What is Human Nature?
I love asking this question. Answers are usually in the "good" or "evil" spectrum, so everyone gets it wrong.
Human nature is neither inherently good, nor inherently evil. The thought-experiment that I like to use is the blank-room experiment. If a person is born into such a room and locked without provision of significant stimuli, all you get is a blank person. The environment is an important factor.
If humans are quite similar to computers, then the environment is our operating condition / operating system.
And indeed, we are quite similar to computers. Our operating condition creates the human condition.
You can think of cultures as operating systems, beliefs as softwares, behaviours as outputs, and life as what it appears on screen.
We are programmable.
And that's human nature.
Heavily influenced by Mark Passio - google him out :)
Visual credit: http://www.dailydesigninspiration.com/diverse/gd/nomabar/Good-and-evil.jpg
I agree with what you said. A large percentage of the time people are convinced it really this good, or else thinks that the other is wrong, when really nobody is right. The personality of each is a map, and each person has his own map, but that does not mean that both maps are wrong or are successful. A very interesting topic @kevinwong
Thank you!
Great point of view you have! I enjoyed your comparison of Humans and Computers. Simple correlations yet their meanings are truly profound.
I agree about human nature not being good or bad but rather an instinctive force that adapt to any condition.
I also want to add a different perspective.
We indeed have an operating system and it is written in a specific language which in the past prevented us to interact with foreign devices. We also install programs, plugins that we copy from other devices. The ones we call culture and religion for example, those are complete packs with many thinking mods. Shortcuts are created so we always choose those macro's when we are on autopilot mode. So I would say yes the environment shapes us but humans are a big part of the environment and in cities almost anything we experience is human made or human manipulated. So this artificial place we call a city is like a sandbox where we can experiment and shape environments that in turn will also shape us.
So do we ever change the world or we always change ourselves and we are just lost in the mirror?
What we observe now is that individuals or groups of people everywhere in the world are already taking action and creating their own environment, community projects that enrich the urban space and make it more nourishing to its citizens. Many things can be done: Street-art, urban farming, car free zones, share economy, anything that will create independence and bring people together to create changes for local problems.
Thanks for the input! I know what you're talking about - you hit the nail! We are afterall, influenced by our spaces - while building them at the same time :). I have this in a video towards the end of one of my Ethereum articles - check it out :) It's the one about Ghost In The Shell
This is exactly what Mark Passio says in his work. Human nature is programmable.
Yes! Edited for attribution. Thanks for the reminder!
It's whatever we genetically engineer human nature to be. What should human nature be like?
I'm intrigued by this. What are you implying? We were genetically engineered?
Well said.