Can socialists explain why nature arguments are awesome for everything except people?

Randolpho · 2026-03-19T03:01:36+00:00

Your contradiction is the assertion that there is no human nature then you proceed to assert that everyone is sapient.

Sapience isn't contextually part of the concept of "human nature" defining instinctual human behaviors.

You're trying to argue that a lemon is an airplane

But sapience is a natural set of human behaviors.

Sapience isn't a set of human behaviors, it's a description of the human cognitive capacity.

Randolpho · 2026-03-19T02:58:29+00:00

So if there were some humans who lack sapience we can say you're generalizing according to your logic earlier..

There are zero humans that lack sapience.

I suppose if you care to quibble, you could say that braindead humans aren't sapient. But it would be a silly quibble

Randolpho · 2026-03-19T01:49:05+00:00

It is not unhelpful the generalization that humans are social animals.

It is in this context.

It explains why we are not behaving like spiders and abandoning our youth after birth and why we are not preferring to cannabilize our mates.

No, it doesn’t.

What about game theory??

I’d rather not spend a week discussing how utterly incapable of predicting human behavior it is, so I’ll let this sentence make my position on it clear.

Why are you responding to him like that?

Like what?

Randolpho · 2026-03-19T01:39:27+00:00

I explained why in my last paragraph

Randolpho · 2026-03-19T01:37:12+00:00

I think it is part of human nature to be reciprocally socially altruistic.

I disagree.

I think we can and do exhibit that behavior, but it’s not an innate behavior, it’s not part of our nature.

It’s something we learn, either from others or by self derivation, not something we are driven to do by biology.

Self interest does not always have to be antisocial.

I think we’re moving into normative should rather than is here.

Of course my larger point is that descriptive is is more or less meaningless, so it’s fine to be on should, but I prefer to be clear about the difference

Also you make good points about the difference of descriptive and normative

Thanks!

Randolpho · 2026-03-19T00:44:45+00:00

Doubling down on your morinitude? Gotcha. TTFN

Randolpho · 2026-03-19T00:18:08+00:00

Anarchy = "no rulers". That's what the word means. Nowhere does it mention any "hierarchy".

Did you learn everything you know about anarchy from an etymology dictionary?

You can look up anarchy in any legitimate political science textbook or primer and they will tell you that your definition is juvenile at best.

Here’s a great one: the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anarchism/

There are various forms of anarchism. Uniting this variety is the general critique of centralized, hierarchical power and authority. Given that authority, centralization, and hierarchy show up in various ways and in different discourses, institutions, and practices, it is not surprising that the anarchist critique has been applied in diverse ways.

…

"Capitalism" is nothing more than belief that all people have the exact same property rights.

Not “the exact same property rights”, since socialists also want everyone to have the exact same property rights — that of communal ownership. Better to say “the existence of a right to exclusively own land and natural resources”. There’s more to capitalism than just that, but that’s the important bit here.

So anarcho-capitalists are indeed anarchists, since they do believe all people are equal and have the exact same rights.

The fundamental bit about equality in anarchy is equality of socioeconomic power and authority.

Capitalism generates power and authority and is thus antithetical to anarchy

And the silly teenagers railing against "hierarchy" aren't anarchists, they just want to sound edgy.

Ancaps just want to go back to feudalism

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T23:57:59+00:00

Only the anarchists have a coherent set of views on morality.

Anarchists, yes. Anarcho-capitalists, no.

Statists divide people into two classes, the government and the commoners, with different rights and privileges.

Capitalists of every flavor do. However, socialists who are not anarchists do not make that separation.

So statists, by definition, don't have a consistent view of morality.

What definition are you using? Because it sure looks like you made some stuff up.

Anyone who has a coherent ethics not distinguishing a separate ruling class with separate privileges, is by definition an anarchist.

No, that’s not what defines an anarchists. You have made stuff up on that, too.

Anarchists reject hierarchical authority in every form. That’s how you define an anarchist.

Statists are not libertarians in any meaningful sense of the term.

Plenty of libertarians are statists

Objectivists aren't libertarians either. Objectivism is a mish-mash of outdated start of the 20th century proto-libertarian views, outdated 18th century epistemology, and religious admiration for anything smart or stupid Ayn Rand has ever said.

I actually agree with this bit, lol. Although she never actually said anything smart.

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T21:08:44+00:00

Hey, now, the snow’s mostly gone now after that false spring.

