When I first read this article the imagery of corrupt hardware cause a certain memory to pop into my head. The memory is of an interaction with my college roommate about computers. Due to various discourses I had been exposed to at the time I was under the impression that computers were designed to have a life-expectancy of about 5 years. I am not immersed the world of computers, and this statement seemed feasible to me from a economic perspective of producer rationale within a capitalistic society. So I accepted it. I accepted that computers were designed to break, crash, or die within 4-5 years, if I could keep one that long. One day I got to talking to my roommate about this, and he shocked me by saying "not if you take care of them the way you should." How many people take their computers for regular checkups as they do their teeth, their cars, their children? How many people read the manuals that come with their computers to be best informed how to take care of them?
I am sure there are people that do, but I realized I was not one of them. I had assumed an intentional deficiency in the hardware, instead of grappling with the much more likely possibility that there was a deficiency in my usage/knowledge of the hardware.
I now return to your premise that "humans run on corrupted hardware." It is a new way to phrase an old idea: that humans are by nature evil. It is an idea I disagree with. I do not disagree with the beginning of your reasoning process, but I believe a lack of necessary knowledge about certain variables in the equation leads you down a faulty path. Therefore I will ignore the thought experiment that takes up the later portion of the essay, and instead focus on the variables in this statement:
-In some cases, human beings have evolved in such fashion as to think that they are doing X for prosocial reason Y, but when human beings actually do X, other adaptations execute to promote self-benefiting consequence Z.
The assumption that you make is that self-interest has to be selfish/ individualistic. That variable Z (self-interest) makes individual benefit unquestionably precedent over group benefit. The assumption being that the individual self is not only real, but the foundation of human consciousness.
I would argue (along with a long list of social scientists in the fields of sociology, anthropology, evolutionary psychology, social psychology, economics, literature, theology, philosophy, and probably several more) that humans contain a social self. Meaning that the self is not individual cognition, but a networked entity constituted by a plurality of bodies, minds, and territories. Under my premise the fact that people must be self-interested is not so fatalistic. There is after all a difference between self-interest and selfishness. What is needed is for people to be taught to understand their self as a network not an individual, and be taught methods of self-extension.
I agree with you that humans cannot escape doing things out of self-interest, but surely you agree that some types of self-interest are more positive than others, and that the farther the notion of self is extended the greater the benefits for humanistic goals?
How can you say the hardware is corrupt before testing all the dispositions for action that it contains to the fullest?
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Not a native speaker I am guessing? Where "same opinions as you" expresses agreement "same opinion of you" has more potential as a retort. "Emit" gives approximately the opposite meaning to what I assume you intended, given that you did not release, give off, send out or express the radical opinion - you omitted it. (I assume English is a second language since your thoughts seem far more advanced than your expression thereof.)
No actually english is my first language. Though I have spent the past 6 years deeply immersed in the study of Chinese linguistics and scholarship. So I apologize in advance for comma splicing or other somewhat awkward rhetorical strategies that I may use. I try to think in chinese as much as I can and I guess it messes me up at points.
That said, I do not see a causal correlation between the quality of my ideas and my mastery of the english language. I know very well that on a scale of 1-10 it would be generous to call my writing a 7. But I do not think that defines the nature of my thoughts, especially since you do not know what stage of the writing process my responses are in. I will go ahead and tell you anything I write on this site is done in a single draft. I am writing not to meet the rhetorical standards of whatever game you are playing. I am writing because of the potential to see what emerges from me when I mix with interesting materials such as Mr./Mrs MixedNuts. Personally I do not see the point in attacking rhetoric, especially if the idea is conveyed. It seems as insecure as my own initial vilifying of Mr./Mrs. MixedNuts. In fact it fulfills the stereotype I was expecting to meet in posting on this website! However, if I can have my insecurities, then I cannot hold your insecurities against you. So I forgive you, and I hope we can keep talking.