📊 poll results
Are humans fundamentally good, or is niceness just the thin layer of rules and consequences keeping our selfish instincts in check?
🗳️ 10 votes so far 🏆 Leading: Fundamentally good — cooperation and empathy are our real default, and most cruelty in history traces back to specific systems and incentives, not human nature itself.

Of 10 votes cast so far, Fundamentally good — cooperation and empathy are our real default, and most cruelty in history traces back to specific systems and incentives, not human nature itself. leads with 50%.

Fundamentally self-interested — people are nice because it's rewarded and punished, and history's worst moments show what happens when that structure disappears. is second on 30%, 20 points behind.

Votes have come in from 2 countries, most of them from China.

The most recent vote came in 9 days ago.

hewsay who say wut? 💬
📊 poll results
Are humans fundamentally good, or is niceness just the thin layer of rules and consequences keeping our selfish instincts in check?
50%
Leading answer
Fundamentally good — cooperation and empathy are our real default, and most cruelty in history traces back to specific systems and incentives, not human nature itself.
10 votes so far
hewsay.com ↗

Discussion

Vote on one of these nextIs willpower a limited tank that runs dry the more you use it — or was "ego depletion," one of psychology's most famous findings, basically debunked?Australia's under-16 social media ban: keep pushing, or admit it's not working?Books that try to predict the AI future: which one do you think gets it right?
react to this tea 👀
Fundamentally good — cooperation and empathy are our real default, and most cruelty in history traces back to specific systems and incentives, not human nature itself.
Fundamentally self-interested — people are nice because it's rewarded and punished, and history's worst moments show what happens when that structure disappears.
Neither — "human nature" isn't one fixed thing, people are shaped almost entirely by whatever environment and incentives they're dropped into.

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