DETROIT In just a few years, well-mannered self-driving robotaxis will share the roads with reckless, law-breaking human drivers. The prospect is causing migraines for the people developing the robotaxis.

A self-driving car would be programmed to drive at the speed limit. Humans routinely exceed it by 10 to 15 mph (16 to 24 kph) just try entering the New Jersey Turnpike at normal speed. Self-driving cars wouldnt dare cross a double yellow line; humans do it all the time. And then there are those odd local traffic customs to which humans quickly adapt.

In Los Angeles and other places, for instance, theres the California Stop, where drivers roll through stop signs if no traffic is crossing. In Southwestern Pennsylvania, courteous drivers practice the Pittsburgh Left, where its customary to let one oncoming car turn left in front of them when a traffic light turns green. The same thing happens in Boston. During rush hours near Ann Arbor, Michigan, drivers regularly cross a double-yellow line to queue up for a left-turn onto a freeway.

Theres an endless list of these cases where we as humans know the context, we know when to bend the rules and when to break the rules, says Raj Rajkumar, a computer engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who leads the schools autonomous car research.

Although autonomous cars are likely to carry passengers or cargo in limited areas during the next three to five years, experts say it will take many years before robotaxis can coexist with human-piloted vehicles on most side streets, boulevards and freeways. Thats because programmers have to figure out human behavior and local traffic idiosyncrasies. And teaching a car to use that knowledge will require massive amounts of data and big computing power that is prohibitively expensive at the moment.

Driverless cars are very rule-based, and they dont understand social graces, says Missy Cummings, director of Duke Universitys Humans and Autonomy Lab.

Driving customs and road conditions are dramatically different across the globe, with narrow, congested lanes in European cities, and anarchy in Beijings giant traffic jams. In Indias capital, New Delhi, luxury cars share poorly marked and congested lanes with bicycles, scooters, trucks, and even an occasional cow or elephant.

Then there is the problem of aggressive humans who make moves such as cutting cars off on freeways or turning left in front of oncoming traffic. In India, for example, even when lanes are marked, drivers swing from lane to lane without hesitation.

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Biggest challenge for self-driving cars? Human drivers - The Recorder

As you read this, take a whiff. What smells do you detect? How do these smells affect how you feel?

It's rare that people consciously take in the smells around them, but a new review argues that the human sense of smell is more powerful than it's usually given credit for, and that it plays a bigger role in human health and behavior than many medical experts realize.

"The fact is the sense of smell is just as good in humans as in other mammals, like rodents and dogs,"John McGann, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University-New Brunswick in New Jersey and the author of the new review, said in a statement.

People often think of dogs and rats as the superior sniffers in the animal kingdom, but humans also have an extremely keen sense of smell, McGann argued in the review, which was published today (May 11) in the journal Science. In fact, humans can discriminate among 1 trillion different odors, McGann wrote, far more than a commonly cited claim that people can detect only about 10,000 different smells. [10 Things That Make Humans Special]

By overlooking humans' keen smelling abilities, medicine may be missing a key component of human health, McGann said. Smell influences human behavior, from stirring up memories to attracting sexual partners to influencing mood to shaping taste, he said. It's no coincidence that the French word for smell, "sentir," also means to feel; emotion and smell are often intricately linked.

When considering the senses, there's a reason smell is often shunted to third place behind sight and hearing, McGann wrote.

It started in the 19th century, when Paul Broca, a French brain surgeon and anthropologist, observed that humans have proportionately smaller olfactory, or smell-related, organs compared with other animals, according to the review. Broca also noted that people don't exhibit odor-driven behavior to the same degree that other mammals do.

This led Broca to hypothesize in his 1879 writings that smell had taken a backseat role to the other senses in humans in exchange for free will. Years later, Sigmund Freud piggybacked on the idea that human smell is inferior to other senses, suggesting that the sense of smell could not dominate a rational person, according to the review.

McGann called these conclusions a "gross oversimplification," but they were then further supported by later research. For example, studies from the 20th century found that rats and mice have genes for about 1,000 different kinds of receptors that are activated by odors, compared with about 400 such receptors in humans.

