I will help a suffering thing if it benefits me to help it, or if the social contract requires me to. Otherwise I will walk away.
I adopted this cruel position after going through one long relationship where I constantly demanded emotional “help” from the girl, then another relationship soon afterwards where the girl constantly demanded similar “help” from me. Both those situations felt so sick that I finally understood: participating in any guilt-trip scenario makes you a worse person, no matter whether you’re tripping or being tripped. And it also makes the world worse off: being openly vulnerable to guilt-tripping encourages more guilt-tripping all around.
So relax and follow your own utility—this will incentivize others to incentivize you to help them, so everyone will treat you well, and you’ll treat them well in advance for the same reason.
People who require help can be divided into those who are capable of helping themselves, and those who are not. Such a position as yours would express the value preference that sacrificing the good of the latter group is better than letting the first group get unpaid rewards—in all cases. For me it’s not that simple, the choice depends on the proportion of the groups, cost to me and society, and just how much good is being sacrificed. To make an extreme example, I would save someone’s life even if this encourages other people to be less careful protecting theirs.
I think it helps to distinguish moral injunctions from statements about human preference. First are the heuristics, while latter are the statements of truth. A “position” is a heuristic, but it isn’t necessarily the right thing to do, in some of the case where it applies. Generalization from personal experience may be useful on average, but doesn’t give knowledge about preference with certainty. When you “follow you own utility”, you are merely following your imperfect understanding of your own utility, and there is always a potential for getting the map closer to reality.
You’re talking about preferences over outcomes and you’re right that they don’t change much. I interpreted Tiiba as asking about preferences over actions (“whose goals you would want to further”), those depend on heuristics.
This differs from what I had hypothesized was the standard model. I think I like my hypothesis of the standard model better than my understanding of your model, so I’ll mention it here, on the off-chance that you might also like it.
I think that most people make (or intuit) the calculation “If it’s not too much trouble, I should help this person one time. If they are appropriately thankful, and if they do not inconvenience me too much, I will consider helping them again; if they reciprocate appropriately, I will probably be friends with them, and engage in a long-term reciprocal relationship.”
In this calculation, ‘appropriately thankful’, ‘inconvenience me too much’, and ‘reciprocate appropriately’ are highly subjective, but this model appears to account for most stable relationships. It also accounts for guilt-trip based relationships being unstable. The “I should help one time” clause may make the world a better place in general, although it is unclear if that’s why most people hold it.
It is possible that when you say “social contract” and I say “reciprocal relationship”, we mean exactly the same thing.
That seems like it could make sense. If you discover their helplessness, does that come under “it benefits me” or “the social contract requires me” to help them?
What about the helpless who would normally be discovered by no one in a position to help them, and don’t have their helplessness advertised? Is it a good idea under this formula to go and actively seek them out, or not?
If I discover their helplessness and expect a high enough degree of gratitude, I’ll help for selfish reasons, otherwise move on. For example, I love helping old women on the metro with their heavy bags because they’re always so surprised that someone decided to help them (Moscow’s not a polite city), but I never give money to beggars. For an even more clear-cut example, I will yield my seat to an elderly person unless specifically demanded to.
Actively seeking out people to help might be warranted if the resulting warm fuzzies are high enough.
This kinda bothers me, and I don’t know whether it’s just an emotional, illogical reaction or whether there are some good reasons to be bothered by it. In practice, I would imagine it’s not a bad description of how most people behave most of the time. But if everyone used these criteria all the time, something is telling me the world would not be a better place. I could well be wrong.
ps. I assumed that was supposed to read “I will not yield my seat...”, but I guess it’s possible that it wasn’t supposed to. ?
Nah, it was supposed to read “I will”. Someone who demands that I yield my seat isn’t likely to show gratitude when I comply.
Can’t speak about the whole world, but anyone who’s very prone to manipulating and being manipulated (like I was before) will benefit from adopting this strategy, and everyone around them will benefit too.
I will help a suffering thing if it benefits me to help it, or if the social contract requires me to. Otherwise I will walk away.
