But just as a question of are they a good person with bad parts clumped on top or are they just a bunch of good and bad parts and they could probably become a different person. You seem to be a bit essentialist about, “No, there’s a good person there and they just have some issues,” whereas I’m like, “Here’s a person and here’s some of their properties. We would like to change which person they are because this person utterly sucks.”
Mistake versus conflict theory are both valid self-fulfilling prophecies one could use to model someone, and I think I’m less being an essentialist about people being intrinsically good, and more insisting on mistake theory being a self-fulfilling prophecy that wins more, in that I think it gets you strictly more degrees of freedom in how you can interact with them.
I strongly agree with the bolded part, and have often been in the position of advocating for this “spiritual stance”.
But I feel like this answer is kind of dodging the question of “which frame is actually a more accurate model of reality?” I get that they’re frames, and you can use multiple frames to describe the same phenomenon.
But the “people are basically good underneath their trauma” and the stronger form “all people are basically good underneath their trauma” do make specific predictions about how those people would behave under various circumstances.
Specifically, I’m tracking at least three models:
Almost everyone is traumatized, to various degrees. that trauma inhibits their ability to reason freely about the world, and causes them to respond to various stimuli with long-ago-learned not-very-calibrated flailing responses. Their psychology is mostly made of a stack of more-or-less reflective behavioral patterns and habits which developed under the constraints of the existing psychological ecosystem of behaviors and patterns. but underneath all of that is an forgotten, but ever present Buddha-nature of universal love for all beings.
vs.
Almost everyone is traumatized, to various degrees. that trauma inhibits their ability to reason freely about the world, and causes them to respond to various stimuli with long-ago-learned not-very-calibrated flailing responses. Their psychology is mostly made of a stack of more-or-less reflective behavioral patterns and habits which developed under the constraints of the existing psychological ecosystem of behaviors and patterns. but underneath all of that is an forgotten, but if that trauma is cleared that mind is a basically-rational optimizer for one’s personal and genetic interests.
vs.
Almost everyone is traumatized, to various degrees. that trauma inhibits their ability to reason freely about the world, and causes them to respond to various stimuli with long-ago-learned not-very-calibrated flailing responses. Their psychology is mostly made of a stack of more-or-less reflective behavioral patterns and habits which developed under the constraints of the existing psychological ecosystem of behaviors and patterns. but underneath all of that is an forgotten, but underneath that is a pretty random cluge of evolutionary adaptions.
Obviously, reality will be more complicated than any of these three simplifications, and is probably a mix of all of them to various degrees.
But I think it is strategically important to have a model of 1) what the underlying motivational stack for most humans is like and 2) how much variation is there in underlying motivations, between humans.
I strongly agree with the bolded part, and have often been in the position of advocating for this “spiritual stance”.
But I feel like this answer is kind of dodging the question of “which frame is actually a more accurate model of reality?” I get that they’re frames, and you can use multiple frames to describe the same phenomenon.
But the “people are basically good underneath their trauma” and the stronger form “all people are basically good underneath their trauma” do make specific predictions about how those people would behave under various circumstances.
Specifically, I’m tracking at least three models:
Almost everyone is traumatized, to various degrees. that trauma inhibits their ability to reason freely about the world, and causes them to respond to various stimuli with long-ago-learned not-very-calibrated flailing responses. Their psychology is mostly made of a stack of more-or-less reflective behavioral patterns and habits which developed under the constraints of the existing psychological ecosystem of behaviors and patterns. but underneath all of that is an forgotten, but ever present Buddha-nature of universal love for all beings.
vs.
Almost everyone is traumatized, to various degrees. that trauma inhibits their ability to reason freely about the world, and causes them to respond to various stimuli with long-ago-learned not-very-calibrated flailing responses. Their psychology is mostly made of a stack of more-or-less reflective behavioral patterns and habits which developed under the constraints of the existing psychological ecosystem of behaviors and patterns. but underneath all of that is an forgotten, but if that trauma is cleared that mind is a basically-rational optimizer for one’s personal and genetic interests.
vs.
Almost everyone is traumatized, to various degrees. that trauma inhibits their ability to reason freely about the world, and causes them to respond to various stimuli with long-ago-learned not-very-calibrated flailing responses. Their psychology is mostly made of a stack of more-or-less reflective behavioral patterns and habits which developed under the constraints of the existing psychological ecosystem of behaviors and patterns. but underneath all of that is an forgotten, but underneath that is a pretty random cluge of evolutionary adaptions.
Obviously, reality will be more complicated than any of these three simplifications, and is probably a mix of all of them to various degrees.
But I think it is strategically important to have a model of 1) what the underlying motivational stack for most humans is like and 2) how much variation is there in underlying motivations, between humans.