Altruism is truly selfless, and it’s good.
Altruism is truly selfless, and it’s bad.
Altruism is enlightened self-interest, which is good.
Altruism is disguised/corrupted/decadent self-interest, which is bad.
To illustrate further, though at the risk of oversimplifying…
One exponent of option #1 would be Auguste Comte who thought that living for others was the foundation of true morality and of the best society.[1]
An exponent of option #2 would be Ayn Rand, who thought that altruism was indeed a doctrine of selflessness, but that this was the antithesis of true morality, and a threat to people.[2]
An exponent of option #3 would be Pierre Cérésole, who felt that altruism is what results when you refine your self-interest successfully and rid it of its mistakes.[3]
An exponent of option #4 would be Nietzsche, who thought altruism was a corrupted and decadent form of selfishness, and that we would be better off if we could be more forthrightly self-interested.[4]
Knowing LessWrong, probably everyone who answers is going to choose some nuanced and galaxy-brained option #5 instead, but I thought I’d ask anyway.
- ^
Auguste Comte “General Theory of Religion” The Catechism of Positive Religion (also e.g. “Social Physics”)
- ^
Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness (also e.g. “Galt’s Speech” For the New Intellectual; “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World” Philosophy: Who Needs It)
FWIW, in “Justice, Cherryl.” @Zack_M_Davis suggests that Rand is really closer to the position I attribute to Nietzsche.
- ^
Pierre Cérésole For Peace and Truth
- ^
Friedrich Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil, The Twilight of the Idols, etc.
All of these and more? I think it’s a trap to make absolute statements about things like altruism. I think that there are good people that give for good reasons, and good people that give for questionable reasons. Helping others seems to generally be positive, but there are limits. Some people give to manipulate others. True selfless is an impossibility, and therefore toothless boogieman.
Altruism is complicated. In order to really judge the nature of altruism, we would have to be able to attribute an outcome based on an action, in light of all alternatives. That’s currently impossible, but we can look for trends, and develop models around them.
We’d also have to truly understand the complex nature of intention, and that’s practically impossible to do for one’s self, let alone orders. Rarely is there a singular reason for anyone to do anything. Even if you go with just the most likely reason, you’re losing data.
It’s totally fine to look at it from the lenses you describe (and more!), but it’s important to remember that these lenses only show you a part of a very complicated whole. Moreover, many of the distinctions between them are disagreements of definitions.
My personal take is that altruism is generally a virtue, but not an obligation. It’s hard to know the line between helping unhealthily enabling, but it does have to be taken into consideration. It is important to remember that not all altruists are virtuous. In the absence of proof, be kind.
I don’t think any one option is precise enough that it’s correct on its own, so I will have to say “5” as well.
Here’s my take:
Altruism can be a result of both good and bad mental states.
Helping others tends to be good for them, at least temporarily.
Helping people can prevent them from helping themselves, and from growing.
Helping something exist which wouldn’t exist without your help is to get in the way of natural selection, which over time can result in many groups who are a net negative for society in that they require more than they provide. They might also remain dependent on others.
Finally, (and I expect some people to disagree with this) I think that moral good is a luxury. Luxuries are pleasant, but expensive, so when you engage in more luxury than you can afford, it stops being sustainable. And putting luxuries above necessities seem to me a good definition of decadence.
Everything has dose-dependent and context-dependent pros and cons.
I think you’re expecting too much of the word “good”. I don’t think any “good” exists such that more of it is always better, so I think “good” is a region of space rather than a direction. If optimization is gradient descent, then the “good” direction might change with every step you take. But if optimization means “what metric should we optimize for?” then we don’t know (we have yet to find a single metric which an AGI could maximize without destroying humanity. Heading too far in any direction seems dangerous). So I think many peoples intuition of the word “good” can prevent them from ever hitting a satisfactory answer (as they’re actually searching for something which can be taken to infinity without anything bad happening as a result, and not even considering the context in question)
Sometimes altruism is truly selfless (if we don’t use too broad tautological definition of self-interest).
Sometimes altruism is actually an enlightened/disguised/corrupted/decadent self-interest.
I feel like there is some sense in which first kind is better then second, but can we have more of whatever kind, please?
Some combination of 1 and 3 (selfless/good and enlightened/good).
When we say “good” or “bad”, we need to specify for whom.
Clearly (to me) our propensity for altruism evolved partly because it’s good for the societies that have it, even if it’s not always good for the individuals who behave altruistically.
Like most things, humans don’t calculate this stuff rationally—we think with our emotions (sorry, Ayn Rand). Rational calculation is the exception.
And our emotions reflect a heuristic—be altruistic when it’s not too expensive. And esp. so when the recipients are part of our family/tribe/society (which is a proxy for genetic relatedness; cf Robert Trivers).