I adopted this cruel position after going through one long relationship where I constantly demanded emotional “help” from the girl, then another relationship soon afterwards where the girl constantly demanded similar “help” from me. Both those situations felt so sick that I finally understood: participating in any guilt-trip scenario makes you a worse person, no matter whether you’re tripping or being tripped. And it also makes the world worse off: being openly vulnerable to guilt-tripping encourages more guilt-tripping all around.
So relax and follow your own utility—this will incentivize others to incentivize you to help them, so everyone will treat you well, and you’ll treat them well in advance for the same reason.
People who require help can be divided into those who are capable of helping themselves, and those who are not. Such a position as yours would express the value preference that sacrificing the good of the latter group is better than letting the first group get unpaid rewards—in all cases. For me it’s not that simple, the choice depends on the proportion of the groups, cost to me and society, and just how much good is being sacrificed. To make an extreme example, I would save someone’s life even if this encourages other people to be less careful protecting theirs.
I think it helps to distinguish moral injunctions from statements about human preference. First are the heuristics, while latter are the statements of truth. A “position” is a heuristic, but it isn’t necessarily the right thing to do, in some of the case where it applies. Generalization from personal experience may be useful on average, but doesn’t give knowledge about preference with certainty. When you “follow you own utility”, you are merely following your imperfect understanding of your own utility, and there is always a potential for getting the map closer to reality.
You’re talking about preferences over outcomes and you’re right that they don’t change much. I interpreted Tiiba as asking about preferences over actions (“whose goals you would want to further”), those depend on heuristics.
I don’t understand what you’re saying here...
This differs from what I had hypothesized was the standard model. I think I like my hypothesis of the standard model better than my understanding of your model, so I’ll mention it here, on the off-chance that you might also like it.
I think that most people make (or intuit) the calculation “If it’s not too much trouble, I should help this person one time. If they are appropriately thankful, and if they do not inconvenience me too much, I will consider helping them again; if they reciprocate appropriately, I will probably be friends with them, and engage in a long-term reciprocal relationship.”
In this calculation, ‘appropriately thankful’, ‘inconvenience me too much’, and ‘reciprocate appropriately’ are highly subjective, but this model appears to account for most stable relationships. It also accounts for guilt-trip based relationships being unstable. The “I should help one time” clause may make the world a better place in general, although it is unclear if that’s why most people hold it.
It is possible that when you say “social contract” and I say “reciprocal relationship”, we mean exactly the same thing.
That sounds very… Objectivist of you.
(Not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily.)
Are you saying that “help the helpless” is a bad idea?
If you discovered their helplessness yourself, most likely a good idea; if it was advertised to you, almost certainly a bad idea.
That seems like it could make sense. If you discover their helplessness, does that come under “it benefits me” or “the social contract requires me” to help them?
What about the helpless who would normally be discovered by no one in a position to help them, and don’t have their helplessness advertised? Is it a good idea under this formula to go and actively seek them out, or not?
If I discover their helplessness and expect a high enough degree of gratitude, I’ll help for selfish reasons, otherwise move on. For example, I love helping old women on the metro with their heavy bags because they’re always so surprised that someone decided to help them (Moscow’s not a polite city), but I never give money to beggars. For an even more clear-cut example, I will yield my seat to an elderly person unless specifically demanded to.
Actively seeking out people to help might be warranted if the resulting warm fuzzies are high enough.
This kinda bothers me, and I don’t know whether it’s just an emotional, illogical reaction or whether there are some good reasons to be bothered by it. In practice, I would imagine it’s not a bad description of how most people behave most of the time. But if everyone used these criteria all the time, something is telling me the world would not be a better place. I could well be wrong.
ps. I assumed that was supposed to read “I will not yield my seat...”, but I guess it’s possible that it wasn’t supposed to. ?
Nah, it was supposed to read “I will”. Someone who demands that I yield my seat isn’t likely to show gratitude when I comply.
Can’t speak about the whole world, but anyone who’s very prone to manipulating and being manipulated (like I was before) will benefit from adopting this strategy, and everyone around them will benefit too.
I see. That’s an interesting approach. (Voted up because you’re making me think. Still not at all sure I find it a good one.)