Walter, Let us consider this from a different angle.
People are not and cannot be inherently flawed. So, we can agree that no person was ever, or ever will be, born in a flawed state. Can we agree that, for whatever reason, some humans' collective or societal actions cause terrible outcomes? We must agree to this as well. If we do, the question becomes, what causes this continual problem with many collective and personal decisions? Please note that I did not say all collective or personal choices, but some are decidedly very bad for the individual and humanity, no? Now, you assert that it is mainly education, which I largely agree with. However, I think our nature leads to many bad decisions for individuals and groups. It's not the whole story, but a significant portion.
Consider why humans have a fight-or-flight response or are much better at linear thinking than exponential thinking. To me, these lead back to how we developed or evolved. We could give simple mathematical problems to Applied Mathematics PhDs in linear versus exponential ways of looking at the world, and studies have shown that they make the same mistakes as the rest of us and repeatedly so. That isn't a lack of education but something much more profound. It can only be found by looking at our very nature and how we developed, or evolved.
Interesting thoughts and a lot to address. I think one issue is this blur point where opinion is often offered as fact. People have settled into this concept of "human beings as flawed" so deeply that they act as if it's a fact even though they don't have the evidence for it. That applies as well to the argument about proof for god. We give lip service to the argument that there's no proof of god, and then the majority of people carry on with the assumption that god exists. It's very hard to achieve intellectual honesty, but until everyone is truly honest about the possibility that god might not exist or that human beings might not be flawed, they'll continue to build arguments based on those flawed foundations. Most of the time I have to get people to slow down. It takes a long time to accept the possibility that you might not be flawed. People tend to skip over that as if they can understand it just by reading the suggestion, but they can't. They really have to engage with that idea.
Walter, Let us consider this from a different angle.
People are not and cannot be inherently flawed. So, we can agree that no person was ever, or ever will be, born in a flawed state. Can we agree that, for whatever reason, some humans' collective or societal actions cause terrible outcomes? We must agree to this as well. If we do, the question becomes, what causes this continual problem with many collective and personal decisions? Please note that I did not say all collective or personal choices, but some are decidedly very bad for the individual and humanity, no? Now, you assert that it is mainly education, which I largely agree with. However, I think our nature leads to many bad decisions for individuals and groups. It's not the whole story, but a significant portion.
Consider why humans have a fight-or-flight response or are much better at linear thinking than exponential thinking. To me, these lead back to how we developed or evolved. We could give simple mathematical problems to Applied Mathematics PhDs in linear versus exponential ways of looking at the world, and studies have shown that they make the same mistakes as the rest of us and repeatedly so. That isn't a lack of education but something much more profound. It can only be found by looking at our very nature and how we developed, or evolved.
Best,
Jeff
Interesting thoughts and a lot to address. I think one issue is this blur point where opinion is often offered as fact. People have settled into this concept of "human beings as flawed" so deeply that they act as if it's a fact even though they don't have the evidence for it. That applies as well to the argument about proof for god. We give lip service to the argument that there's no proof of god, and then the majority of people carry on with the assumption that god exists. It's very hard to achieve intellectual honesty, but until everyone is truly honest about the possibility that god might not exist or that human beings might not be flawed, they'll continue to build arguments based on those flawed foundations. Most of the time I have to get people to slow down. It takes a long time to accept the possibility that you might not be flawed. People tend to skip over that as if they can understand it just by reading the suggestion, but they can't. They really have to engage with that idea.