What drives human behavior?
Edwin's do-it newsletter: 2:19 reading time
Hello everyone,
This week we're breaking down human nature, or in other words, what drives our behavior. This has been the most challenging to condense, simply because there are still so many things we don’t know. For instance, how life even originated or how evolution really works. Don’t worry, we’ll reflect on those questions in the dos and don'ts of this post as well.
Last week we answered: In what ways can the world be affected? Check it out here: edwindoit.com/5acts
Let's dive in.
What drives human behavior:
Humans are a lifeform. Life’s core characteristic is knowledge and the motivation to reproduce knowledge. It commands organisms to do this via genes and memes. The knowledge is the program and the organism the machine. The program is solely concerned with the reproduction of knowledge, not with things like truth or the well-being of the organism or the tribe.
Genes (DNA) have been the original form of knowledge and are present in all life forms since they originated 4 billion years ago. In humans, individual diversity in personality originates from genes for instance. (The purpose of this individual diversity is a more robust functioning group via the division of labor). In certain species, knowledge is also stored in the form of memes. Memes are abstract forms of knowledge that spread through simple imitation. Approximately 100.000 years ago a genetic mutation occurred within homo sapiens ancestors which enabled them to not merely mirror behavior, but to have a conscious mind with the capacity to understand the meaning of the behavior. The ability to understand also birthed the ability to explain, and therein human creativity. It allows us to trade ideas, create universal languages and collaborate at large through shared beliefs.
Our behavior can be best seen as a collection of continuously competing programs with each their own goals.
A large part of these programs derive from genes and memes, but our ability to understand allows us to question and criticize these programs. This enables us to unshackle from the blind dominion of our encoded knowledge and to have agency in what programs we chose to execute.
Our programs also have a built-in mechanism for adapting to the experienced environment. We call this nurture. The process of learning and adaptation takes place inside of our nervous system. On top of that, the nervous system is the command center tasked with selecting the highest priority programs (and related goals) to focus on. Usually, there are many programs running at the same time. The programs that are prioritised are those driven by four main evolutionary drivers: survival, reproduction, reciprocal altruism (tit for tat), and kin selection (family preservation). This takes place inside of the hypothalamus, an ancient and highly developed part of our brain, which also controls our autonomic nervous system and our hormonal system.
When our most pressing needs are satiated, the default orientation of humans is towards curiosity and exploration. This is where conscious human creativity, learning, and agency happens.
Sources/references
Richard Dawkins - The Selfish gene. Charles Darwin - The Origin of species. Jordan B Peterson’s lectures on personality 2017. David Deutsch, Karl Popper and Brett Hall’s works on explanatory knowledge and the role of the mind. Various ideas and phrases from Matt Ridley, Gad Saad and Steven Pinker. And naturally a ton of Wikipedia articles on evolutionary biology.
How you can apply this knowledge
Don’ts
Don’t fall for the blank slate idea where all behaviors are acquired through socialization. This is simply not true. Everybody has a different quantifiable personality (Big 5 traits), and average personality differences across for instance genders exist even cross-culturally. Also, identical twins which share the exact same genome, even when growing up in entirely different environments, have been shown to share a large number of traits.
Don’t think that our body is "primitive” and secondary to our minds because it’s so old. The fact that our organs and internal systems are so old meant they stood the test of time over millions of years. There’s much to learn from how our bodies regulate our behavior.
Dos
Do believe in the value of thinking, reflecting, and learning. We are the only organisms capable of transcending our genetically hardwired programs. Nearly everything, including habits, behavior patterns, and attitudes can be criticized and changed if you want to.
Remember that there’s a lot we don’t know yet about life and human nature. In line with the credo: if you can’t program it you haven’t understood it, we don’t understand:
How life originated and why it did so rapidly (as soon as the biosphere permitted it)
Why life remained single-celled for nearly a billion years
Why and when life evolves into increasingly complex organisms
Specifically why and when certain evolutionary steps happened. It’s very hard to historically trace back and find evidence for species that are long gone.
How human creativity and general intelligence works
What the function is of the different parts of the brain (we have only rough ideas)
That’s a wrap
I'd be very happy to hear what you think of this new series. Feel free to send me a personal message or just reply to this e-mail. If you'd like to see more insights, be sure to follow me on Twitter → https://twitter.com/Edwindoit
See you next week!
, Edwin