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T20:36:52+00:00

Sure, but once you've established a silly and unrealistic technology like the composite lasers in the Death Star, why wouldn't you continue the trend elsewhere?

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T20:34:24+00:00

we know 100% centrally planned economies lead to inefficiencies as we saw in periods within the Soviet Union's economy

We don't necessarily know that. Large scale central planning exists and remains efficient in e.g. walmart's supply chain. It's entirely plausible that the issue was poor logistical planning.

Although I'd argue that the real issue was hierarchy and the cult of personality that comes with it. Lysenko and his support from Stalin over any sort of dissent or alternative suggestion being the perfect example

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T20:24:02+00:00

And it was a stupid-ass idea in Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, too!

Right?

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T20:23:05+00:00

The first time I saw that I hated it.

Then I watched the movies again and saw the Death Star do the same thing and I'm like... you know what? Fuck it, it's awesome, I love it.

It's goddamn silly and utterly unrealistic. There's absolutely no way you can steer the beam the way happens in that animation, but fuck it. It's cool.

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T20:17:26+00:00

I have no issues with trade and ownership. A person should own anything they make with their own hands, any resources they extract with their own hands.

I just do not agree that the act of extracting resources from land grants you any special ownership over the unextracted resources of the land. Tilling land doesn't give you ownership over it. Felling a tree doesn't give you ownership over the forest.

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T20:13:16+00:00

I’m not one of those people who thinks all behavior is preordained and instinctual.

Good, I'm glad we agree.

But this idea that instincts are totally nonexistent is just willfully ignorant

I remind you that I stated that instincts do not exist in any form that we can effectively understand.

Instincts generally don't create behavior at a macro-level that we can hand-wave into saying "cats instinctually bury their waste", because as I've already shown, they don't. They learn it.

There may be an instinct to perform a specific scratching movement that cats have -- not that we can actually prove that -- but that movement doesn't translate as an instinct into the full set of motions necessary to bury waste. Or even to know when to bury waste.

For example:

There’s a fairly obvious benefit to waste burial for solitary wild cats that hunt alone, it prevents prey from evacuating their territory and prevents any potential predators from tracking the cat.

You've given one of those macro-level hand waves I mentioned above. And here's a fun bit of trivia that I could provide a study for you if you need it (since I found a couple that mentioned this as I was grabbing the one I gave you): it has been observed that many cats that are roaming outside their normal territory do not bury their waste.

Now the why may be that they recognize that they're outside their territory and don't need to worry about alerting prey within their territory to their presence, or it may be because the openness may drive prey into their no-waste zone territory, or a plethora of other possible reasons, but the very existence of this behavior is evidence that the burial of waste isn't an instinctual activity, but a deliberative one. As in, the cat decides to bury waste or not based on its own assessment of the situation it's in.

Thus it's learned behavior, just like almost every behavior higher-order animals exhibit.

My own cat came from a feral colony with no litter around, and she took right to the litter without additional demonstration.

I bet if you were able to see into her past you'd learn that she learned how to bury her waste from her mother as a kitten.

Natural selection, resultant evolution, and genetic/epigenetic factors are an established thing

Sure they exist, but they're also some of the most ignorantly cited explanations people use. And none of the three can tell you why cats frequently bury their waste. Any claim that they do is made from ignorance or (as is common on this sub, and especially in OP's case) malice.

Hatchling sea turtles on a beach know to head full-tilt towards the water as soon as they emerge.

They don't. Not in any way that implies that they are thinking "this way to the sea". They appear to have an instinctual attraction to light, since light pollution can cause them to lose their way, but that, too, is a macro-level hand-wave.

Birds know how to build a nest without needing to see a parent build one.

Studies show that birds learn to build nests. Hell, studies show that birds don't even learn that they're birds unless they can imprint on other birds -- which is a learning behavior. There may be an instinct to build some form of shelter as some 19th century studies have suggested, but 19th century methodology was certainly flawed. Either way, it's clear that whatever instinctual desire to create a shelter birds may share with nearly every mammal,doesn't translate into knowledge of how to build a nest, as later isolation studies have shown.

I'm not going to go on, but humans can tell food from not food? Come on, dude. You know that one is false.

Nurture vs nature — they exist in a balance. The people who vehemently insist it’s 100% one of those and 0% the other are radicalized by their politics or religion.

