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The main issue with that stance is that a lot of human suffering happens because others claim it is "out of their control" to do anything. Dividing things into

The main issue with that stance is that a lot of human suffering happens because others claim it is "out of their control" to do anything. Dividing things into the two buckets "in my control" and "out if my control" allows a lot of leeway for us to excuse selfish behavior. I think it's prudent to make it out business to get control over and fix things that are actively causing harm. Or as Raymond Chen might say, "Be somebody": https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110118-00/?p=11733/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110118-00/?p=...

roenxi 9y ago
From a super-simple perspective, a community that grows exponentially _will_ eventually have very few resources per head. If, as a starting point, someone believes the population is growing exponentially then they likely also believe it doesn't matter if they try to be selfish or not. There will be a lot of people with limited resources and that is probably going to reduce their quality of life. Now there are a lot of issues with this view and the actual reality might favour anything, but I don't think the average selfish or selfless person has thought about them. So I'm pretty happy to excuse both until I see arguments with more facts than 'I think' or implicit 'selfishness is bad it sounds unfriendly'.
- xelxebar 9y ago
  > So I'm pretty happy to excuse [selfishness] until I see arguments with more facts than 'I think' or implicit 'selfishness is bad it sounds unfriendly'. This is a really good point. To remove the moral overtones, I like to think of selfishness as local vs global optimization. The prisoner's dilemma is a great (abstract) example where "locally optimal" or "selfish" behaviour creates a situation where everyone is individually worse off than they need to be. In the real world, this kind of situation is especially visible in urban planning and traffic control. Things like lane widening or adding a new road can famously worsen traffic congestion. Lane mergers is another. The "zipper merge" is known to produce shorter queues and fewer accidents, but individuals have motive to "cheat" and merge earlier in these cases, which ends up causing worse traffic for everyone. Personally, I find this game theoretic view point of "selfishness" to generate more precise and relevant questions than the more morally-tinted stances. Maybe that kind of thing is up your alley.
deleted 9y ago
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philipov 9y ago
> I think it's prudent to make it out business to get control over and fix things that are actively causing harm. And I am confident I could do that more effectively as an ageless vampire overlord. The main weakness of a benevolent dictatorship has always been the succession.

roenxi 9y ago

From a super-simple perspective, a community that grows exponentially _will_ eventually have very few resources per head. If, as a starting point, someone believes the population is growing exponentially then they likely also believe it doesn't matter if they try to be selfish or not. There will be a lot of people with limited resources and that is probably going to reduce their quality of life. Now there are a lot of issues with this view and the actual reality might favour anything, but I don't think the average selfish or selfless person has thought about them. So I'm pretty happy to excuse both until I see arguments with more facts than 'I think' or implicit 'selfishness is bad it sounds unfriendly'.

xelxebar 9y ago
> So I'm pretty happy to excuse [selfishness] until I see arguments with more facts than 'I think' or implicit 'selfishness is bad it sounds unfriendly'. This is a really good point. To remove the moral overtones, I like to think of selfishness as local vs global optimization. The prisoner's dilemma is a great (abstract) example where "locally optimal" or "selfish" behaviour creates a situation where everyone is individually worse off than they need to be. In the real world, this kind of situation is especially visible in urban planning and traffic control. Things like lane widening or adding a new road can famously worsen traffic congestion. Lane mergers is another. The "zipper merge" is known to produce shorter queues and fewer accidents, but individuals have motive to "cheat" and merge earlier in these cases, which ends up causing worse traffic for everyone. Personally, I find this game theoretic view point of "selfishness" to generate more precise and relevant questions than the more morally-tinted stances. Maybe that kind of thing is up your alley.

deleted 9y ago

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philipov 9y ago

> I think it's prudent to make it out business to get control over and fix things that are actively causing harm. And I am confident I could do that more effectively as an ageless vampire overlord. The main weakness of a benevolent dictatorship has always been the succession.