It's true that humans have relatively smaller olfactory organs and fewer odor-detecting genes compared with other animals. However, the power of the human brain more than makes up for this.

"The truth is that 400 different receptors still offer a tremendous range. There are very few odors that humans can't smell despite having practically fewer receptors than rats, mice and dogs," McGann told Live Science. Part of the reason humans can detect so many odors is thanks to their "much more complicated and powerful brain that's interpreting that information."

When a person smells something, odor molecules bind to receptors in the nose. These receptors send information about the molecules to the human olfactory bulb in the brain, which then sends signals to other areas of the brain to help identify scents. [Tip of the Tongue: The 7 (Other) Flavors Humans May Taste]

This is different from the way smell works in dogs, McGann said. Dogs have a "pump" in their noses that's designed to take in chemicals in liquid form (say, on the side of a fire hydrant) for identification, he said. Because the smelling mechanisms are so different, it's hard to compare humans to dogs, McGann said.

Many studies have linked the humans sense of smell to certain medical conditions.

Dr. Dolores Malaspina, a psychiatrist at New York University Langone Medical Center, agreed that smell can play an important role in medicine. Malaspina was not involved in the new review.

Malaspina has long used smell to help diagnose certain diseases, and her research has connected the human sense of smell with both schizophrenia and depression.

"Smell among schizophrenia patients is often either distorted or decreased," she told Live Science.

Malaspina has also shown that a loss of smell can lead to depression. This may be linked to how odors trigger the growth of neurons, she said. [10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain]

"There's evidence that these stimulations of the brain by odors may drive the making of new brain cells," she said.

Loss of smell has been linked to other health problems as well. A 2016 study showed that a loss of the ability to detect scents was associated with early signs of Alzheimer's disease. And sobering research from 2014found that a loss of smell may predict death within five years.

As people age, many gradually lose their sense of smell. Research has shown that 75 percent of people lose at least part of their sense of smell by age 80.

It's all the more reason, McGann said, to appreciate the power of human smell and its role in human health.

"When you lose your sense of smell, it's actually a big deal. It influences your ability to take pleasure in food and daily life," McGann said. "There's a significant impact of losing your sense of smell that's not yet fully understood."

Originally published on Live Science.

Continue reading here:
People Smell Great! Human Sniffers Sensitive as Dogs' - Live Science

Introduction

In this lesson, you will read about some of the important figures and discoveries that have greatly advanced the study of human behavior since the early 1900s. After you have explored the online resources, you will discuss what you have learned with your class.

Begin by reading the introductory page A Science Odyssey: Human Behavior.

The following is a list of key figures of the 20th century whose work impacted on or changed the way we view human behavior or treat mental illness. Use the links provided on the A Science Odyssey: Human Behavior page to learn more about these individuals.

Use the links provided at A Science Odyssey: Human Behavior to learn more about the following landmarks in the history of psychology and medical science.

That's My Theory! is an amusing and informative online "game show" in which you have to guess which of the three disguised psychologists is the real Sigmund Freud (based on questions dealing with the personality, mind function, and the purpose of psychology)

In a brief essay, summarize in your own words what you believe is the key difference between how human behavior was viewed in 1900 and how it is viewed now.

See original here:
Human Behavior - Science NetLinks

A new University initiative is bringing together researchers and administrators to apply insights from behavioral science to tackle campus challenges and advance research in that field.

Representatives from 24 administrative units and seven academic departments, programs and centers gathered in March to launch the Campus Behavioral Science Initiative (CBSI), a joint effort of the Office of the Executive Vice President and the Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science & Public Policy.

"CBSI aspires to foster collaboration between administrative units and academic researchers to use the campus as a research site, tapping behavioral science to develop innovative solutions to campus challenges," said Treby Williams, the University's executive vice president.

Eldar Shafir, the Class of 1987 Professor in Behavioral Science and Public Policy, professor of psychology and public affairs, and inaugural director of the Kahneman-Treisman Center, said the initiative offers researchers the opportunity to gather valuable data, further their scholarly work and contribute to the University in a new way.

