“And that is: humans don’t owe society anything. We were here first”—not true. Society as an idea was clearly established before human race, before language, before thought, it is an all-ape thing, maybe even wider. And (almost) every individual society is older than its individual members. And you apply an illegitimate operation of comparing the individual society with human as an idea. Maybe your idea in general is good, but you’re using a wrong argument—incorrigibly wrong, as far as I can tell.
But modern society is an individual example of the general idea of society, whereas human psychology as optimized is a general idea (performed in every specific individuum to a certain degree).
This feels like a bad faith nit-pick. If we taboo the word “society”, you and Scott obviously agree on the sorts of structures that used to exist—the kinds that exist among most/all primates—in which the people today who struggle may have easily found a place and a role and acceptance, and you both agree that the kinds of social structures that don’t do a good job of making life feel meaningful for these people are pretty new compared to the timeline of modern humans.
Taboo the word, replace it with the idea, and see if you still disagree.
Now for me to exercise good faith and strong-man your argument.
“Hey Scott, I like your idea overall, but worry that using the word “Society” may be too general of a term, and may cause confusion—since most primates and even ants have societies—so what you’re talking about here is narrower than that. I don’t know if there’s a better word or term you could use throughout, or if one clarifying remark could avoid that pitfall, but I think it may be worth a small edit. Thank you.”
Sorry, but I do not think that this is a term disagreement and that your “strong-manning” is faithful to my comment. I believe that Scott’s idea is somewhat inconsistent because he puts an individual example against a general idea; a specific structure against a set of psychologies.
“And that is: humans don’t owe society anything. We were here first”—not true. Society as an idea was clearly established before human race, before language, before thought, it is an all-ape thing, maybe even wider. And (almost) every individual society is older than its individual members. And you apply an illegitimate operation of comparing the individual society with human as an idea. Maybe your idea in general is good, but you’re using a wrong argument—incorrigibly wrong, as far as I can tell.
Human psychology as it was optimized for the ancestral environment has been around longer than modern society.
But modern society is an individual example of the general idea of society, whereas human psychology as optimized is a general idea (performed in every specific individuum to a certain degree).
This feels like a bad faith nit-pick. If we taboo the word “society”, you and Scott obviously agree on the sorts of structures that used to exist—the kinds that exist among most/all primates—in which the people today who struggle may have easily found a place and a role and acceptance, and you both agree that the kinds of social structures that don’t do a good job of making life feel meaningful for these people are pretty new compared to the timeline of modern humans.
Taboo the word, replace it with the idea, and see if you still disagree.
Now for me to exercise good faith and strong-man your argument.
“Hey Scott, I like your idea overall, but worry that using the word “Society” may be too general of a term, and may cause confusion—since most primates and even ants have societies—so what you’re talking about here is narrower than that. I don’t know if there’s a better word or term you could use throughout, or if one clarifying remark could avoid that pitfall, but I think it may be worth a small edit. Thank you.”
Sorry, but I do not think that this is a term disagreement and that your “strong-manning” is faithful to my comment. I believe that Scott’s idea is somewhat inconsistent because he puts an individual example against a general idea; a specific structure against a set of psychologies.