Why hierarchy creates a destructive force within the human psyche (by dr. Robert Sapolsky)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN shares it as a compact explanation of how hierarchy and stress affect health, pointing to the longer full lecture.
What it is
A short clip of Robert Sapolsky on how social hierarchy generates chronic stress, drawing on baboon research. It links rank-related stress to heart health and life expectancy.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2015 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends ak39 · 2015-06 · on “No Time to Be Nice at Work”
That is so true. Primates, not just apes. Here's Sapolsky explaining how stress in an hierarchical social arrangement impacts heart health and life expectancy. [this video]
Recommends Litost · 2024-02 · on “Chronic stress spreads cancer”
The full length video of his is definitely worth a watch, but if anyone's short on time, there's quite a good much shorter version focussing more on the hierarchy/alpha male side of it - [this video]
Cites leto_ii · 2021-03 · on “Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks”
> Read Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" I have, I don't fully agree with Dawkins. I'm not a biologist, merely a dilettante, but I can point to source [1] for some counter-arguments. First, there's a difference between the biological and the common use of the term 'altruism': > This biological notion of altruism is not identical to the everyday concept. In everyday parlance, an action would only be called ‘altruistic’ if it was done with the conscious intention of helping another. But in the biological sense there is no such requirement. Indeed, some of the most interesting examples of biological altruism are found among creatures that are (presumably) not capable of conscious thought at a