altruism is part of my self-improvement feedback loop
One critique of utilitarianism is that if you seriously use it to guide your decisions, you would find that for any given decision, the choice that maximizes overall wellbeing is usually not the one that does any good for your personal wellbeing, so you would turn into a “happiness pump”: someone who only generates happiness for others at the detriment of themself. And, wouldn’t you know it, we see people like this pop up in the effective altruism movement (whose philosophy stems mostly from utilitarianism), particularly those who pursue earn-to-give. While most are happy to give away 10% of their income to effective charities, I’ve heard of some who have taken it to the extreme, to the point of calculating every purchase they make in terms of days of life they could have counterfactually saved via a donation.
However, since its beginnings, EA has shifted its focus away from earning to give and closer to encouraging people to pursue careers where they can work directly on the world’s most important problems. For someone with the privilege to consider this kind of career path, I believe this has changed the incentives and made the pursuit of self-fullfillment more closely aligned with maximizing expected utility.
the self-improvement feedback loop
Self-improvement is a feedback loop, or rather, a complicated web of feedback loops. For example,
The happier you are, the more productive you are, the more money you make, the happier you are.
The more often you exercise, the better your mental health, the better your executive function, the less often you skip your workouts, the more often you exercise.
The more often you exercise, the stronger you become, the more attractive you become, the more you benefit from the halo effect, the more likely you are to get a promotion, the more money you make.
In my constant battle to nudge this loop in the right direction, I don’t see altruism as a nagging enemy, who would take away energy I could use to get ahead. Rather, I see it as part of the loop.
Learning about the privilege I have (not only in the US but also globally) and how I can meaningful leverage that privilege as an opportunity to help massive numbers of poorer-off people has given me an incredible amount of motivation to better myself. Before I discovered EA, my plan was to become a software developer and retire as early as possible. Great life plan, don’t get me wrong – but when I learned I could take a shot at solving the world’s most important problems, I realized it was a super lame and selfish waste of privilege in comparison.
Instead of thinking about “how do I make as much money as possible?”, I now think about
How do I form accurate beliefs about the world?
What does the world look like, where will it be in the future, and where can I fit in to make it better?
Which professional skills are the best fit for me and the most important for having a positive impact?
How do I become as productive and agentic as possible?
Notice how this differs from the happiness pump situation. It’s more focused on “improving the self to help others” than “sacrificing personal wellbeing to help others”. This paradigm shift in what it looks like to try to do as much good as possible brings altruism into the self-improvement feedback loop. It gives my life a sense of meaning, something to work towards. Altruism isn’t a diametrically opposed goal to personal fulfillment; it’s mostly aligned.
The happier you are, the more productive you are, the more money you make, the happier you are. The more often you exercise, the better your mental health, the better your executive function, the less often you skip your workouts, the more often you exercise. The more often you exercise, the stronger you become, the more attractive you become, the more you benefit from the halo effect, the more likely you are to get a promotion, the more money you make.
And this effect could be even stronger in a group. In addition to the individual loops, seeing other people happy makes you happy, seeing other people productive inspired you to do something productive, people in the group could help each other financially, exercise together, etc.
One critique of utilitarianism is that if you seriously use it to guide your decisions, you would find that for any given decision, the choice that maximizes overall wellbeing is usually not the one that does any good for your personal wellbeing, so you would turn into a “happiness pump”: someone who only generates happiness for others at the detriment of themself.
I think this only happens if you take an overly restictive/narrow/naive view of consequences. Humans are generally not productive if they’re not happy, so the happiness pump strategy is probably not actually good for the net well being of other people longterm.
I agree, maybe I should state that overtly in this post. It’s essentially an argument against the idea of a happiness pump, because of the reason you described.
altruism is part of my self-improvement feedback loop
One critique of utilitarianism is that if you seriously use it to guide your decisions, you would find that for any given decision, the choice that maximizes overall wellbeing is usually not the one that does any good for your personal wellbeing, so you would turn into a “happiness pump”: someone who only generates happiness for others at the detriment of themself. And, wouldn’t you know it, we see people like this pop up in the effective altruism movement (whose philosophy stems mostly from utilitarianism), particularly those who pursue earn-to-give. While most are happy to give away 10% of their income to effective charities, I’ve heard of some who have taken it to the extreme, to the point of calculating every purchase they make in terms of days of life they could have counterfactually saved via a donation.
However, since its beginnings, EA has shifted its focus away from earning to give and closer to encouraging people to pursue careers where they can work directly on the world’s most important problems. For someone with the privilege to consider this kind of career path, I believe this has changed the incentives and made the pursuit of self-fullfillment more closely aligned with maximizing expected utility.
the self-improvement feedback loop
Self-improvement is a feedback loop, or rather, a complicated web of feedback loops. For example,
The happier you are, the more productive you are, the more money you make, the happier you are.
The more often you exercise, the better your mental health, the better your executive function, the less often you skip your workouts, the more often you exercise.
The more often you exercise, the stronger you become, the more attractive you become, the more you benefit from the halo effect, the more likely you are to get a promotion, the more money you make.
It all feeds into itself. Maybe this is just another way of phrasing the effect of accumulated advantage.
let’s throw altruism into the loop
In my constant battle to nudge this loop in the right direction, I don’t see altruism as a nagging enemy, who would take away energy I could use to get ahead. Rather, I see it as part of the loop.
Learning about the privilege I have (not only in the US but also globally) and how I can meaningful leverage that privilege as an opportunity to help massive numbers of poorer-off people has given me an incredible amount of motivation to better myself. Before I discovered EA, my plan was to become a software developer and retire as early as possible. Great life plan, don’t get me wrong – but when I learned I could take a shot at solving the world’s most important problems, I realized it was a super lame and selfish waste of privilege in comparison.
Instead of thinking about “how do I make as much money as possible?”, I now think about
How do I form accurate beliefs about the world?
What does the world look like, where will it be in the future, and where can I fit in to make it better?
Which professional skills are the best fit for me and the most important for having a positive impact?
How do I become as productive and agentic as possible?
Notice how this differs from the happiness pump situation. It’s more focused on “improving the self to help others” than “sacrificing personal wellbeing to help others”. This paradigm shift in what it looks like to try to do as much good as possible brings altruism into the self-improvement feedback loop. It gives my life a sense of meaning, something to work towards. Altruism isn’t a diametrically opposed goal to personal fulfillment; it’s mostly aligned.
And this effect could be even stronger in a group. In addition to the individual loops, seeing other people happy makes you happy, seeing other people productive inspired you to do something productive, people in the group could help each other financially, exercise together, etc.
Yeah definitely! It gets even more complicated when you throw other humans in the loop (pun not intended).
I think this only happens if you take an overly restictive/narrow/naive view of consequences. Humans are generally not productive if they’re not happy, so the happiness pump strategy is probably not actually good for the net well being of other people longterm.
I agree, maybe I should state that overtly in this post. It’s essentially an argument against the idea of a happiness pump, because of the reason you described.