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Scientists Probe Human Nature—and Discover We are Good, after All

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Scientists Probe Human Nature—and Discover We are Good, after All: Scientific American

When it really comes down to it—when the chips are down and the lights are off—are we naturally good? That is, are we predisposed to act cooperatively, to help others even when it costs us? Or are we, in our hearts, selfish creatures?

This fundamental question about human nature has long provided fodder for discussion. Augustine’s doctrine of original sin proclaimed that all people were born broken and selfish, saved only through the power of divine intervention. Hobbes, too, argued that humans were savagely self-centered; however, he held that salvation came not through the divine, but through the social contract of civil law. On the other hand, philosophers such as Rousseau argued that people were born good, instinctively concerned with the welfare of others. More recently, these questions about human nature—selfishness and cooperation, defection and collaboration—have been brought to the public eye by game shows such as Survivor and the UK’s Golden Balls, which test the balance between selfishness and cooperation by pitting the strength of interpersonal bonds against the desire for large sums of money.
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A new set of studies provides compelling data allowing us to analyze human nature not through a philosopher’s kaleidoscope or a TV producer’s camera, but through the clear lens of science. These studies were carried out by a diverse group of researchers from Harvard and Yale—a developmental psychologist with a background in evolutionary game theory, a moral philosopher-turned-psychologist, and a biologist-cum-mathematician—interested in the same essential question: whether our automatic impulse—our first instinct—is to act selfishly or cooperatively.
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This is a great example of why science, which relies on evidence is far superior to rely solely on philosophy for the discovery of human nature and truth. With science, we can actually test our conclusions, while with philosophy we cannot.

The end result of this article though, is something I have been saying all along, despite many who disagree and take a more "objective" approach to human nature. Humanity is primarily a social creature and the individualism is secondary and often learned behavior. Because this is what human nature really is, people having altruistic impulses, the idealized society of perfectly selfish and rational individuals is as much a pipe dream as communism ever was.
 
See, and if we eliminate capitalism, and the perception of greed as an instinct, then communism could flourish.
 
spud_meister said:
See, and if we eliminate capitalism, and the perception of greed as an instinct, then communism could flourish.
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I would rather see the perfection of neither capitalism nor communism and keep to the mixed model that has fueled so much prosperity over the last century or so. The extreme of either is spectacular failure waiting to happen.
 
megaprogman said:
This is a great example of why science, which relies on evidence is far superior to rely solely on philosophy for the discovery of human nature and truth. With science, we can actually test our conclusions, while with philosophy we cannot.
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Nonsense. This has no philosophical weight whatsoever, and is meaningless. Science does not assess value, and as such can tell us nothing about what is good.

Use your head. The conclusions of this study are, at best, scientifically dubious and ethically crass.
 
Guy Incognito said:
Nonsense. This has no philosophical weight whatsoever, and is meaningless. Science does not assess value, and as such can tell us nothing about what is good.

Use your head. The conclusions of this study are, at best, scientifically dubious and ethically crass.
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Philosophy only ever deals with theoretical models and never verifies its conclusion. This is one of its fundamental flaws in fact, it never accounts for that fact that life is messy and never quite conforms to any theoretical understanding. It having no philosophical weight is not a problem for that reason as the value of philosophy is very low.

Also, philosophy has produced stunning yet useless and false insights like the four elements, the idea of humors, chi and the tao, fung shui, etc. Forgive me if I am skeptical of its value.

Using my head tells me that humanity has evolved as social and communal creatures or else we would have never built societies...
 
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spud_meister said:
See, and if we eliminate capitalism, and the perception of greed as an instinct, then communism could flourish.
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Capitalism is not a political ideology, its merely an economic model
This is why we have corporately run pseudo capitalism in the USA and a state run pseudo capitalist system in China.

Both systems are fascist tyrannical slave based Oligarchies

So if you want genuine democracy in the USA you would have dismantle the fascist Corpocracy that has enslaved the bulk of the US population.
 
Klown said:
Capitalism is not a political ideology, its merely an economic model
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Capitalism enforces the mindset of greed being the norm, and altruism being the exception. If this was reversed, communism would work.
 
spud_meister said:
Capitalism enforces the mindset of greed being the norm, and altruism being the exception. If this was reversed, communism would work.
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Neither would work because people are neither inherently good, nor bad. We're social animals that rely on each other for survival.
 
spud_meister said:
Capitalism enforces the mindset of greed being the norm, and altruism being the exception. If this was reversed, communism would work.
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You can have a communist based capitalism system.

Why are you comparing the two? Communism is a political ideology whilst capitalism is merely an economic and financial model.

You should be looking at what the fascist Corporate system is doing to the enslaved US masses.

Corporatism vs democracy

Now that is a comparison that is forbidden in the US mass media, we can never talk about Corporatism as a fascist ideology
 
megaprogman said:
Philosophy only ever deals with theoretical models and never verifies its conclusion. This is one of its fundamental flaws in fact, it never accounts for that fact that life is messy and never quite conforms to any theoretical understanding. It having no philosophical weight is not a problem for that reason as the value of philosophy is very low.

