Ultimately, this might not be a “more true” reason than “what I have been selected for”, but it does appeal to me more than anything else.
Experience and observation of others has taught me that when one tries to derive a normative code of behavior from the top-down, they often end up with something that is in subtle ways incompatible with selfish drives. They will therefore be tempted to cheat on their high-minded morals, and react to this cognitive dissonance either by coming up with reasons why it’s not really cheating or working ever harder to suppress their temptations.
I’ve been down the egalitarian altruist route, it came crashing down (several times) until I finally learned to admit that I’m a bastard. Now instead of agonizing whether my right to FOO outweighs Bob’s right to BAR, I have the simpler problem of optimizing my long-term FOO and trusting Bob to optimize his own BAR.
I still cheat, but I don’t waste time on moral posturing. I try to treat it as a sign that perhaps I still don’t fully understand my own utility function. Imagine how far off the mark I’d be if I was simultaneously trying to optimize Bob’s!
Experience and observation of others has taught me that when one tries to derive a normative code of behavior from the top-down, they often end up with something that is in subtle ways incompatible with selfish drives. They will therefore be tempted to cheat on their high-minded morals, and react to this cognitive dissonance either by coming up with reasons why it’s not really cheating or working ever harder to suppress their temptations.
I’ve been down the egalitarian altruist route, it came crashing down (several times) until I finally learned to admit that I’m a bastard. Now instead of agonizing whether my right to FOO outweighs Bob’s right to BAR, I have the simpler problem of optimizing my long-term FOO and trusting Bob to optimize his own BAR.
I still cheat, but I don’t waste time on moral posturing. I try to treat it as a sign that perhaps I still don’t fully understand my own utility function. Imagine how far off the mark I’d be if I was simultaneously trying to optimize Bob’s!