People are good-ish

This is an indisputable fact about the world that for some reason people keep demoting to an overly-optimistic belief. People are generally pretty decent most of the time, if they're not backed into a corner.

Humans have well-known biases, blind spots, and mental traps, but everything about the world today would not even be fathomable, let alone able to be accomplished, if even 5% more of human activity was malicious. In fact I'm starting a running list of all the things I can think of that would utterly fall apart if just a fraction of people were a fraction more fundamentally malicious or misanthropic.

This is going to be an evergreen note from the get-go for two reasons:

1. It is well-supported by evidence from the real world
2. It is fundamental to most of the ways in which my ideology—and therefore my ideas—differ from others

Other content that links to this

• Note: an ethic of curiosity
• Note: Capitalism needs mechanisms for humility in valuations