François CholletVerified account

I think most people are good people. Not in the shallow sense that they can't be cruel, violent, or indifferent, but in the sense that they have plenty of good sides that they can readily express if you give them the opportunity

When people are mean, it's often because they're encouraged to by systems (groups, products, institutions...) that leverage the bad parts of human nature for self-preservation

All successful systems have strong mechanisms for self-preservation & expansion. Because human nature is mostly static, systems that are made of people have the choice between exploiting the good pillars of human nature, like hope & compassion, or the bad ones, like fear & anger

Some systems evolve to make people constantly mad and undermine their instinct for empathy. Bad behavior is usually driven by being part of a bad system, rather than by spontaneous evil

Now, people still have agency. Not just because they shape the systems around them, but because they can choose to react to them in different ways -- to let out their worst impulses, or to resist them