"This campus has a group of very talented and hard-working researchers who try to use behavioral insights to produce better outcomes," Shafir said. "We love and care about this campus, and it is so close and available. Why shouldn't we turn our eye partly to what we can do here?"

Behavioral science focuses on scientific experimentation, controlled observation of real-life behavior, and systematic analysis of data to understand the motivations, limitations and biases inherent in human behavior. The Kahneman-Treisman Center brings together faculty members from departments including psychology, sociology, politics, philosophy and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs who pursue research in behavioral science.

Williams said the University can benefit from the application of behavioral-science insights as it tackles challenges from developing programs to reduce the number of cars driven to campus each day or reducing campus energy use to guiding employees toward appropriate health-care programs or helping students make better decisions related to healthy eating, sleep and alcohol consumption.

"Innovative solutions to these kinds of challenges require accurate insights into human behavior and decision-making. Without that knowledge, we won't succeed," Williams said.

Learnings from behavioral science have already been used successfully on campus, such as shifting default participation to "opt-in." For example, in the past, eligible faculty members had to take action to opt in to a benefit that gave them a reduced teaching load following the birth of a child. Shifting the benefit to one that faculty members automatically accrue unless they take action to opt out has increased participation on campus. A similar approach for a retirement savings program has increased the amount employees are saving for retirement.

The CBSI kick-off event included a brainstorming session where administrators and researchers offered ideas and suggested areas for potential collaboration. Khristina Gonzalez, associate dean in the Office of the Dean of the College, and Margaret Frye, assistant professor of sociology, expressed an interest in research about the experience of low-income and first-generation students at Princeton. Gonzalez and Frye have already met with colleagues from the departments of politics and psychology to chart their next steps and will be bringing other administrators and researchers into the project in the fall.

Gonzalez oversees the Freshman Scholars Institute and the Scholars Institute Fellows Program, which are designed to empower undergraduates to thrive at Princeton, particularly those from first-generation and low-income backgrounds. She said CBSI presents an opportunity to learn from research about what helps such students succeed and to contribute to additional research on the topic.

"I think it can be a valuable partnership because there is a lot of great, innovativeresearch in this field and working together will help us think about how to use that research to improve interventions to support our students," Gonzalez said.

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University initiative focuses on behavioral science to tackle campus challenges - Princeton University

Robert Sapolsky (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

Robert Sapolsky is a lot of things: a MacArthur Fellow who spent years studying a troop of baboons in Kenya, a neuroendocrinologist who changed the way we think about stress and the brain, an accomplished columnist and writer of popular science books. He is also a professor of biology at Stanford who has long been interested in what animals can tell us about our own behavior.

Most recently, Sapolsky has been reflecting on the origins of human behavior, starting deep in the brain moments before we act and working his way millions of years back to the evolutionary pressures on our prehistoric ancestors decisions, with stops along the way to consider how hormones, brain development and social structures shape our behavior. He also has been thinking about free will and comes to the conclusion, based on the biological and psychological evidence, that we do not have it.

On the occasion of his latest book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, Stanford News Service interviewed Sapolsky about science, the need to be behavioral biologists and what to do about justice if, as Sapolsky argues, we do not have free will.

Youve advanced the idea that we cant understand human behavior by studying it at just one level that, for example, we cant understand politics without studying neurons, brain chemistry without studying psychology, or perhaps even humans without studying apes. Does that mean that weve been studying behavior the wrong way? Are university departments too compartmentalized to see the forest for the trees?

Well, theres nothing particularly special about the idea scientists thinking about the bases of behavior know that you have to be multidisciplinary. There are entire journals that enshrine that concept, for example, Psychoneuroimmunology or Brain, Behavior and Evolution, and every university of note is overflowing with interdisciplinary programs.

