The four laws of humanity

Nearly every phenomenon in the known universe can be explained by the application of a few fundamental laws. At times the laws themselves are peculiar or counter intuitive, but all complex behavior arrives from their interaction as opposed to their number. Consider, for example, the most easily observable force in nature: gravity. Gravity is governed by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, but over short distances is explained almost as well by Newton's work. The practical upshot of both theories is that masses attract each other and force of the attraction decreases proportionally to the square of the distance between them. Simple, no? But it took years to find this law because of the complexity arising from the number of bodies present in the observable subject (the solar system). Myriads of complex theories were proposed before a simple law was discovered. Once it was, prediction and comprehension were easy.

I would like to postulate that nearly all of human behavior can be explained by a few simple laws. There will always be exceptions, but in general I believe the following apply. The pronouns are male to keep my sentences simple. I am not a chauvinist. Just thought I'd clear that up.

1) A person will act in what he perceives to be his best interest or the best interest of someone else.

This may seem obvious, but it explains a lot of otherwise anomalous behavior. The Secret Service agent who stops a bullet for his charge is acting in what he perceives to be in the best interest of either the man he protects or his country. The mother who works two jobs to put food on the table is acting both in her own interest and her family's. The drug addict weighs the damage inflicted by heroin against the perceived benefit. This last is startling, but makes perfect sense when paired with the second law.

2) A person is incapable of always correctly discerning what a "best interest" actually is.

We are finite, fallen beings. Equally to the point, we are not omniscient. No one person holds all the facts and even if he did he may not act on them due to emotional distortion of reason. Let's say that you are faced by a home intruder. He has a paring knife. You have a Benelli semi-automatic shotgun loaded with deer slugs and pointed at his chest. Your young child is sleeping in the next room. He rushes you. What do you do? If you shoot him, he's going to die. If you don't, you might die, and so might your son. (We will ignore human rights to self-defense for the sake of simplicity.) If you fire, one person definitely dies. If you don't, two people might. You might be able to just clock him with your stock and stun him. You might not. He might run away. He might not. On a purely utilitarian level, there is no way to make a foolproof decision. This is a stark example, but the general concept applies everywhere. If we could see every outcome, we'd all make fortunes on the stock market.

3) People (both individually and collectively) are incapable of detecting error without external points of reference once a choice has been made.

This may sound confusing or unduly cynical, but consider it for a moment. If an entire population is convinced of something (say, that the earth is flat), then unless external, independent evidence emerges to the contrary people will continue to act as though the earth is flat. Locke wrote that a person's knowledge cannot exceed his or her experience. Something similar attaches here. We cannot detect our mistakes without either prior knowledge (which we ignored in order to make the mistake) or future evidence. This is, as you have probably guessed, a corollary of Rule Two. People not only cannot always determine what is in everyone's (or even their own) best interest, we cannot learn without trying and failing and thus gathering more knowledge. Another way to phrase this is that a choice always seemed like a good idea at the time.

4) People (collectively) have short memories.

We are only capable of learning from experience/evidence, but easily forget exactly what we theoretically learned. Consider government regulation of economics. It's never worked well, but that has not stopped us from trying it again.

These four rules (the first two the most fundamental) explain much of human behavior, especially when large numbers of people are involved. I'm not Hari Seldon, and these ideas likely fail Popper's falsifiability test, but in future posts I'll apply them to our current issues and see how much behavior I can accurately predict.