Also, philosophy has produced stunning yet useless and false insights like the four elements, the idea of humors, chi and the tao, fung shui, etc. Forgive me if I am skeptical of its value.

Using my head tells me that humanity has evolved as social and communal creatures or else we would have never built societies...
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You certainly have a lot of useless blather of your own, and yet in spite of it all you have not managed to bridge the gap from is to ought. You can study what human behavior is but that will never tell you what human behavior ought to be. Absent some external system of value, science is utterly vacuous. You claim to have value but you are wrongly dismissive of philosophy, without which there would be no coherent system of value. In short you are entirely incoherent and irrational, while patting yourself on the back for being "scientific.":lol:
 
megaprogman said:
Using my head tells me that humanity has evolved as social and communal creatures or else we would have never built societies...
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To be fair, if we were such social & communal creatures, wouldnt we all be living in one single location, where we first started?

Many have spent hundreds of thousands of years going to great lengths to avoid each other (or to oppress & kill each other when they cant avoid each other).

In a lot of cases isnt it circumstance, profit, or necessity that draws us together?
 
megaprogman said:
Scientists Probe Human Nature—and Discover We are Good, after All: Scientific American





This is a great example of why science, which relies on evidence is far superior to rely solely on philosophy for the discovery of human nature and truth. With science, we can actually test our conclusions, while with philosophy we cannot.

The end result of this article though, is something I have been saying all along, despite many who disagree and take a more "objective" approach to human nature. Humanity is primarily a social creature and the individualism is secondary and often learned behavior. Because this is what human nature really is, people having altruistic impulses, the idealized society of perfectly selfish and rational individuals is as much a pipe dream as communism ever was.
Click to expand...

Humans are social individuals.
We're not totally social nor totally individualistic.

However, altruism is bullcrap.
You get a "reward" whether it chemical, emotional, instinctual, physical or some combination there of.
 
spud_meister said:
See, and if we eliminate capitalism, and the perception of greed as an instinct, then communism could flourish.
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Sorry buddy, but anytime we come close to implementing communism or any form there of, a black market emerges.
Sorry, but these guys are completely wrong, otherwise the natural state of man, would not be a market economy, but in fact a communal society.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
Humans are social individuals.
We're not totally social nor totally individualistic.

However, altruism is bullcrap.
You get a "reward" whether it chemical, emotional, instinctual, physical or some combination there of.
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You are making "altruism" into a Strawman, which is a common enough fallacy. An act does not need to be completely bereft of benefit to the actor to be altruistic. Altruism is a selfless action done without material gain. A spiritual or-- as you so coarsely put it-- "chemical" reward does not negate altruism. A selfless act for nothing but spiritual gain is noble. An act for material gain is base. The distinction between altruism and selfishness is plain as day and it is absurd to deny it.

I suspect that there is more than a bit of rationalization at work in this fallacy. Sort of like, "I am selfish but it's ok for me to be selfish since altruism is impossible. Even saints get rewarded, so my selfish behavior is ok."

This ignores the very real distinction between the type of reward the saint gets as opposed to the sinner. But hey, whatever helps you sleep at night, right?
 
Guy Incognito said:
You are making "altruism" into a Strawman, which is a common enough fallacy. An act does not need to be completely bereft of benefit to the actor to be altruistic. Altruism is a selfless action done without material gain. A spiritual or-- as you so coarsely put it-- "chemical" reward does not negate altruism. A selfless act for nothing but spiritual gain is noble. An act for material gain is base. The distinction between altruism and selfishness is plain as day and it is absurd to deny it.

I suspect that there is more than a bit of rationalization at work in this fallacy. Sort of like, "I am selfish but it's ok for me to be selfish since altruism is impossible. Even saints get rewarded, so my selfish behavior is ok."

This ignores the very real distinction between the type of reward the saint gets as opposed to the sinner. But hey, whatever helps you sleep at night, right?
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Altruism, in the purist sense is doing something for someone, at a cost to yourself.
No reward.

Pure altruism, does not exist.

Sorry, I don't follow all that religious stuff.
I think helping people is good for yourself and humanity as a whole.
That is the reward, it's not selfish in the least, but it is self interested.

Edit: I know my use doesn't follow the strict definition of altruism, but that is how most people commonly use it.
 
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Harry Guerrilla said:
Humans are social individuals.
We're not totally social nor totally individualistic.

However, altruism is bullcrap.
You get a "reward" whether it chemical, emotional, instinctual, physical or some combination there of.
Click to expand...

We have been through this before Harry. The fact that there is a reward is never the point. Its the motivation that matters. People rarely do things so that they can feel good about them later.
 
megaprogman said:
We have been through this before Harry. The fact that there is a reward is never the point. Its the motivation that matters. People rarely do things so that they can feel good about them later.
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If the motivation is instinct, then you aren't really in control.

