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One must distinguish human nature, the shared phenomena of our being, and "human nature", the rhetorical bludgeon that ends productive discussion.

• scythe 9y ago
  The proposition "there are inherent psychological desires of humans" -- and I must say desires to distinguish from more flexible characteristics like rationality or sociality -- is supported by a variety of good heuristics such as the evolutionary origin of people, the existence of significant similarity in social structures across cultures (with stronger similarities in literate cultures), and observed failures in many attempts to manipulate desires (most notably David Reimer). However, the prospect of determining what these are is difficult, the justifications behind the best theories of inherent desires are usually both complex and epistemologically imperfect, and the game of telephone that relays scientific information to a popular audience tends to oversimplify the findings, overestimate the appropriate confidence level, and distort the conclusions to better comport with the preconceptions of the audience. As a result, colloquial discussions of how human nature impacts our lives are a huge minefield of pseudoscience, narcissism and utopianism that rarely support better understanding of any situation. Most useful applications of psychology depend on the application of empirical data describing some settings to other closely related settings, rather than the great theoretical leaps in the reasoning applied in the natural sciences. As such, when a thinker is prone to making such leaps (eg Jordan Peterson) it's a red flag that they're a charlatan, or (eg "Dr. Phil") are willing to distort what they do know scientifically in order to gain notoriety.