I think this view is the opposite of true. My view is something more like “all men are created evil”. Animals are callous about how they kill or eat, and we start out as animals too. An animal doesn’t have to be hurt to hurt other animals. Neither does a human, there are tons of reports of rich kids who have everything and are callous anyway. It’s nature.
So where do we place the good? I think the good in us is the outer layer, the culture. Game-theoretic conventions like “don’t kill”, first coming from circumstantial necessity, and then we learn and internalize them because we have a capacity for learning and internalizing. If you wanna look for something innocent and nice, look in the cultures we acquire. Not in our inner nature or genes, hell no.
IMO the truth is in the middle. Empathy is within human nature, but it’s a very partial emotion (i.e. we have different amount of empathy for different people), and different people have different capacity for empathy. Culture comes in to impose norms that are at least somewhat impartial and universal. And, these norms are still shaped by game-theoretic incentives (plus historical accident).
I think this view is the opposite of true. My view is something more like “all men are created evil”. Animals are callous about how they kill or eat, and we start out as animals too. An animal doesn’t have to be hurt to hurt other animals. Neither does a human, there are tons of reports of rich kids who have everything and are callous anyway. It’s nature.
So where do we place the good? I think the good in us is the outer layer, the culture. Game-theoretic conventions like “don’t kill”, first coming from circumstantial necessity, and then we learn and internalize them because we have a capacity for learning and internalizing. If you wanna look for something innocent and nice, look in the cultures we acquire. Not in our inner nature or genes, hell no.
IMO the truth is in the middle. Empathy is within human nature, but it’s a very partial emotion (i.e. we have different amount of empathy for different people), and different people have different capacity for empathy. Culture comes in to impose norms that are at least somewhat impartial and universal. And, these norms are still shaped by game-theoretic incentives (plus historical accident).