Humans

Differences:

extreme flexibility
normal animalss behaviour is hot wired by their emotions which is hot wired by what evolutionary is good for them, humans have emotions but can do something completely different than follow their emotions, can fuck us up but might also be neccesary to collaborate and stuff

animals: emotions → behaviour

humans: emotions → thoughts → putting into context with norms and expectations → behaviour

Humans differ from most animals in that our behavior is not rigidly determined by instincts but is instead shaped by culture — a flexible, programmable system much like software running on biological hardware. While animals operate largely through fixed emotional and instinctual patterns suited to stable environments, humans evolved to be highly adaptable through social learning and symbolic thought. This cultural “software” allows for enormous variation in social structure, power dynamics, and sexual norms across human societies. Our conversation explored how this flexibility sets humans apart and how your analogy of humans as reprogrammable microcontrollers elegantly captures this core distinction.

You’ll never see a wolf pack holding a council to question alpha dominance, or lionesses forming a movement to redistribute zebra steaks more fairly. That’s because their social systems are biologically hardwired — they don’t have the cognitive flexibility or symbolic language to imagine alternatives, debate fairness, or redefine roles.

Humans, on the other hand, constantly question and reinvent our social structures. We can build patriarchy, feminism, capitalism, socialism — even entire religions or ideologies — and just as easily critique or dismantle them. It’s like our species was given a base operating system and then told, “Now go code your own society.”