Where the contrast comes in is with individual scientists research. Of necessity, a scientist typically studies one incredibly tiny sliver of some biological system, totally ensconced within one discipline, because even figuring out how one sliver works is really hard. There are not many scientists who would argue that their sliver is the only thing that should be studied just that its the most important, which sure makes sense, if they just spent their last seven decades obsessing over that sliver.

Is that a problem?

Its not a problem if all they do is talk and think about sliver X. But potentially a definite problem if they think larger and their sliver X-centric view of the universe is distorted.

All roads in human behavior seem to lead to its complicated. Out of the mess of things that combine to create our best and worst and typical behavior, what do you think is most important for ordinary people to know? What about policymakers or other scientists?

I think its the same for both groups, which is that were all behavioral biologists when we serve on juries, when we vote for whether government funds should be spent to try to correct some societal ill, when we deal with an intimate with a mental illness, we are tacitly deciding how and how much our behavior is constrained by biology. So we might as well be informed behavioral biologists. And one thing that involves is being profoundly cautious and humble when it comes to deciding you understand the causes of a behavior, especially one that we judge harshly.

What does that suggest about judicial sentencing rules or the death penalty, for example?

Basically, that the criminal justice system is staggeringly out of date in incorporating neuroscience into its thinking. As one flagrant example, the gold standard for determining whether someone is so organically impaired that they cant be held responsible for their criminal actions the MNaghten rule concerning an inability to tell the difference between right and wrong is based on the case of a man by that name, almost certainly a paranoid schizophrenic, from the 1840s. The 1840s!

What are the most important questions that remain?

For me, the single most important question is how to construct a society that is just, safe, peaceful all those good things when people finally accept that there is no free will.

Thats a tall order, given that philosophers let alone politicians and activists have trouble deciding what justice and free will mean.

A tall order, indeed, because words like justice, punishment, accountability become completely irrelevant as irrelevant as if a car that has damaged brakes and is dangerous to drive is thought to be accountable for being dangerous, and that justice is served when the car is punished by locking it up in a garage and not driven.

And its equally important and challenging to realize that free will is also irrelevant to our best as well as our worst behaviors. And thus where praising seems as irrelevant as praising a car for having a strong work ethic and admirable gratification postponement when it makes it up the top of a steep road. Or if you give a car preferential treatment if it was manufactured with a really attractive hood ornament.

Yes, a very tall order, and Im not sure if it is achievable.

Sapolsky is also the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor, a professor of neurology and neurological sciences and of neurosurgery, and a member of Stanford Bio-X and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute.

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Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky takes on human behavior, free will - Stanford University News

Last week, I wrote a bit about the dangers of passwords and the relationship with the Google Docs phishing scam that recently broke. Today, Im going back to the Google Docs issue, but to look at it from a different angle: how scammers continue to use social engineering so successfully.

An eSecurity Planet article touched on this:

Fidelis Cybersecurity threat research manager John Bambenek said by email that the attack is a stark reminder that criminals and nation states are targeting the one thing technology can't fix -- the user. "If you can trick the user into compromising themselves, you have no need for a zero-day," he said. "Security awareness and vigilance of end users are the key to the security of any system."

This echoes what Nathan Wenzler, chief security strategist at AsTech, told me in an email message. Hackers are using attacks such as ransomware and honed spearphishing campaigns to go after the weakest link: people, adding:

These attacks take advantage of social and emotional constructs to either fool the user into clicking on a link or a file that is malicious, or in the case of ransomware, appeal to the user's sense of ownership of their data and the desire to gain access to files which are important to them and may not be available anywhere else.

Someone recently asked what excites me about cybersecurity right now, and I said behavior analytics and how hackers use human behavior to manipulate their attacks, but also how security professionals can turn to behavior to better prevent attacks. In the Google Docs phish, the hackers not only turned to behavior to gain an edge, they also used the legitimate functionality within Google's infrastructure to provide a proper user login. They counted on the phishing recipients to simply react without thinking. And we should expect hackers to build on this type of attack vector, according to Simon Taylor, vice president of products at Glasswall, who told me in an email comment:

Cyber criminals know that productivity suites like O365 and Google, as well as dynamic documents and other types of shared files are the lifeblood of todays internet users. This includes consumers and employees of massive corporations, and oftentimes, theyre one and the same. While the threat has reportedly been mitigated by Google, this will not stop the ever-expanding theme of clever phishing tactics by malicious actors.

