Notions of human nature (was Re: How will nanotech be sold?) (ely001@aol.com)
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24 May 1996 17:39:59 -0400

It would be entirely defensible to say that the priciples you describe obtain in contemporary industrial society. It would probably be fairly defensible to say that this holds for most societies for the last few centuries, but certainly not for all.

Arguments appealing to human nature take the form: people do X because that is the way they are. On inquiry as to how knowledge about how people are is obtained, we find that it is a conclusion or generalization about some number of "people do X" observations or statements. This might be description, but it isn't explanation.

Since this discussion refers to how people will behave or believe in significantly different environments, it is reasonable to ask whether the sample set from which knowledge/descriptions/generalizations are drawn is relavent to the matter at hand. Put differently, how will strong-mnt proliferation change notions of what you refer to as "human nature." Unless you have firm ground on which to answer this question, the answers are baseless.

Of course, all of this leaves aside the question of what happens to what you refer to as "human nature" as strong-mnt is increasingly put into biocybernetic applications such as cognitive integration...i.e. what happens even on more individual psychological bases. If you wish to assert that human nature is invariant <and I wouldn't recommend the assertion, or worse still, trying to go about ordinary life with such an iron-clad belief> and that therefore any human sample population is valid to your analysis, biocybernetics complicates your position rather terribly.

E.

[One or two "biocybernetic" innovations might be difficult to predict,
but in the long run the forms that develop must conform to the laws of evolution and memetics.
--JoSH]