"It's against human nature"?

[cyu]

Excerpts from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100308151049.htm

when one person gives money to help others in a "public-goods game," where people have the opportunity to cooperate with each other, the recipients are more likely to give their own money away to other people in future games. This creates a domino effect in which one person's generosity spreads first to three people and then to the nine people that those three people interact with in the future, and then to still other individuals in subsequent waves of the experiment.

"You don't go back to being your 'old selfish self.''' As a result, the money a person gives in the first round of the experiment is ultimately tripled by others who are subsequently (directly or indirectly) influenced to give more.

"kindness spreads to people I don't know or have never met. We have direct experience of giving and seeing people's immediate reactions, but we don't typically see how our generosity cascades through the social network to affect the lives of dozens or maybe hundreds of other people."

The study participants were strangers to each other and never played twice with the same person, a study design that eliminates direct reciprocity and reputation management as possible causes.

The contagious effect in the study was symmetric; uncooperative behavior also spread

these findings suggest the fascinating possibility that the process of contagion may have contributed to the evolution of cooperation: Groups with altruists in them will be more altruistic as a whole and more likely to survive than selfish groups.

"there is a deep and fundamental connection between social networks and goodness," said Christakis. "The flow of good and desirable properties like ideas, love and kindness is required for human social networks to endure, and, in turn, networks are required for such properties to spread. Humans form social networks because the benefits of a connected life outweigh the costs."

[Meridian]

Humans form social networks because the benefits of a connected life outweigh the costs.
This reads like Hume's Leviathan (the social contract). Except, of course, Leviathan is not in any way about autonomic networks.

[vyborg]

human nature doesnt exist. any theory based on this concept is useless to understand reality

[RasTheDestroyer]

This reads like Hume's Leviathan (the social contract). Except, of course, Leviathan is not in any way about autonomic networks.

That would be Hobbe's, not Hume

[Sasha]

these findings suggest the fascinating possibility that the process of contagion may have contributed to the evolution of cooperation: Groups with altruists in them will be more altruistic as a whole and more likely to survive than selfish groups.


as i quoted in another thread:


[C]onsider my favorite group selection experiment... William Muir, an animal breeder at Purdue University, selected for egg productivity in hens in two different ways. Both involved housing hens in cages (groups), which is standard practice in the poultry industry. The first method involved selecting the most productive hen within each cage to breed the next generation of hens. The second method involved selecting the most productive cages and using all the hens from those cages to breed the next generation of hens. It might seem that this is a subtle difference, that the same trait (egg productivity) should be selected in both cases, and that the first method should be more efficacious. After all, eggs are produced by individual hens, so why not directly select the best? Why select at the group level, when even the best groups might have some individual duds? The results told a completely different story. The first method caused egg productivity to perversely decline, even though the most productive hens were chosen each and every generation. The second method caused egg productivity to increase 160 percent in six generations, an astonishing response as artificial selection experiments go.
What happened? ...The first method favored the nastiest hens who achieved their productivity by suppressing the productivity of other hens. After six generations, Muir had produced a nation of psychopaths, who plucked and murdered each other in their incessant attacks. No wonder egg productivity plummeted! It would be hard to imagine a more graphic example of what I have called "the original problem" throughout this series of blogs; traits that are "for the good of the group" are not always locally advantageous within the group and require a process of group-level selection to evolve.http://www.revleft.com/vb/chickens-proof-capitalism-t131490/index.html?t=131490&highlight=frans+waal

the also in that thread by me mentioned Frans de Waal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal) (sensible socio-biologist/psychologist/primate-expert) talk exstensively about this in his new book "the age of empathy" (http://articles.latimes.com/2009/sep/20/entertainment/ca-frans-de-waal20) wich i can strangly encourage you to read.

[Sasha]

this whole debate is by the way nothing new, found this nice quote by anton pannekoek:



[The Bourgeois Darwinists] claimed that only the extermination of all the weak is in accordance with nature and that it is necessary to prevent the deterioration of the race, while protection of the weak is unnatural and leads to degeneration. But what do we see? In nature itself, in the animal world, we find that the weak are protected, that they don't need to persist by their individual strength, and that they are not exterminated due to their individual weakness. And this arrangement does not weaken a group in which it is the rule, but strengthens it. The animal groups in which mutual aid is best developed maintain themselves best in the struggle for existence.
—Anton Pannekoek, Darwinisme en Marxisme (in Dutch), 1909.

[Sturzo]

When people try to describe human nature, they usually end up only describing their own mentality.

[Jazzhands]

Human nature is a purely ridiculous notion that has no basis in science, biology, or anything else that qualifies as a real source. It's a philosophical question that nobody has been able to agree on. Hobbes and Locke have the best writings on human nature, but the "against human nature" argument comes from people who subscribe to the Hobbesian view, even though the Hobbesian view was made to justify a sovereign with unlimited power ruling the country and forcing the people to "give up everything but life." So basically Hobbes is justifying absolute dictatorship-the same thing they always accuse us of arguing for.