What can you do to help your employees avoid phishing scams that are using the tools they use every day to conduct ordinary job duties? You know Im going to say its time for security awareness training, specifically about this type of attack, and to always verify everything before clicking, especially if the request is out of the ordinary. In addition to that, Wenzler suggested that users should understand exactly how the software works:

Under normal conditions, Google Docs won't ask a user to provide access to Google Docs. It already has it, essentially, as that's the nature of signing up for the service. Users who know that something called "Google Docs" won't ask for access like this attack did would know that something is amiss and could stop before providing that access. Always take a moment to understand what your web-based applications are supposed to do, and if you see something abnormal, err on the side of caution and do not proceed.

Sue Marquette Poremba has been writing about network security since 2008. In addition to her coverage of security issues for IT Business Edge, her security articles have been published at various sites such as Forbes, Midsize Insider and Tom's Guide. You can reach Sue via Twitter: @sueporemba

See the original post here:
Google Docs Phishing Scam Takes Advantage of Human Behavior - IT Business Edge (blog)

(MENAFN Editorial)

Human Behavior and Cognition Expert, Tony J. Selimi, Featured on NBC

Tony J. Selimi, Human Behavior and Cognition Expert, Speaker, Educator and Internationally Published Author, was recently seen on ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX network affiliates around the country as a guest on The Brian Tracy Show

London, England May 2, 2017 Tony J. Selimi, Human Behavior and Cognition Expert, was recently a featured guest on The Brian Tracy Show. The show was hosted by Best-Selling Author and one of the country's leading business minds, Brain Tracy, and features business leaders and experts from around the world. Tony J. Selimi was one of Brian Tracy's recent guests, discussing his five step method to maximize human awareness and awaken people's innate healing faculties, the TJS Evolutionary Method.

Selimi's expertise and specialization in helping people realize their full potential led to an invite to the set of The Brian Tracy Show to tell the revolutionary story on how he went from living homeless on the streets of London to becoming a thought leader. His work has changed the lives of his clients by helping them align their highest values to their daily lives, build iconic ethical businesses, co-loving relationships, achieve work-life balance, and find inner peace and attain ultimate health. His feature has been seen by viewers across the country, and has undoubtedly inspired many.

The Brian Tracy Show, filmed in San Diego, California, is produced by Emmy Award-winning Director and Producer, Nick Nanton, Esq. and Emmy Award winning Producer, JW Dicks, Esq., Co-Founders of America's PremierExperts and The Dicks and Nanton Celebrity Branding Agency. The episode featuring Selimi recently aired on NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX affiliates across the country.

Watch Selimi's appearance on The Brian Tracy Show here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyeYlGrASdw

About Tony J. Selimi:

Tony Jeton Selimi went from being a teenage victim of war feeling hopeless, impoverished, and abandoned on the streets of London, to graduating with honors from one of London's most prestigious engineering universities UCL. He build a very successful IT career before following his hearts calling to follow the entrepreneurial path that led him to become No.1 Amazon bestselling and award-winning author, key note speaker, co-creator of Living My Illusion Documentary Series and the founder of TJS Cognition, a service educational institution dedicated to unravelling, advancing, and elevating human potential.

He specializes in assisting businesses owners from all market sectors and people from all professions find solutions to their personal and business problems, accelerate their learning, and achieve excellence in all of the eight key areas of life: Spiritual, Mental, Emotional, Physical, Business, Money, Relationship and Love.

Like a transparent mirror, Tony is known for his ability to see through people' problems, unconscious behaviors, thought patterns, skewed perceptions, and dis-empowering beliefs that prevent them from creating and delivering astronomical visions and living the lifestyle they dream about. He helps them break free from shame, guilt, expectations, control, fears, trauma, addictions and other mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual blockages by upgrading their 'cognitive operating system and teaching them how to tap into the infinite wisdom of their interstellar existence.

