I'm not sure what makes so many people positively aroused by the idea of selflessness. Even Christ (Julius by another name) had his motives. I once heard the online activity of free problem solving described as "random acts of kindness." At the time, I was in my living room and fully immersed in multirecreational activities involving a bottle of jack and some musky smelling stuff I can't remember the name of and was thus a likely target to be struck by what a beautiful and apt description this was, but not because it meant that people are on the internet selflessly helping others answer questions, think through problems, etc.. I recall instead thinking that the very condition that most, if not all, neurotypical humans share in their desire (biological programming by a different name? We may never know...) to help others because it makes them feel good to do so - and so they are getting something out of it - is quite worthy of admiration all by itself. Sticking to the example of helpful online actors, it's easy to see how often times "thank you" isn't even necessarily the exchange medium for acts of "true altruism" as you describe it here. Sometimes the urge to grapple with a problem when there's a possibility of coming out in mount is enough benefit to produce a sense of reciprocity and sustain behaviors that consequently help others, even if the reward is some internal metric unseen from the outside. On the surface, this may look a bit like a selfless act, but upon closer inspection it's easy to see the positive inclination toward being useful that each of us has - and determining whether this exists as a design feature or a bug is probably a less enjoyable pursuit than simply appreciating its precious existence for what it is. Take it from me - that night I mentioned above? It was super fun.
I agree with your ideas here, aligning your motivations with your values will help produce good outcomes and probably produce fewer hypocrites. If there could be widespread cultural acceptance of the idea that getting something (money, praise, whatever isn't outright stolen) in exchange for doing something helpful is a positive behavioral driver in the pursuit of a more harmonious existence on this planet, it might be easier to express that this is often directly tied to a person's sense of worth and meaning in life. Why that's a pesky idea that needs squashing in the eyes of some EA supporters, I'm not entirely sure. I might start trying to answer that by addressing the guilt that might come from being out of tune with your motivations and the internal disharmony that naturally follows from such a situation. Nice post.
Excellent point on "thank yous" as true altruism currency. There are a lot of instances where you won't get a thank you, even if you did help. To give you a personal example sometimes I'll run into patients randomly and they'll give me a hearty "thank you", but I only receive that kind of feedback based on random chance. I use it as an indication that I'm aligned appropriately if I'm at least hearing it sometimes. That is what I'm trying to say, essentially that if you're improving the well-being of others, you're going to hear that on occasion. If you never hear it, you're probably not effective. What troubles me with EA is that I imagine the "thank yous" they get are from NGOs and other institutional actors telling them what a great job they're doing, perhaps counting up the lives saved etc. while potentially never getting feedback from any of these individuals that was "saved." This is scary because without that feedback from the target of your intervention there could be very dark things happening on the ground. I saw a video of a cobbler in a small town somewhere in Africa who had his livelihood destroyed by people donating massive quantities of shoes to his community. What is that cobbler's livelihood worth? As soon as big money starts moving around, it attracts the attention of the worst kinds of people like flies to shit. In this case, big money is probably going to Nike, or some other multinational corporation that works people in sweatshops to build low quality shoes that will fall apart very quickly in an austere environment and the reliable cobbler and his family are on the street unable to get by. This is the kind of thing that will happen if you're not making sure you're getting "thank yous" from the target. When you're at a large scale, even this might be deceptive, as the people who's lives you destroy in the balance might not know how to get you a letter.
The example of the presumably unintended consequences that resulted from the free shoe giveaway that Tom's Shoes instigated abroad is a good one and makes me wonder if the wish to be seen by oneself and others as a selfless do-gooder remains strong in people after they cause more headaches than they solve for some individuals. "We may have put one man and his associates out of work, but look how many others now have shoes, albeit unattractive ones. We are still good people. We did the right thing and that man's livelihood was an unfortunate casualty of the goodness we provided to so many others."
Reminds me a bit of "ends justify the means thinking" - the sort that never accounts for second or third order effects.
Perhaps Effective Narcissism is a more apt term that could be substituted for EA...
The observation that narcissism plays an important role is an astute one that I'd have missed had you not brought it up. The thing about narcissism that is difficult for a lot of people to appreciate is that everyone has some, and that it is normal and healthy. In the context of EA, it is not healthy. Why am I so sure? Related to the points I am trying to make it is because EA supports a pathological degree of narcissism where these feelings are able to exist without evidence. Is it good to be satisfied by helping others? Of course it is. The fact that human beings draw contentment and satisfaction from making meaningful positive impacts in the lives of others is probably the foundation of all of my faith in our species. This is perhaps exactly why I'm so disgusted by EA, because it encourages people innately motivated to seek this narcissistic supply without actually making a meaningful difference, and this ties directly in with what makes garden variety narcissism that we all have into narcissistic personality disorder, a condition where narcissistic beliefs are permitted to exist with a total lack of evidence that they are justified.
