifically for the reference of the students of that semester, like many college lectures are, and they may have had access to those slides or they could be from a required book. Anyway most of the slides are shown at some point, usually right after they're put up, so just take a screenshot and reference that. You could even use your big brain to try and find those diagrams on the internet :O

[@XlogicXX]

THIS guy is quite amazing!! Talk about passion for your craft! I have enjoyed watching/listening to his lectures. Makes a lot of sense. It's funny cos in the "Chaos and Reductionism" lecture, I was arguing with him while listening to the first part of the lecture on reductionism. "That is a part to whole flaw" I argued... but by the time he got to the latter part of the lecture on chaotic systems, I appreciated how he effectively presented both sides of the argument -- MASTERFUL!

[@punchjudy]

Actually, Kasparov's main gripe was that the IBM team of programmers went back and modified the program after the first game. Not only was he playing against several humans programming a machine, they were able to adapt the program to his playing style along the way, which he thought was cheating, and I tend to agree.

[@nackedgrils9302]

What part of that would you regard as cheating? If you were a great chess player, you'd end up playing against the same opponents all the time, learn their playing style after a few games and then adapt your strategy every future time you'd be playing them. That's not cheating, that's just the proper way to do it.

[@punchjudy]

@@nackedgrils9302Kasparov felt that the original parameters of the game were that he was playing against the program that they had already created, not one that they would reprogram after losing to him. They were not able to create a program that could beat him without the team from IBM manipulating the program after the fact.

[@courtneyfalk5722]

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who holds that set of opinions about Wolfram.

[@Puchicas9]

Again, from about 37:00-40:00, Dr. Sapolsky puts up a series of diagrams, talks about them and points at them, but the chimp guiding the camera seems to have no clue that these diagrams might be of interest to the people watching the video. I think, in fact, that the camera operator must not be human, but a lower-order primate that was trained to focus on the face of the human in the front of the room. We cannot reasonably expect such a primate to follow the content of the lecture or realize that the projected diagrams are relevant. So now the question is, why did the great, prestigious Stanford University choose a non-human primate to film these lectures, rather than a competent human who could actually follow the flow of the lecture and realize that when the professor displayed a projection, the camera should focus on that, and not on the professor's face?

[@SarahC2]

Lower entry requirements, and feeling sorry for them.

[@youtubehandlessuckalot]

here you go. These are the fractals he was discussing: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor_set en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_snowflake en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menger_sponge

[@Baamthe25th]

Mike Fury Thanks.

[@greenpaperclips]

Puchicas9 Copyright issue? I think this was stated in the first lecture as the reason that not all the slides would be recorded.

[@charlotteknoblauch3901]

Mike Fury thanks🙂👍🏼

[@roslynborretta1923]

Sapolsky rocks ‼️ He's very brilliant.....he makes you want to learn

[@mbappekawani9716]

im grateful to marijuana for making this comprehensible

[@thedragonlady6661]

Dude. Me too.

[@kashmiller4675]

Thank you the effort and patience

[@heyokastu2]

i like his prediction of the revolution from our living rooms because of emergent complexity. well look at that emergent pandemic for society! lol there's our Merlin Professor Sapolsky everybody. too bad it had to be a pandemic virus. maybe next time.

[@djrinpoche]

Perhaps that will be a minor example.

[@송예은-h7b]

Somehow, I can relate this topic to failure, risk-taking, and success in life. Great topic to study about

[@Mink0twink]

Whats the deal with the person recording not showing us the illustrations!!! It's driving me nuts!

[@Dr.PaulCottrell]

Very informative. Great lecture. Thanks for the upload.

[@itsRAWRtime007]

shouldve filmed the projector a bit more since the point of cellular automata is captured in their graphical representation

[@blessedandbiwithahintofmagic]

That knowledge of the crowd phenomena is amazing.

[@jungleragadon4917]

"Is this president Tree, *president Trump* , president Bush?" Ten years ago, this guy knew already...

[@littlemissmisses2981]

He said President Shrub 😂

[@michaelcarley9866]

Sometime Sapolsky blow my mind with tha knowledge.

[@MumblingMickey]

In short I think this system is brilliant from the perspective of software developers. But I wouldn't want to be the guy who had to debug any applications! I agree from a philosophical point that yeah we need some sort of true definition of 'alternatives' when discussing phenomena like 'life' or 'living' or 'alive' now. I think life became a category when John Holland set about building genetic algorithms in the 70's... it just took some time for the rest of us to catch up!

[@pnppotsnpansmix6365]

This guy does t beat around the bush…. He tip toes gracefully through to the switch and ikikinates the whole field.

[@kimcooper87]

The cameraperson was asleep for a while there.

[@sgcollins]

i'm glad i stumbled upon this amazing sapolsky guy! what would be cool is if he were presenter of a BBC horizon-style mini-series about emergence and complexity, with full-on animations to illustrate.

[@milesteg8627]

Ok did anyone else catch his comment at the end about a revolution in which nobody leaves their living rooms and emergence from beneath collapses govt systems? Prescient

[@kedarnathsahu2643]

yup

[@wendellbabin6457]

Probably won't like the result either.

[@atulpj]

Eye opening. Thank you. Will work to improve these insights.