The likely reason, that nature programmed us to be social, is because inner species conflict, is not in the greater interest of the species as a whole.
It's a positive survival trait and so is individualism.

That's why we have both characteristics.
 
Paul Austin said:
To be fair, if we were such social & communal creatures, wouldnt we all be living in one single location, where we first started?

Many have spent hundreds of thousands of years going to great lengths to avoid each other (or to oppress & kill each other when they cant avoid each other).

In a lot of cases isnt it circumstance, profit, or necessity that draws us together?
Click to expand...

The term communal creature can take a lot of different forms.

However, we see in the absence of a structured society or government, people tend to revert to a more tribal social structure, such is the case in the middle east and much of africa where human social development hasn't come as far as it has in the western world or much of asia. Tribal is still communal. Also I believe its more likely people migrated out to find more resources such as animals to hunt or new farmland more than a desire to avoid each other.
 
Guy Incognito said:
You certainly have a lot of useless blather of your own, and yet in spite of it all you have not managed to bridge the gap from is to ought. You can study what human behavior is but that will never tell you what human behavior ought to be. Absent some external system of value, science is utterly vacuous. You claim to have value but you are wrongly dismissive of philosophy, without which there would be no coherent system of value. In short you are entirely incoherent and irrational, while patting yourself on the back for being "scientific.":lol:
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Guy, before you go much further in your unfounded assumptions, let me set you on a path that has something to do with my views about life vs your strawman. I have my moral views which are independent of the scientific literature and I am amused that my views of human nature are being validated by empirical testing. Neither philosophy nor science can really give us an ought. The ought or what we call human morality comes from moral comes from instinctual social behaviors that have developed over hundreds of thousands of years of survival necessity.
 
It seems to me that 'good' and 'bad' in this context are just descriptors of kinds of human behaviour, so that humans inevitably contain both. The question then is what sort of societies maximise the sorts of behaviour we almost all regard as 'good'. Both war and competition bring out certain admirable qualities, but the overall effects tend to be bad - and this point can doubtless be made about most human systems and experiences. The difficulty with this kind of discussion is that behind all the 'philosophical' or 'religious' words lie very real and very powerful material interests for which the arguments are a mere cover.
 
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Harry Guerrilla said:
If the motivation is instinct, then you aren't really in control.

The likely reason, that nature programmed us to be social, is because inner species conflict, is not in the greater interest of the species as a whole.
It's a positive survival trait and so is individualism.

That's why we have both characteristics.
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Exactly. Most of morality is just instincts anyway. Its not like humans are this classical logic/rationality machines that the enlightenment philosophers decided we were (hey, there is another failure of philosophy!). but its only recently with modern neuroscience, neuropsychology, and psychology that we have been able to test these things.
 
megaprogman said:
The term communal creature can take a lot of different forms.

However, we see in the absence of a structured society or government, people tend to revert to a more tribal social structure, such is the case in the middle east and much of africa where human social development hasn't come as far as it has in the western world or much of asia. Tribal is still communal. Also I believe its more likely people migrated out to find more resources such as animals to hunt or new farmland more than a desire to avoid each other.
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Im afraid I have to agree with Harry above, we are generally social individuals (with varying degrees).

Yes, some migrate for food purposes, but just as many to avoid other peoples.

We are individuals, there is reward to be gained from some social activities, so some participate, but equally many dont go for community life as well.

It should also be noted that, in some more prosperous nations, inner-city, high density living is actually declining, despite rising national populations & greater costs.
 
megaprogman said:
Exactly. Most of morality is just instincts anyway. Its not like humans are this classical logic machines that the enlightenment philosophers decided we were (hey, there is another failure of philosophy!). but its only recently with modern neuroscience, neuropsychology, and psychology that we have been able to test these things.
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Logic has to be taught, because instinct can often be faulty.
That part of why humans are currently supreme on earth though, we can adjust with learning.

I don't think the enlightenment philosophers believed that humans were purely logic machines.
That's largely why they proposed republican forms of government, as a filter for instinctual reactions of people.
 
Paul Austin said:
Im afraid I have to agree with Harry above, we are generally social individuals (with varying degrees).

Yes, some migrate for food purposes, but just as many to avoid other peoples.

We are individuals, there is reward to be gained from some social activities, so some participate, but equally many dont go for community life as well.

It should also be noted that, in some more prosperous nations, inner-city, high density living is actually declining, despite rising national populations & greater costs.
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I largely agree with Harry too. Instinctively we are social creatures, but with generalities there is always the variance hidden underneath the averages.

Historically, very few people have been documented as deciding to avoid others. Acetic religious people (monks), trappers, social outcast, etc. This was not typical though. Groups would migrate for available land and other resources though, such as a gold rush or other finds, but generally towns would spring up and those people wouldn't be loners for long.

Too much density can be a bad thing as well. Again, humanity being social creatures don't necessarily mean that there aren't consequences or even if it is a good thing in it results, its just how the brain is structured.
 
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