20190514

Tue May 14 09:03:16 EDT 2019 Slept from ten to six, somewhat restlessly but much better than the previous night. High of sixty-seven and mostly sunny today. Saw a smallish raptor — maybe a sharp-shinned hawk — fly over Lahser on my way to work. Work: - Patch Tuesday Done. - Order UPS battery Done. - Test preseed Done, but I may end just cloning the drives for various reasons. Fifteen-minute walk at lunch after shopping at Meijer. Sunny and warm. Leaves cover most trees. Starting to feel like summer. Home: - Buy lunch groceries Done. - Remember to take home groceries Done. - Go to bed not late https://www.edge.org/conversation/robert_sapolsky-a-bozo-of-a-baboon > Here’s an example: When baboons hunt together they'd love to get as much meat as possible, but they're not very good at it. The baboon is a much more successful hunter when he hunts by himself than when he hunts in a group because they screw up every time they're in a group. Say three of them are running as fast as possible after a gazelle, and they're gaining on it, and they're deadly. But something goes on in one of their minds—I'm anthropomorphizing here—and he says to himself, "What am I doing here? I have no idea whatsoever, but I'm running as fast as possible, and this guy is running as fast as possible right behind me, and we had one hell of a fight about three months ago. I don't quite know why we're running so fast right now, but I'd better just stop and slash him in the face before he gets me." The baboon suddenly stops and turns around, and they go rolling over each other like Keystone cops and the gazelle is long gone because the baboons just became disinhibited. They get crazed around each other at every juncture. > A typical male baboon is too impulsive and can't possibly do the disciplined thing. Baboons are far less disciplined than chimps and when you map their brain anatomy you notice that they don't have a whole lot of frontal cortical function. Even though there are tremendous individual differences among the baboons, they're still at this neurological disadvantage, compared to the apes, and thus they typically blow it at just the right time. They could be scheming these incredible coalitions, but at the last moment, one decides to slash his partner in the ass instead of the guy they're going after, just because he can get away with it for three seconds. The whole world is three seconds long—they're very pointillist in their emotions. > […] > The typical male baboon career trajectory is to fight your way to the top while building some good coalitional skills. When you're relatively high-ranking and if you're going to stay up there, you switch from physical prowess to psychological intimidation and social skills. But eventually it catches up with you and you finally get into a key fight and get killed or crippled or are utterly defeated and you crash way down. However, every decade you'll get some guy who's fought his way up, and six months into his ascendancy suddenly decides, "Who needs this?" and voluntarily walks away from it. They seem to have some sort of epiphanal mid-life crisis and go on to spend the rest of their lives hanging out with infants and forming social attachments with females. > Ten years ago the evolutionary community would have had a derisive response to this, saying that while this may be terrific, it's not a very successful adaptive strategy because this guy is walking away from the competitive world of maximizing his reproductive success. Now, however, genetic studies are beginning to show that these guys out-reproduce the slash-and-burn competitive guys, because they last for years afterward without getting seriously injured and form this female affiliate. Watched the last few episodes of season one of Samurai Gormet. Such a charming show! Moon in the blue sky this evening. Servings: grains 6/6, fruit 4/4, vegetables 5/4, dairy 2/2, meat 4/3, nuts 0/0.5 Brunch: tomato, celery, banana, mandarin, migas, coffee Lunch: doughnut, banana, carrots, cucumber Afternoon snack: coffee Dinner: sandwich, coleslaw, apple 102/63

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