Thank you for the explanation. I was trying to play the devil’s advocate a bit and I didn’t think my comment would be well-received. I’m glad to have gotten a thoughtful reply.
Thinking about it some more, I was not meaning to anthropomorphize evolution, just point out homo-hypocritus. On any particular value of a person’s, we have:
What they tell people about it.
How they act on it.
How they feel about it.
I feel bad about a lot of suffering (mostly that closest to me, of course). However its not clear to me that what I feel is any more “me” than what I do or what I say.
Most everyone (except psychopaths) feels bad about suffering, and tells their friends the same, but they don’t do much about it unless its close to their personal experience. Evolution programmed us to be hypocritical. However in this context its not clear to me why we’d chose to act on our feelings instead of feel like our actions (stop caring about distant non-cute animals), or why we’d chose to stop being hypocritical at all. We have lots of examples throughout history of large groups of people ceasing to care about suffering of certain groups, often due to social pressures. I think the tide can swing both ways here.
So I have trouble seeing how these movements would work without social pressures and appeals to self-interest. I guess there’s already a lot of pro-altruism social pressure on LW?
Edit: as a personal example, I feel more altruistic than I act, and act more altruistic than I let on to others. I do this because I’ve only gotten disutility from being seen as a nice guy, and have refrained from a lot of overt altruism because of this. I think I’d need a change in micro-culture to change my behavior here; appeals to logic aren’t going to sway me.
“Only” was a gross exaggeration. I’m not sure why I typed it.
I think my examples are pretty typical though. Charitable people get lobbied by people who want charity. This occurs with both personal and extended charity. In my case it gets me bugged into spending more time on other people’s technical problems (e.g. open-source software projects) than I’d like.
I haven’t contributed to many charities, but the ones I have seem to have put me on mailing and call lists. I also once contributed to a political candidate for his anti-war stance, and have been rewarded with political spam ever since. I’m not into politics at all so its rather unwelcome.
Most everyone (except psychopaths) feels bad about suffering, and tells their friends the same, but they don’t do much about it unless its close to their personal experience.
I’m not sure how much truth there is in this generalisation. Countless environmental activists, conservationists and humanitarian workers across the globe willingly give their time and energy to causes that have little or nothing to do with satisfying their own local needs or wants. Whilst they may not be in the majority, there are nevertheless a significant minority. I doubt many of them would be happy to be told they are only ‘signalling altruism’ to appear better in the eyes of their peers.
On the other hand, I suppose you could argue the case that such people have X-altruistic personalities and that perhaps that isn’t a desirable quality in terms of creating a hypothetical perfect society.
Thank you for the explanation. I was trying to play the devil’s advocate a bit and I didn’t think my comment would be well-received. I’m glad to have gotten a thoughtful reply.
Thinking about it some more, I was not meaning to anthropomorphize evolution, just point out homo-hypocritus. On any particular value of a person’s, we have:
What they tell people about it.
How they act on it.
How they feel about it.
I feel bad about a lot of suffering (mostly that closest to me, of course). However its not clear to me that what I feel is any more “me” than what I do or what I say.
Most everyone (except psychopaths) feels bad about suffering, and tells their friends the same, but they don’t do much about it unless its close to their personal experience. Evolution programmed us to be hypocritical. However in this context its not clear to me why we’d chose to act on our feelings instead of feel like our actions (stop caring about distant non-cute animals), or why we’d chose to stop being hypocritical at all. We have lots of examples throughout history of large groups of people ceasing to care about suffering of certain groups, often due to social pressures. I think the tide can swing both ways here.
So I have trouble seeing how these movements would work without social pressures and appeals to self-interest. I guess there’s already a lot of pro-altruism social pressure on LW?
Edit: as a personal example, I feel more altruistic than I act, and act more altruistic than I let on to others. I do this because I’ve only gotten disutility from being seen as a nice guy, and have refrained from a lot of overt altruism because of this. I think I’d need a change in micro-culture to change my behavior here; appeals to logic aren’t going to sway me.
Any examples?
“Only” was a gross exaggeration. I’m not sure why I typed it.
I think my examples are pretty typical though. Charitable people get lobbied by people who want charity. This occurs with both personal and extended charity. In my case it gets me bugged into spending more time on other people’s technical problems (e.g. open-source software projects) than I’d like.
I haven’t contributed to many charities, but the ones I have seem to have put me on mailing and call lists. I also once contributed to a political candidate for his anti-war stance, and have been rewarded with political spam ever since. I’m not into politics at all so its rather unwelcome.
I’m not sure how much truth there is in this generalisation. Countless environmental activists, conservationists and humanitarian workers across the globe willingly give their time and energy to causes that have little or nothing to do with satisfying their own local needs or wants. Whilst they may not be in the majority, there are nevertheless a significant minority. I doubt many of them would be happy to be told they are only ‘signalling altruism’ to appear better in the eyes of their peers.
On the other hand, I suppose you could argue the case that such people have X-altruistic personalities and that perhaps that isn’t a desirable quality in terms of creating a hypothetical perfect society.