Are humans fundamentally good or evil? (By "evil" I mean something like "willing to inflict large amounts of harm/suffering on others in pursuit of one's own interests/goals (in a way that can't be plausibly justified as justice or the like)" and by "good" I mean "most people won't do that because they terminally care about others".) People say "power corrupts", but why isn't "power reveals" equally or more true? Looking at some relevant history (people thinking Mao Zedong was sincerely idealistic in his youth, early Chinese Communist Party looked genuine about wanting to learn democracy and freedom from the West, subsequent massive abuses of power by Mao/CCP lasting to today), it's hard to escape the conclusion that altruism is merely a mask that evolution made humans wear in a context-dependent way, to be discarded when opportune (e.g., when one has secured enough power that altruism is no longer very useful).

After writing the above, I was reminded of @Matthew Barnett's AI alignment shouldn’t be conflated with AI moral achievement, which is perhaps the closest previous discussion around here. (Also related are my previous writings about "human safety" although they still used the "power corrupts" framing.) Comparing my current message to his, he talks about "selfishness" and explicitly disclaims, "most humans are not evil" (why did he say this?), and focuses on everyday (e.g. consumer) behavior instead of what "power reveals".

At the time, I replied to him, "I think I’m less worried than you about “selfishness” in particular and more worried about moral/philosophical/strategic errors in general." I guess I wasn't as worried because it seemed like humans are altruistic enough, and their selfish everyday desires limited enough that as they got richer and more powerful, their altruistic values would have more and more influence. In the few months since then, I've became more worried, perhaps due to learning more about Chinese history and politics...