Another of my friends writes in reference my having recently said "I suspect I make the same logical errors myself. I find my nature changeable, so I believe human nature is changeable."
"How is human nature different from human personality?" She asks.
Well, I suppose that speaks directly to what I was saying: Human personality is individual, but human nature is universal. My personality is changeable, so I extrapolate to human nature as being changeable.
There are lots of aspects of people's personality that are clearly not universal. One person is cranky, another is jovial, a third holds grudges. There are aspects that (sometimes) appear (to some) to be universal; survival (fight or flight) instincts, sexual urges (tho' of various kinds), use of language (of various kinds), pattern-matching, competitiveness, etc. Some of that appearance is presumably due to small sample size, some to social constraints (you could argue, for instance, that people are innately modest about nudity, if you didn't know that there were lots of people who don't live near me who are not), some due to defects in my own pattern-matching abilities, some due to my imperfect perception of the universe. Some may in fact be true. I think. Maybe.
Thank you,
-Vardibidian.