As a business consultant he globally provides answers to questions and practical solutions to life's challenges in talks, workshops, one to one coaching, mastermind groups, retreats, articles, radio and TV interviews as well as through his books and online downloads of Audio Books and the TJS Evolutionary Meditation Solutions.

His clients are entrepreneurs, leaders, and people from all walks of life who seek his help to manifest their highest vision, to be more healthy, wealthy, wise, spiritual and influential. They range from Coaches, #Sports Personalities, Musicians, Celebrities, MPs, Dr's, Scientists, to CEO's and Managers of FTSE 100 companies such as Microsoft, SAP, Bank of America, E & Y, Gayacards, Vandercom and Deutsche Bank.

Tony appeared in various national magazines including Soul and Spirit, Global Women, Science to Sage, Hitched, Migrant Women, Accelerate Your Business, Changing Careers Magazine, Consciousness Magazine, Your Wellness, Time Out, Pink Paper, Gay Star News, Key Person Influence, and Soul Mate Relationship World Summit.

Some of his recent TV appearance include Digging Deep Show for SKY TV, Top Channel, Klan Kosova, AlsatM, Jeta KohaVision, RTM, MTV2, Kanal 21, and Shenja.

Tony's unique wisdom is sought regularly by various radio broadcasters to inspire their listeners including Hay House Radio, Voice of America, Radio Macedonia, Radio Kosova, Beyond 50, Knowledge for Men, Love and Freedom, Empty Closet, Donna Sebo Show, News for the Soul, Channel Radio, Untangled FM, Self-Discovery, and Spirit Radio.

He loves travelling, consulting, researching, teaching, speaking, and coaching clients globally. Tony loves using his creative flair and in partnership with the owners of Vandercom, a leading telecommunication and IT service Provider Company, he is co-creating inspiring films and documentaries that share his clients' real life breakthrough stories that are emotionally engaging, mind illuminating, and heart awakening to move people into action.

He is known for creating amazing transformation and leaving his clients feeling revitalized, energized, and with a sense of inner peace.

If you would like to learn more about Tony J. Selimi and his services, connect with him at: http://TonySelimi.com

###

Contact:

Christine Enberg

Dicks and Nanton Celebrity Branding Agency

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Human Behavior and Cognition Expert, Tony J. Selimi, Featured on NBC - MENAFN.COM

Human beings are a mess of contradictions. A person might hate violence but love violent action movies. Someone else might consider certain people are inherently good yet refuse to believe in the idea of a soul. For a long time, scientists have attempted to account for the inconsistencies in human behavior and tried to find predictable patterns in them but theyve yet to come up with a simple explanation.

But neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky wants us to know that were never going to find one.

While we are a miserably violent species, were also extraordinarily compassionate and altruistic, said Sapolsky, a Stanford University professor, to a TED 2017 crowd on Thursday. So how do you make sense of the biology of our best moments, our worst, and all of the ambiguous ones in between?

Answering this, he says, means first accepting that human behavior cant be explained by one hormone or evolutionary mechanism. Human decisions, he explains, are influenced by multiple factors that operate on a vast timeline, ranging from the second before a choice is made to the moment thousands of years ago when a persons behavioral patterns began to be shaped by their ancestors. Heres how he broke down the moments that contribute to human behavior in his talk.

One second before the decision: Whatevers happening in your immediate environment seconds before you make a decision may activate your amygdala, the brain area central to fear and aggression. So, if your environment is stressful, then your amygdala will be more likely to elicit hostile emotions that may influence that choice.

In addition, if youre tired, youre hungry, youre in pain your frontal cortex is not going to work very well, Sapolsky advises. Thats the brain region whose job it is to get there just in time to stop the amygdala.

Hours to days before the decision: This span of time is most influenced by hormones, Sapolsky says. The levels of these natural chemicals constantly fluctuate, and their levels at any given moment can influence a decision made down the line.

