A Few Judgments About Human Nature — and Where I'm Most Likely to Slip
There’s a question I’ve turned over for a long time: are human beings defined by good and evil, or by survival?
Dig into it and you first hit environment and genes, then the tug-of-war between the larger self and the smaller self, and finally you circle back to a question that worries me more — has my own cognitive system already slipped somewhere I haven’t noticed?
I’m setting these thoughts down not to arrive at an answer, but to leave myself a draft that can be argued against.
I. Humans Are Not Simply Creatures of Good and Evil
I tend to think human behavior isn’t determined by morality alone, but shaped simultaneously by several systems: biological instinct, survival pressure, social environment, the opportunities of one’s era, the structure of desire, the moral system, self-narrative — plus one more variable: whether a person can keep updating themselves based on feedback from reality.
Under extreme short-term pressure, survival overrides morality. But in a complex society over the long run, morality in turn raises the odds of survival, because it brings trust, cooperation, low transaction costs, and a durable reputation. So morality is not the opposite of survival — it’s a more advanced survival technology.
There’s a mistake I used to make often; let me name it up front.
I once wrote that “nature embraces everything; in theory, anything is allowed to exist.” Turning it over again and again, I’ve concluded the sentence is inaccurate. Nature doesn’t embrace; it has no stance. It neither accepts nor rejects anything — it simply lets events unfold, making no distinctions. The Ice Age wiped out countless species; nature didn’t “want them all.” “Embrace” is the human habit of projecting aesthetic feeling onto nature.
A more solid formulation:
Nature explains existence. Values determine choice. Strategy determines action.
This matters. Because the moment you equate “exists in nature” with “morally right,” you slide toward “whatever happens is justified,” and from there to excusing every evil. I’ve slipped two steps down this path myself, so I’m especially wary of it.
II. Understand the World Through a Wide Lens; Live Your Life Through a Narrow One
Understanding why a person became who they are gets closer to the real world than simply judging them good or bad. This is something I’m still practicing.
But understanding has two boundaries.
Boundary one: understanding is not endorsement.
To understand evil is not to approve of it. To understand greed is not to indulge it. The state I’m reaching for isn’t “don’t judge” — it’s understand first, then judge; explain first, then choose.
Understanding why something happened is not the same as endorsing that it should have happened.
Boundary two: the macro view can’t substitute for micro-level survival.
I never had this clear before. A God’s-eye view can help you understand the world, but it can’t live your life for you. Someone with only the larger self and no smaller self tends toward excessive pity, a moral burden too heavy to carry, and helplessness in practical life.
I used to cite Du Fu, the Tang-dynasty poet, as an example. Thinking about it later, attributing his suffering to “too lofty a vision, no care for himself” is really reading modern, refined self-interest back onto an ancient figure — his suffering was more a product of the structural forces of his era. But there’s a tension worth recording: the balance between macro-level empathy and micro-level survival has never been easy.
What I’m trying to practice now:
Look at the world broadly; make decisions narrowly. Understand the world coldly; choose your life warmly.
III. The Four Places Where I’m Most Likely to Slip
Writing these views down is easy. What’s hard is admitting each one has a direction it can slide in — and that I’ve stepped onto every one of them.
Slip one: from “understanding human nature” to “rationalizing everything.”
I once wrote down a thought experiment: “If I had Newton’s genes and environment, I’d become Newton; if I had Hitler’s genes and environment, I’d become Hitler.”
I have to revise this now. First, it’s unfalsifiable — you can never actually “run them again.” Second, the consensus in behavioral genetics is that genes shape dispositions, not specific behaviors; identical twins in the same environment still make opposite choices. Third, and more important: this kind of statement easily becomes a gateway to letting everyone off the hook — readers, myself included, will use it to excuse themselves.
When I run this thought experiment on myself, the point is to stay alert to determinism, not to defend the powerful or the wicked. These two things must be kept distinct.
Slip two: from “natural law” to “fatalism.”
Overemphasize genes, environment, and era, and it becomes easy to feel that everything is decided by the system and individual choice barely matters. But the truth is: the system sets the boundaries; the individual sets the path. You can’t choose the script you’re born into, but you can choose your strategy from there.
Viktor Frankl, in Auschwitz, still chose to observe human nature rather than collapse. The divergence of behavior within the same environment is itself the most direct counterexample to “environmental determinism.”
Slip three: from “multiple systems” to “opportunism.”
I’ve always felt that multi-model thinking is more robust than a single closed loop of belief. That much is right — in investing you can’t look only at the technicals, nor only at the fundamentals; in judging people you can’t look only at morality, nor only at interest.
But multiple systems is not the same as no system. Without a meta-criterion for judgment, multiple systems degenerate into opportunism — whichever logic suits the occasion — until everything can be explained and nothing gets acted on.
My formulation now: it’s not that more models stacked up is better. You want a stable core, a few supporting models, and a meta-layer that decides which one to use right now.
Slip four: from “daring to overturn yourself” to “never stable.”
A closed belief system can reduce internal friction, but if it can’t be corrected by reality, it becomes a cognitive cage. I still hold to this judgment.
But the reverse — overturning yourself every day — isn’t maturity either; it’s just another form of anxiety. The more stable state is:
Keep your foundational values fixed; iterate the operating system.
Not overturning for its own sake, but daring to upgrade when feedback from reality keeps showing the old system’s explanatory power in decline.
This is a note on how human nature forms, not a prescription for how people ought to act. Understanding the mechanism is meant to reduce misjudgment, not to reduce responsibility.
Writing this, I realize what I really want to leave behind isn’t some “sophisticated judgment,” but a few reminders to myself: understanding is not endorsement; existence is not correctness; nature is not justice; many models is not no stance.
And if some day I start using “it’s all just natural” to explain away something that should have been opposed — please pull this essay back out and slap me in the face with it.