I certainly agree that human behavior isn't an immutable law of the universe in the same way that, say, gravity is. But, at least to me, it seems that treating it as such gives us a pretty good model for how the world actually works and thus allows us to make accurate predictions about the future.
it’s fundamentally unscientific at this point. much of our current science lies in the realm of natural law. so far we haven’t found any laws that govern human behavior. what we know, with considerable certainty, is that behavior can be positively influenced. but at the point of action, nothing we know of compels any specific/predictable behavior. until we have found rigid laws of reasons that apply to both the brute and the civilized, any ‘discoveries’ of psychology are reports of someone’s idiosyncrasies, imho.
So human nature is immutable? What's so special about human nature that makes it a constant while almost everything else is so clearly mutable. Heck we humans even observe changes on geological time scales...
That's generally the case for everything in our lives, though. Part of what keeps civilization going is minimizing variance / maximizing predictability of people.
In modern societies, we try to keep unpredictable people away from anything important. In the most extreme cases, we lock them up in prisons and mental hospitals. In less extreme cases, we gatekeep: for example, you have to go through a psychological evaluation to get your pilot's license, driver's license, to be allowed to own a firearm, or be employed in certain positions. Degree of such gatekeeping is usually proportional to the damage wrong behavior can cause.
And then in general, we have laws and cultures and social customs that slowly grind us into shape, every day of our lives, making us ever so slightly more similar to each other with every interaction, so that we can predict each others' behaviors and cooperate effectively.
(I bring this up sometimes in context of AI/ML, where I complain that modern ML is made of black boxes with unpredictable failure modes. The usual reply is, "but humans are black boxes too!". Well, they aren't completely opaque - thanks to shared hardware architecture and "theory of mind", and to the degree it's not enough, society ensures predictability is maximized.)
It's an interesting point of view, but the assumption that human society is bound to replicate internally the natural law of increasing entropy is quite the naturalistic fallacy. Until now, there hasn't been, to our knowledge, rational processes in our universe, capable of self reflection and decision making regarding their own behavior and organization, so past observations are not really relevant.
Sure, humanity is just another physical process that will ultimately dissolve in a high entropy lukewarm soup, but as long as we have access to low entropy, high energy density sources, we can buck the trend and choose to do quite unoptimal things, such as assigning individual rights to every individual, even those unfit for reproduction.
Zooming out past the current Stelliferous era of the universe and into the distant black hole and dark eras might risk losing quite a bit of nuance about humanity's nature and destiny.
Yes I agree with that, but having understood those laws (hypothetically), of which I guess you might be referring to human behaviour, evolutionary principles etc. How can we be sure that those naturalistic foundations could possibly inform the problem of 'what to do now'? Wouldn't be a bit like a mirror trying to reflect itself, or possibly, a fish trying to understand that it's in water?
And yet, as we've come to better understand ourselves, human behavior actually has become better. The statistics actually bear this out.
We need to stop thinking of "human nature" as some inviolable fundamental quality and start thinking of it as the behavior of an animal in an environment.
Accepting that there is such a thing as "human nature" is a big thing, and at odds with much current thinking.
Many modern people assume human behavior is an effect of upbringing and social cues. A mental model where it is a mix of upbringing and people's inherent human nature can be shocking to many.
Turkheimer's Three Laws of Behavior Genetics is a good world shaking introduction to this world:
It's not a "some times" statement, it posits that humans are capable of living reasonably without being forced. That people sometimes behave unreasonably is a different matter.
Thank you for summing that up so concisely. I'm going to try to remember the "so you think human nature is something more than physics?" argument for the future.
True. Tho' I believe the arc of the point is...a system based on humans and human nature is subject to a wide range of questionable behaviours.
Just recently there was a judge - was it judges? - found guilty of sending kids to prison based on kickbacks received from the prison. And that, pardon the cliche, is just the tip of the iceberg.
Human behavior is both predictable and yet often bizarre.
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