You claimed I was “pretending to be surprised”—while what I was actually doing was asking questions. Your interpretation seems to presume dubious motives :-|
Not dubious at all. I assumed you purpose was rhetorical. By feigning incomprehension of something carrying a stench of irrationality, you signal that you are pure in your rationalism. Surely you don’t believe that there is something dubious about signaling.
The other thing to say about this is: I don’t think helping strangers, or explaining to others how to help strangers—without any thought to what it might signal—is at all irrational.
I understand perfectly well, that for people with certain kinds of utilitarian goal systems, this kind of thing all makes perfect sense—and is absolutely the rational thing to do.
It is pretty strange that any such utilitarian people exist in the first place—but if we accept that axiomatically, things like the discussion on this thread follow—without any need for invoking irrationality.
It is more that I don’t think I was pretending at all. I did ask questions—but that doesn’t mean I was surprised by existence of an audience for the presentation.
I have some hypotheses about that (some of which I listed) - but I am not so certain of their relative merit that I don’t welcome input from others on the topic. Some of those involved clearly have quite a different perspective from me, and I am curious about what they think is happening.
Not dubious at all. I assumed you purpose was rhetorical. By feigning incomprehension of something carrying a stench of irrationality, you signal that you are pure in your rationalism. Surely you don’t believe that there is something dubious about signaling.
The other thing to say about this is: I don’t think helping strangers, or explaining to others how to help strangers—without any thought to what it might signal—is at all irrational.
I understand perfectly well, that for people with certain kinds of utilitarian goal systems, this kind of thing all makes perfect sense—and is absolutely the rational thing to do.
It is pretty strange that any such utilitarian people exist in the first place—but if we accept that axiomatically, things like the discussion on this thread follow—without any need for invoking irrationality.
It is more that I don’t think I was pretending at all. I did ask questions—but that doesn’t mean I was surprised by existence of an audience for the presentation.
I have some hypotheses about that (some of which I listed) - but I am not so certain of their relative merit that I don’t welcome input from others on the topic. Some of those involved clearly have quite a different perspective from me, and I am curious about what they think is happening.