Is humankind nasty?

This resource is a wikidebate, a collaborative effort to gather and organize all arguments on a given issue. It is a tool of argument analysis or pro-and-con analysis. This is not a place to defend your preferred points of view, but original arguments are allowed and welcome. See the Wikidebate guidelines for more.

Cyberneticist Warren McCulloch said: "I don't particularly like people, never have. Man to my mind is about the nastiest, most destructive of all the animals. I don't see any reason, if he can evolve machines that can have more fun that he himself can, why they shouldn't take over, enslave us, quite happily. They might have a lot more fun, invent better games than we ever did." Is McCulloch right?

Search terms:

• criticism of humankind
• is humankind evil

Humankind is nasty

Pro

• Argument for Humans exterminated a large number of biological species, especially mammals.
• Argument for Humans greatly reduced the total biomass of the planet.
• Argument for Humans invented and operated gas chambers in an industrial extermination of a group of humans.
• Argument for Humans enslaved other humans, treating them as cattle that can be killed at will.
• Argument for Humans performed medical experiments on other humans against their will, sometimes resulting in deaths of the experimental subjects.
• Argument for Humans tortured other humans, deriving pleasure from inflicting pain on other humans.
• Argument for Humans invented fissile and fusion nuclear weapons, threatening the existence and well-being not only of humankind but of other biological species.
• Argument for Humans let animals held for food live in bad conditions, e.g. crowded places.
• Argument for The human intraspecies aggression and killing manifested in wars has no analogue in the non-human biological realm.
• Argument for Humans bring about a global climate change that runs the risk of greatly decreasing the habitalibity of the Earth for humans and for non-human species.
  • Objection That is uncertain. It may be very hard to know these things.
• Argument for Most humans would sooner die than they would start to think.
  • Objection While not nice, perhaps not so bad as nasty.
• Argument for Humans are compulsive liars/misrepresenters/truth distorters.
  • Objection While not nice, perhaps not so bad as nasty.
• Argument for Humans tend to believe in factually and ethically absurd propositions.
  • Objection While not nice, perhaps not so bad as nasty.

Con

• Argument against Unlike other species, humans take steps to preserve non-human species.
  • Objection Too little too late. Since other species do not exterminate other species to the extent humans do, they do not then need to take steps to reduce the extermination.
• Argument against Humans invented ethical and legal codes and succeeded to a considerable extent in implementing and administering them.
  • Objection That does not help the exterminated species.

Further reading

• Are we born good or evil? (naughty or nice), BBC Earth
• Are humans evil?, quora.com