Regardless of your sex, if your testosterone levels are elevated, youre more likely to mistake a neutral facial expression for a threatening one, says Sapolsky. Or, if you have elevated levels of stress hormones, your amygdala becomes excitable and your frontal cortex gets sluggish.

Weeks to months before the decision: This time frame is the realm of neural plasticity the changes to the brain that happen as neurons form new connections.

The brain can change dramatically over time in response to experience, says Sapolsky. If your previous months were filled with stress and trauma, your amygdala would have grown larger, and neurons would have grown new connections there.

Years before the decision: The decisions you make as an adult are also shaped by the way your brain forms as it matures during childhood and adolescence, Sapolsky says.

Thats the time that your brain is being constructed, and experiences can cause what are called epigenetic changes, says Sapolsky. Some genes are activated permanently, other ones are turned off. For example, if as a fetus you were exposed to high levels of stress hormones from moms circulation, epigenetic changes would have gifted you with an adult amygdala thats enlarged with elevated stress hormones.

Centuries before you were even born: Ultimately, your behavior and the decisions that arise from that behavior is also shaped by the decisions your ancestors made thousands of years before. For example, Sapolsky explains, if your ancestors were warriors, their attitudes still influence the values with which you are raised.

Its clear that if you want to understand a behavior a wonderful one, an appalling one, a confusing one in between youve got to understand what happened from the second before to millions of years before, Sapolsky said, summarizing his talk.

In other words, its complicated.

More:
Here's Every Moment That Influences Human Behavior - Inverse

Igo on the assumption that everyone is guilty.

This sentiment of a guilt that is assumed automatically through membership in the human race is expressed by Jewish master violinist Yehudi Menuhin at the beginning of The Memory of Justice, and its an assessment that is largely borne out over the course of the 4 1/2-hour HBO documentary that airs April 24.

Although publicists for the film make a point that the screening date was set intentionally for Holocaust Remembrance Day, the production deals with three examples of mans inhumanity during the 20th century.

The first and longest segment does focus on the Holocaust, but the second part covers Frances attempted suppression of the Algerian bid for independence, and the third on Americas role in the Vietnam War.

The Memory of Justice is a massive and masterful restoration of a film of the same title released in 1976 that was produced, written and directed by Marcel Ophuls. He and his father, Max Ophuls (nee Oppenheimer), were German-born Jews, who resumed their brilliant film careers after fleeing to France and then the United States.

The main part of the films Holocaust-themed segment deals with the postwar Nuremberg war crimes trials that began in 1945 and in which an international tribunal tried 22 top political and military leaders of the Nazi regime. (Hitler had cheated the gallows by shooting himself as Soviet forces closed in on his Berlin bunker.)

Interviews with 40 people, perpetrators and victims, form the backbone of this segment. The two main figures are Telford Taylor, chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, and Albert Speer, an architect who served as Hitlers minister of armaments.

Taylor went on to cover the Vietnam War (1955-75) and his views on war crimes, as well as similarities between Nazi and American conduct during the war in Southeast Asia, were expressed clearly in the title of his 1970 book, Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy. A considerable part of the film is based on Taylors book.

After a 20-minute intermission, both in the press screening and the TV presentation, Ophuls documentary moves on to the Algerian war (1954-62), in which France tried to squelch its colonys independence movement, and in which both sides systematically tortured their enemies. In French history, the conflict is known as the dirty war.

The final segment focuses on the Vietnam War. The centerpiece is the 1968 My Lai Massacre, in which U.S. soldiers killed, mutilated and raped up to 500 unresisting men, women and children.

The Memory of Justice has been widely acclaimed as a masterpiece of documentary filmmaking, which it is, but the mass of material can at times overload the attentive viewer, who also may have difficulties in quickly adjusting to the films shifts in tone from gruesome depictions of death camp atrocities to merry songs of the era.

Ophuls, now 89, did not take an active part in the films restoration. Instead, the living link between the 1976 original and the current version is Hamilton Fish, a personality worth his own biographical film.