Most of the people I have encountered who talked about selflessly helping others might more accurately be described as on the "spectrum of sociopathy."
Yes, it does smack of sociopathy if only because it comes across as an attempt to compensate for something (like an inability to experience empathy organically perhaps?). This particular kind of thing grinds my gears if only because virtue signalling about "selflessly" helping others is an obviously self-interested behavior. I can't think of a faster way for anyone to communicate that they're full of shit.
Conspicuous among the EA crowd is their altruism only seems to extend to people they never actually have to associate with, while they might not visit their own mother in a nursing home.
Great post, with points well made. I think a useful framing or "unit of accountancy", is Prof. Andrew Huberman's idea that dopamine is the single basic currency for humans. Doing something which isn't rewarding is very hard for humans, especially if the habenula part of the brain gets activated ( https://garysharpe.substack.com/p/the-role-of-disappointment-in-chronic ), which literally freezes us out of an unrewarding action. So I agree that unrewarding altruism is necessarily very rare. This also ties in with why random thankyous are worth a lot more than predictable thankyous - random rewards are what Sapowsky calls the dopamine jackpot.
Thank you for sharing this. In this context, I just had what I feel like is an interesting thought. Neuroscience helps us explain the mechanisms that we can infer exist from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. McConkey would call them perceptual, cognitive, and behavioral mechanisms (PCBM) traits. Perhaps understanding the mechanisms can allow us to more effectively align our behaviors. At the very least, it helps us understand more about our nature and the constraints that are placed upon us by biological reality. My wife just went outside and looked towards the sun this very morning for the first time on the advice of Dr. Huberman, influential dude!
Yes, there was an excellent podcast with Jordan Peterson and Andrew Huberman just this week - drawing the parallels with psychology and neuroscience. With your interest in human performance I think you will love it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-mJEZbHFLs - have a notebook handy as there are some many pragmatic points. Yes, his protocols work - help me fixed my sleep problems, and that going outside and getting light in the eyes in the morning has helped everyone I know who does it!
I'm not sure what makes so many people positively aroused by the idea of selflessness. Even Christ (Julius by another name) had his motives. I once heard the online activity of free problem solving described as "random acts of kindness." At the time, I was in my living room and fully immersed in multirecreational activities involving a bottle of jack and some musky smelling stuff I can't remember the name of and was thus a likely target to be struck by what a beautiful and apt description this was, but not because it meant that people are on the internet selflessly helping others answer questions, think through problems, etc.. I recall instead thinking that the very condition that most, if not all, neurotypical humans share in their desire (biological programming by a different name? We may never know...) to help others because it makes them feel good to do so - and so they are getting something out of it - is quite worthy of admiration all by itself. Sticking to the example of helpful online actors, it's easy to see how often times "thank you" isn't even necessarily the exchange medium for acts of "true altruism" as you describe it here. Sometimes the urge to grapple with a problem when there's a possibility of coming out in mount is enough benefit to produce a sense of reciprocity and sustain behaviors that consequently help others, even if the reward is some internal metric unseen from the outside. On the surface, this may look a bit like a selfless act, but upon closer inspection it's easy to see the positive inclination toward being useful that each of us has - and determining whether this exists as a design feature or a bug is probably a less enjoyable pursuit than simply appreciating its precious existence for what it is. Take it from me - that night I mentioned above? It was super fun.
I agree with your ideas here, aligning your motivations with your values will help produce good outcomes and probably produce fewer hypocrites. If there could be widespread cultural acceptance of the idea that getting something (money, praise, whatever isn't outright stolen) in exchange for doing something helpful is a positive behavioral driver in the pursuit of a more harmonious existence on this planet, it might be easier to express that this is often directly tied to a person's sense of worth and meaning in life. Why that's a pesky idea that needs squashing in the eyes of some EA supporters, I'm not entirely sure. I might start trying to answer that by addressing the guilt that might come from being out of tune with your motivations and the internal disharmony that naturally follows from such a situation. Nice post.