[@franciscoc1144]

this is like being a teenager again and listening to Tool for the first time.

[@ginabrogan1825]

exactly!!

[@slagoona1790]

At the one hour mark, I knew my life was changed.

[@kedarnathsahu2643]

exactly

[@doomprophetess6286]

Move the damn camera to the overhead, for god's sake!!!!

[@musicrights6645]

+Karina Koehler lol, ya there really must be a God...just that Prof Sapolsky doesn't believe in one, so he hires an atheist to move the camera, who doesn't even listen to what he's pointing at, so doesn't even know when to move the camera to the overhead slides.

[@xorneytoadsatchel9687]

For how stupid aggressively the cam pans left and right to follow him...

[@brindlebriar]

I know right? I felt very violently towards the camera person, during that part of the lecture. I fantasized about shooting him. There are illustrations, right there! that could convey concepts that turn the universe upside down in the blink of an eye and the camera person WON'T FUCKING SHOW US! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK! fUCK! I would beat.... I would beat that person. ...I would beat them. ....okay I feel better now.

[@theultimatereductionist7592]

Ikr?

[@theultimatereductionist7592]

+brindlebriar 100% agree. I feel the same way, but 10^100 times more intensely, more violently, towards hypocritical judges, who vote republiturd or democrap, who preach VAGUE UNFALSIFIABLE ideology/philosophy against communism or socialism (never ONCE entering their brain that, WHATEVER they think is "communist" or "socialist", it's the LAW, and MUST be upheld) & then sentence poor people to prison for life for killing a cop who tries to arrest them over a triviality. Spouting generalities about "libertarian vs socialism" = unfalsifiable untestable garbage. Only testable quantifiable reductionistic mathematical models of ALL cause & effect, ALL acts of force, from forcing animals to be born & confined & tortured & murdered in factory farms, to forcing new humans into existence with no guarantee they can support themselves.

[@GregTroxell]

Fascinating application of these truths and theories in all aspects of life, community, business, even church.

[@paftaf]

29:49 First time I heard “president trump”. Then I looked at the date and freaked out....

[@adrienv9075]

I totally did the same thing man! Seriously, like what the fuck? How smart is this guy?

[@stvbrsn]

Ha! President Shrump.

[@carlosprada4852]

President Shrub

[@Gravija1980]

This is the greatest video on all of KZbin.

[@EricDMMiller]

It's amazing how Wolfram's terminology makes these concepts easier to grasp in terms of computability and computational irreducibility.

[@harmreduction3403]

Google Cellular Automata for the diagrams.

[@lindseylim8026]

Oh thank you ... I kept wondering "cellular auto-what??"

[@Themultimediaguy]

That's quite a prediction there at the end. Doesn't seem to be possible currently but perhaps as more control is based online here in 2020 it seems more plausible. Might not be a good thing though for freedoms.

[@Thisisnotmyrealname8]

I like this professors general tone, he's easy to listen to. However, I bet five bucks that this idea about small communities putting together small bits of information that compiles and solves a complex problem is always empirically never shown to be any more than a sum of vectors. The only reason we know any "problem" has been solved is because of intelligence, and if "knowing" means anything it means we know that life is more than absolute material interaction, that information creates a dynamic that is, as of yet, well beyond man's wisdom. Such a dynamic of information allows Man to step outside of his or her motivation and examine it. What if a similarly studied colony of ants who were only efficient enough to barely survive (in fact, let's say they are retrograde efficient, coming into existence from some "chance", and would die out in a matter of days) also produce the most beautiful patterns humans have ever seen? They might preserve the colony, study it, keep it alive accordingly, and figure out new laws for reproducing that original beauty. It is only captured because of an intelligence which desired the feature. When scientists study the genome, or whatever, they are looking for ways to survive, essentially. What survives? Efficiency, in a nut shell. If we were a species that had full awareness of the consciousness, passing into death from life with no doubt as to what comes next, no concern for eating, health, or pain, it could be theorized that all we would be interested in studying scientifically would be making beautiful patterns, or sounds. Perhaps, that is the experience of algae, or mold, which could be argued to be more a more successful organism than man in the world's past, present, or future. So, a question of quality is raised, but what determines quality? What is quality in the void? Satisfaction.

[@Liusila]

Thisisnotmyrealname8 On a scale from 1 to Snoop Dog, how high were you when writing this?

[@alizakhalid1499]

Thankyou for this life changing journey professor ❤️

[@Xasperato]

I must say that the camera operator is completely and utterly incompetent. The most likely situation which I can construct to explain why such an operator may be employed for this task is that Stanford University is running some manor of experiment to record the camera operating capabilities of a chimpanzee in the environment of a legitimate lecture. I would strongly suggest that Stanford wouldn't conduct such experiments during lectures intended to also serve the purpose of conveying interesting ideas to human viewers, as the effectiveness of the visual diagrams is lost in all entirety and the presentation in general becomes much less effective. Luckily, Dr. Sapolsky is a very effective lecturer and makes up for some of the damages to the presentation caused by this experiment. I would hope that Stanford considers the opinions of viewers stating that chimpanzees shouldn't operate cameras in such situations.

[@Shifty4L]

^