He is the descendant of an old American family of Anglo-Saxon and Scottish extraction. Formally named Hamilton Fish V, during a phone interview he invited a reporter to address him as Ham.

The Fish dynasty produced a series of rock-ribbed Republican politicians, including a former governor of New York. Another member of the clan, Hamilton Fish III, was a congressman from New Yorks Hudson Valley for 25 years and the nemesis of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Ham, 64, however, has flipped in the opposite direction, and as publisher of The Nation, is credited with preserving and upgrading Americas premier liberal magazine.

In 1975, he partnered with Ophuls to produce the original version of Memory of Justice and, in 2011, embarked on the excruciatingly difficult six-year project to restore and revive the documentary.

Some of the challenges called for scanning 50 reels of the 16 mm original negatives, frame by frame, eliminating dirt and scratches, restoring the soundtrack and adding new subtitles in English, French and German.

What I take away from the film are the continuing questions of justice and accountability, of a system of international law to counter rogue behavior by government leaders, Fish said.

However, looking at the present state of the world in general, and in Washington, D.C., in particular, Fish sounded a pessimistic note: We see a renewed emphasis on military power at the expense of meeting human needs at home.

The Memory of Justice will air at 5 p.m. April 24 on HBO2, HBO Now, HBO Go and HBO on Demand.

See more here:
Film focuses on how war warps human behavior - Jewish Journal

Sat., April 22, 2017, 1 p.m.

Humans routinely underestimate the intelligence of other animals, according to Frans de Waal, one of the worlds leading primatologists.

We look at intelligence as one way to solve problems in the environment, and animals can do things we cannot do, de Waal said in an interview with The Spokesman-Review.

Echolocation used by dolphins and bats is just one example of how some animals are capable of advanced intelligence.

Humans tend to judge things based on what were good at, and were really not impressed by echolocation, but really it is as complex (a form) of communication, de Waal said.

The Dutch/American biologist and author will discuss themes from his best-selling book, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? at a public lecture and book signing at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox in Spokane. The free event is part of the Presidents Forum for Critical Thought lecture series at Eastern Washington University. He will also speak at a special event for students, faculty and staff earlier in the day on the EWU campus.

De Waal is the C.H. Candler professor of primate behavior in the Emory University psychology department, the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. His numerous books, which include The Primate Mind and Evolved Morality, have drawn parallels between animal behavior and perceived human morality.

Chimpanzee Politics compared power struggles between chimpanzees with that of human politicians. The term alpha male was used to describe leaders that would enforce the power dynamic within a group, though de Waal said popular culture oversimplified the term when applying it to human behavior.

People have the impression that alpha male just means being a bully and ordering people around, de Waal said. Alpha males become leaders through diplomatic efforts, and it is rare they become alpha just by their physical strength.

The alpha male breaks up fights, consoles victims of aggression and a has a lot of different roles, he said.

Still, de Waal said political grandstanding often resembles animal behavior, citing some of last years preliminary presidential debates.

It was very chimp-like, because they were posturing, making anatomical connections, insulting each other, de Waal said.

His studies on empathy in chimps have also led to how people perceive emotional capabilities within the animal kingdom.

Its something we see in all mammals and even some bird studies, de Waal said.

While anyone with a loyal dog wouldnt be surprised by emotional awareness in animals, de Waal said there are some who still push back on the idea of animals being capable of complex human behaviors.

I think it helps placing us in a biological context, especially when it comes to positive behavior, de Waal said. As soon as humans do bad things, like kill each other, we call them animals. As soon as we do good things, thats our humanity. But in both the positive and the negative, we are animals.

Moral tendencies are not just intellectual, he said.

Continued research on animal intelligence has had a major cultural impact in recent years, particularly in the treatment of animals in captivity, de Waal said.

Circuses are disappearing, killer whales in captivity are disappearing, there are all these movements where slowly and steadily we take animals more seriously and how we treat them, he said. It may have implications for the farm industry those are much bigger numbers of animals than the research labs and the zoos.

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Renowned primatologist to tout animal intellect at free Spokane lecture - The Spokesman-Review