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Behave by Robert Sapolsky

Readers say it helps them understand themselves and others, and its punishment chapter stays with them. No critics raised a recurring complaint.

Summarized from 4 comments.

Readers say it helps them understand themselves and others, and its punishment chapter stays with them. No critics raised a recurring complaint.

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Why people love it

  • Helps understand self and others · 1

    I found it immensely helpful to understand about self and others

    May 2026 · comment
  • Punishment chapter stays with readers · 1

    Just read Sapolsky's Behave and linger in the punishment chapter.

    Nov 2025 · comment

What hackers pick instead

Every quote

The 4 most detailed of 4 comments. Each links to the original.

  1. Just read Sapolsky's Behave and linger in the punishment chapter.

    Recommends · Nov 2025

  2. I found it immensely helpful to understand about self and others

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Ask HN: Books you wish you had read earlier?”

  3. Here's a promising example that is ripe for an Agentic AI implementation

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Kotlin creator's new language: a formal way to talk to LLMs instead of English”

  4. Sapolsky isn’t storytelling.

    Recommends · Nov 2025

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