Point is, it's a philosophical question and not a hard fact. Thus an actual analysis of material conditions cannot possibly take this into account and still be accurate. We shouldn't even be debating this because human nature isn't based in reality. Humans are sentient beings. Human nature is what we want it to be.

[Dunk]

My favorite argument about this ridiculous position was written about in the ISR.


Socialists argue something quite different. We say that human nature is flexible and multifaceted, and that the behaviors of human beings are shaped by their social circumstances. We are all capable of greed as well as generosity; which one gets expressed has more to do with the values of a society than with the inborn tendencies of the individual. As Karl Marx put it: "the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations." From a socialist perspective, there is such a thing as human nature, but its most prominent feature is its changeability. What makes us distinctly human is our ability, not only to change as our circumstances change, but to create new and different social relations and then adapt to them. Socialists argue that if humans could create capitalism, humans can create socialism.

http://isreview.org/issues/47/wdss-humnature.shtml - What Do Socialists Say About...Human Nature? - Elizabeth Terzakis

Take a peek at this video as well, it's very entertaining and has good information. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g - The Empathic Civilization

[Dean]

Human nature is a purely ridiculous notion that has no basis in science, biology, or anything else that qualifies as a real source. It's a philosophical question that nobody has been able to agree on. Hobbes and Locke have the best writings on human nature, but the "against human nature" argument comes from people who subscribe to the Hobbesian view, even though the Hobbesian view was made to justify a sovereign with unlimited power ruling the country and forcing the people to "give up everything but life." So basically Hobbes is justifying absolute dictatorship-the same thing they always accuse us of arguing for.

Point is, it's a philosophical question and not a hard fact. Thus an actual analysis of material conditions cannot possibly take this into account and still be accurate. We shouldn't even be debating this because human nature isn't based in reality. Humans are sentient beings. Human nature is what we want it to be.

I don't think you're completely right on this. There definitely is human nature, as sure as there are canine and genetic natures to all life. I don't see how that can honestly be refuted.

From these natural tendencies, there are derived human activities which can often even be predicted.

However, any concrete conceptualization of human nature beyond some basic facts will fall on its face if it is not carefully researched, and in fact, conceptualizations of the human in society are so diverse in their theories and in their real manifestation, that I think it is ridiculous to frame the complete workings of society on contemporary prejudices on human nature.

Your point about Hobbes is completely on the mark and serves enough to refute the capitalist notion of 'human nature.'

[noble brown]

human nature doesnt exist. any theory based on this concept is useless to understand reality


Human nature is a purely ridiculous notion that has no basis in science, biology, or anything else that qualifies as a real source. It's a philosophical question that nobody has been able to agree on. Hobbes and Locke have the best writings on human nature, but the "against human nature" argument comes from people who subscribe to the Hobbesian view, even though the Hobbesian view was made to justify a sovereign with unlimited power ruling the country and forcing the people to "give up everything but life." So basically Hobbes is justifying absolute dictatorship-the same thing they always accuse us of arguing for.

Point is, it's a philosophical question and not a hard fact. Thus an actual analysis of material conditions cannot possibly take this into account and still be accurate. We shouldn't even be debating this because human nature isn't based in reality. Humans are sentient beings. Human nature is what we want it to be.


you seem to imply that a lack of scientific proof is proof that it doesnt exist.

aside from that lets define first what we mean by "human nature". when i speak of the "nature" of a thing i am speaking of the universal qualities that are apparent in the thing as a general rule which are then often used to anticipate future behavior.

so are there universal qualities or conditions of the human biology and psyche? absolutely. there are gestures or expressions that are universal and there are universal requirements both biologically and emotionally. granted their specific expressions may vary and there really aren't a whole lot of universals but the do exist. and these universals result in a "human nature"

the idea that because we are sentient beings we have complete control over our biology and psyche is individualism taken to the extreme. it sounds good and its actually a very comforting thought, that i'm always in control and whatever i do do is entirely a result of me and only me. (incidentally, this is a part of that non-existent human nature). this seems to be more along the lines of Stirners thought and counter to what the various strains of the social sciences (go ahead...tell me its not real science) have shown. look at some stuff like the stanford prison experiment or the milford studies. granted you may be able to argue cultural-relativism here but i bring them up to support my argument that we are as much a subject of our environment & biology as we are to our sentinence. if not more so to the former.

so here we are, the only thing that could break us away from any sort of "human nature" would be complete autonomy from our biology and environment, which just isn't the case.

the capialtist culture has for centuries kept the masses in check through this type of individualist thought. if i'm poor then its because something is wrong w/ me. which keeps us focused on ourselves as individuals and never questioning the current paradigms.