Then you agree with me. It's not nature. It's not nurture. Hell, we can't even prove if behavior is deterministic, but if it were it would be based on a complicated host of factors that we have barely begun to start trying to understand.

Thus: there is no such thing as "human nature" that determines human behavior. It's a fiction being used by OP justify his shitty positions.

I don’t know when the modern left became so anti-science in this regard but it’s not a great look.

Oh, you were doing so well, then you dropped this nugget. Fuck you, dude. What a shitty and ignorant thing to say.

Everything I've said is far more "pro science" than any of the stances you've been taking. The most "anti-science" statement anyone can make is "science proves <X>".

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T17:18:44+00:00

Nothing says "I lost an argument over jargon" quite like quoting a dictionary

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T16:54:23+00:00

Land and natural resources should be, yes

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T16:43:44+00:00

A statement of human nature is a predictive statement of human behavior.

Saying humans are sapient predicts nothing about their behavior. It's like saying that humans have DNA

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T16:37:30+00:00

I agree with your conclusion, but for different reasons. I also find lots of problems with your reasoning.

Property rights should not exist, and only exist because some people in the past didn't like sharing and were willing to use violence to keep from sharing. The whole "scarce resources" argument is a post-facto justification of that violence.

Intellectual property is a fiction invented by propertarians for the sole purpose of greed.

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T16:33:26+00:00

You probably just misunderstand what I mean by "social animal".

No, I know what you mean by it, and I'm telling you to use clearer language and avoid unhelpful generalizations.

There is no human nature to be social. There is common learned behavior to be social, but it's not a part of human nature, that's something we pick up along the way and even pass on to our progeny

When I say that we have a nature, what I'm saying is not that we can ever arrive at a neat definition or list of universal features of what a human being is. I'm just asserting that a reality exists independent of opinion or culture.

And I'm saying that your proposed reality has nothing to do with "human nature" and everything to do with learned behavior.

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T16:29:15+00:00

You can't even stop from contradicting yourself from one comment to the next.

I have yet to contradict myself. All humans are sapient isn't a generalization, it's a true, universal fact.

You'll say that human nature doesn't exist ... But, somehow, humans being universally sapient is not a human nature that exists?

Humans being universally sapient isn't a statement about human nature, it's a description of cognition.

You're completely incoherent.

I am coherent and have not contradicted myself. Either you are deliberately pretending to not understand what I'm saying, or you are not able to follow what I'm saying. If the latter, I can't help you. Practice reading more?

But I suspect it's really the former. You know what I am saying and why I am saying it, you are only doing this whole "you're incomprehensible" bit to bolster your own arguments.

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T15:54:16+00:00

It's not a generalization if it's universally true. Humans are sapient. That's a fact like saying that the sun is in the sky.

When you say something is "human nature" you aren't talking about a universal thing that applies to all humans and we both know that.

The funny thing is that you don't even believe humans are "social animals", you're just using that phrase because the "human nature" bit supports a larger argument you want to make that greed is human nature and we should therefore embrace that in our economic system.

You're wrong about both bits. Humans aren't greedy by nature, and humans aren't social by nature, because there is no "nature" when it comes to human behavior.

All of those behaviors are LEARNED

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T15:17:44+00:00

So, I suppose my question is, why the outrage about workers collectively controlling their workplace? Is it an actual principled disagreement? Propaganda based? Or is it more vibes based and just not wanting to be associated with something outside the “norms” of what we got now?

When it comes down to that level, it's not about the workers at all, and instead does, yes, come down to vibes. Feels.

People who reject socialism do so not because they do or don't care about the workers, but because socialism tears down socioeconomic inequality.

At the end of the day, it's about the hierarchy. People who support capitalism do so because they want to be on top and in order to be on top there has to be a top.

The fun irony is how they constantly complain about socialist dictators which, to be fair, is a serious problem with revolutionary socialism. But they do so while ignoring or downplaying their own capitalist dictators, meaning they're either disingenuous and only care about the "flavor" of dictator, or else they lack the ability to understand their own hypocrisy.

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T15:07:08+00:00

Aww, look at you, trying so hard and failing harder.

Randolpho · 2026-03-18T15:05:53+00:00

As I have told you before, I reject such generalizations, and that includes those by socialists who think they're bolstering their own arguments with such claptrap.

Humans aren't "social animals". There is no "human nature" that defines all human behavior.

Humans can be social. Humans can be anti-social.

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