I’ve always been a fan of the book, “The Myth of the Rational Head” by Robert Sapolsky. Sapolsky explains how we’ve all been conditioned to think that our actions are rational, and therefore, they’re not necessarily the product of our best interests. The book, and its follow-up, “The Rationality Illusion,” explains that we are all irrational creatures that are motivated by self-interest.
Robert Sapolsky has been a great teacher, and The Rationality Illusion is the book that has helped me understand the self-centeredness that leads us to irrational behavior. One of the reasons why Sapolsky taught himself to think rationally was because he had a very clear picture of how irrational behavior came about. He explained that, when it comes to our decisions, we are not motivated by our best interests.
In Sapolsky’s view, our motivation for taking actions is not our highest self-interest. Rather, it comes from our lowest self-interest. In other words, when we make a decision, we do it because our best self-interest is served. We are not motivated by our actual self-interest, we are motivated by our lowest self-interest.
This is the basis of the Sapolskys thought experiment. It’s just a thought experiment, so take it with a grain of salt. But the premise is that we have a very clear picture of how irrational behavior comes about, and all we have to do is watch the people who are doing it and observe their pattern of behavior.
The Sapolskys experiment doesn’t suggest that we are rational. The whole point is that the Sapolskys have a good idea of what they are doing, but they aren’t rational. They are following the rule of “lower your self-interest, and your action will follow.” But the point is, we can have that rule wrong and it won’t follow at all.
We are taught (almost by default) to think of ourselves as being rational. This is a little oversimplified, but it does give us a really nice framework for understanding our behavior. We are taught that the only thing we can do for ourselves is take care of ourselves. We learn how to take care of ourselves by taking care of our parents, our friends, our family, and our neighbors. All that stuff is a very important part of human behavior.
That’s fine, so far as we are concerned, but this only works if we don’t learn to do it ourselves. So let’s take a look at what this means. We are taught to take care of ourselves by helping other people and taking care of our own needs. This means that we are taught to take care of ourselves in a variety of ways. The obvious way to take care of yourself is to make sure that you are getting plenty of exercise.
It is not, however, a good idea to be a couch potato either. There are a wide variety of exercise programs that help you get in shape. The best ones will do something similar to what we are doing with our family and our neighbors. It is important to understand that exercise is not the same thing as getting a good night’s sleep. For some people, going to bed with a book is the best thing to do with their time.
There are three types of sleep. Sleeplessness is when you don’t get any sleep whatsoever. Insomnia is when you don’t get your sleep at all. And cataplexy is when someone’s eyes go crazy.
Cataplexy is basically being unable to control your body’s involuntary actions. For example, when you go to sleep, your body goes to sleep without you. But if you can’t control it, it’s like you can’t move your legs.