Excellent point on "thank yous" as true altruism currency. There are a lot of instances where you won't get a thank you, even if you did help. To give you a personal example sometimes I'll run into patients randomly and they'll give me a hearty "thank you", but I only receive that kind of feedback based on random chance. I use it as an indication that I'm aligned appropriately if I'm at least hearing it sometimes. That is what I'm trying to say, essentially that if you're improving the well-being of others, you're going to hear that on occasion. If you never hear it, you're probably not effective. What troubles me with EA is that I imagine the "thank yous" they get are from NGOs and other institutional actors telling them what a great job they're doing, perhaps counting up the lives saved etc. while potentially never getting feedback from any of these individuals that was "saved." This is scary because without that feedback from the target of your intervention there could be very dark things happening on the ground. I saw a video of a cobbler in a small town somewhere in Africa who had his livelihood destroyed by people donating massive quantities of shoes to his community. What is that cobbler's livelihood worth? As soon as big money starts moving around, it attracts the attention of the worst kinds of people like flies to shit. In this case, big money is probably going to Nike, or some other multinational corporation that works people in sweatshops to build low quality shoes that will fall apart very quickly in an austere environment and the reliable cobbler and his family are on the street unable to get by. This is the kind of thing that will happen if you're not making sure you're getting "thank yous" from the target. When you're at a large scale, even this might be deceptive, as the people who's lives you destroy in the balance might not know how to get you a letter.
The example of the presumably unintended consequences that resulted from the free shoe giveaway that Tom's Shoes instigated abroad is a good one and makes me wonder if the wish to be seen by oneself and others as a selfless do-gooder remains strong in people after they cause more headaches than they solve for some individuals. "We may have put one man and his associates out of work, but look how many others now have shoes, albeit unattractive ones. We are still good people. We did the right thing and that man's livelihood was an unfortunate casualty of the goodness we provided to so many others."
Reminds me a bit of "ends justify the means thinking" - the sort that never accounts for second or third order effects.
Perhaps Effective Narcissism is a more apt term that could be substituted for EA...
The observation that narcissism plays an important role is an astute one that I'd have missed had you not brought it up. The thing about narcissism that is difficult for a lot of people to appreciate is that everyone has some, and that it is normal and healthy. In the context of EA, it is not healthy. Why am I so sure? Related to the points I am trying to make it is because EA supports a pathological degree of narcissism where these feelings are able to exist without evidence. Is it good to be satisfied by helping others? Of course it is. The fact that human beings draw contentment and satisfaction from making meaningful positive impacts in the lives of others is probably the foundation of all of my faith in our species. This is perhaps exactly why I'm so disgusted by EA, because it encourages people innately motivated to seek this narcissistic supply without actually making a meaningful difference, and this ties directly in with what makes garden variety narcissism that we all have into narcissistic personality disorder, a condition where narcissistic beliefs are permitted to exist with a total lack of evidence that they are justified.
Most of the people I have encountered who talked about selflessly helping others might more accurately be described as on the "spectrum of sociopathy."
Yes, it does smack of sociopathy if only because it comes across as an attempt to compensate for something (like an inability to experience empathy organically perhaps?). This particular kind of thing grinds my gears if only because virtue signalling about "selflessly" helping others is an obviously self-interested behavior. I can't think of a faster way for anyone to communicate that they're full of shit.
Conspicuous among the EA crowd is their altruism only seems to extend to people they never actually have to associate with, while they might not visit their own mother in a nursing home.
"The more voluntary, the more “aligned” with true altruism"
This.
Anybody wishing to be altruistic should be working towards as voluntary a society as possible.
-=-
Covid 19 vaccine damage repair protocols:
https://davenarby.substack.com/p/covid-19-vaccine-damage-repair-protocol
Great post, with points well made. I think a useful framing or "unit of accountancy", is Prof. Andrew Huberman's idea that dopamine is the single basic currency for humans. Doing something which isn't rewarding is very hard for humans, especially if the habenula part of the brain gets activated ( https://garysharpe.substack.com/p/the-role-of-disappointment-in-chronic ), which literally freezes us out of an unrewarding action. So I agree that unrewarding altruism is necessarily very rare. This also ties in with why random thankyous are worth a lot more than predictable thankyous - random rewards are what Sapowsky calls the dopamine jackpot.
Thank you for sharing this. In this context, I just had what I feel like is an interesting thought. Neuroscience helps us explain the mechanisms that we can infer exist from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. McConkey would call them perceptual, cognitive, and behavioral mechanisms (PCBM) traits. Perhaps understanding the mechanisms can allow us to more effectively align our behaviors. At the very least, it helps us understand more about our nature and the constraints that are placed upon us by biological reality. My wife just went outside and looked towards the sun this very morning for the first time on the advice of Dr. Huberman, influential dude!
Yes, there was an excellent podcast with Jordan Peterson and Andrew Huberman just this week - drawing the parallels with psychology and neuroscience. With your interest in human performance I think you will love it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-mJEZbHFLs - have a notebook handy as there are some many pragmatic points. Yes, his protocols work - help me fixed my sleep problems, and that going outside and getting light in the eyes in the morning has helped everyone I know who does it!