5 ms·

Altruism Isn’t Always Attractive

70 points by EndXA 7y ago

EndXA 7y ago
The main study which prompted this article is available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103117308181 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210311... Abstract: > Previous work has demonstrated that people are more likely to trust “deontological” agents who reject harming one person to save many others than “consequentialist” agents who endorse such instrumental harms, which could explain the higher prevalence of non-consequentialist moral intuitions. Yet consequentialism involves endorsing not just instrumental harm, but also impartial beneficence, treating the well-being of every individual as equally important. In four studies (total N = 2086), we investigated preferences for consequentialist vs. non-consequentialist social partners endorsing instrumental harm or impartial beneficence and examined how such preferences varied across different types of social relationships. Our results demonstrate robust preferences for non-consequentialist over consequentialist agents in the domain of instrumental harm, and weaker – but still evident – preferences in the domain of impartial beneficence. In the domain of instrumental harm, non-consequentialist agents were consistently viewed as more moral and trustworthy, preferred for a range of social roles, and entrusted with more money in economic exchanges. In the domain of impartial beneficence, preferences for non-consequentialist agents were observed for close interpersonal relationships requiring direct interaction (friend, spouse) but not for more distant roles with little-to-no personal interaction (political leader). Collectively our findings demonstrate that preferences for non-consequentialist agents are sensitive to the different dimensions of consequentialist thinking and the relational context.
- CSSer 7y ago
  For those who have studied Philosophical Ethics in High School or Undergrad, you'll probably be familiar with the term "deontological" (lit. 'derived from god') but are perhaps not used to the term "consequentialist" or "consequentialism". Per the study, "consequentialism" is Utilitarianism, which may be more familiar to you. > "...said to be making a “consequentialist” (or “utilitarian”) judgment in line with consequentialist ethical theories (Bentham, 1789/1983; Mill, 1863)."
  - jfengel 7y ago
    Strictly, there are other forms of consequentialism besides utilitarianism, though utilitarianism is perhaps the most familiar. Consequentialism means (duh) judging your morality based on the consequences of your actions. Utilitarianism means making that judgment in terms of some quantifiable "utility" or "value". But there are other ways to make that judgment, including applying intuition or even applying some kind of deontological deity-given rules. The utilitarian framework is so broad that it can be extended to cover all of this, and to cover deontology for that matter ("utility is defined as following the rules of X ethical framework").
    - Throw_Away_6389 7y ago
      >The utilitarian framework is so broad that it can be extended to cover all of this, and to cover deontology for that matter ("utility is defined as following the rules of X ethical framework"). But for it to be utilitarianism you have to apply this universally. So making someone follow the ethical framework is just as good as following it yourself (something deontologists generally disagree with). The utilitarian calculus had to give actions that make other people follow the ethical framework a negative utility in such a way that you will always come out only following the ethical framework for yourself.
    - gowld 7y ago
      For example, a deontological ethic might say "you must not drive drunk" under a theory of negligence, and "you must not negotiate with terrorists", but a consequentialist ethic might say "you may drive drunk but not kill someone while driving" and "you should acquiesce to terroristic threats to prevent a murder". And a utilitarian ethic would measure how many lives would be lost under each choice, and perhaps assign variable value to those lives (by age or health or potential future productive output)
  - al_form2000 7y ago
    Hate to nitpick, but 'deont' in deontology does not come from the (latin) root "deus', rather from the Greek root 'deont' - that which pertains to duty.
- k__ 7y ago
  TL;DR People like you if you wouldn't sacrifice them for the benefit of the group.
  - ken 7y ago
    I see a lot more subtlety here than that. This is already a pop summary of work published in the "Journal of Experimental Social Psychology". Do we need to reduce every piece of information to a 10-word summary?
    - k__ 7y ago
      It is. They also say you like people more who spend their time and money on you and not on some strangers who need those resources more than you. Anyway, I just wrote this "summary" because I had the impression the diction was a bit heavy for mere mortals :)
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  No mention of culture in the article, and apparently the Mechanical Turk population isn't actually that large[0], seems like this is likely to be a pretty WEIRD[1] result. The WEIRD paper actually references evidence that altruistic behaviour is punished in some cultures (Figure 4), so to do a study of something similar without a good handle on the cultural background of the participants seems pretty trash. The do have the nicest open science solution I've ever seen though, with very pretty Rweave (or some other notebook) renderings easily available: https://osf.io/xecdt/ https://osf.io/xecdt/ [0]: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/psychologists-grow-increasingly-dependent-online-research-subjects https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/psychologists-grow-i... [1]: https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/WeirdPeople.pdf https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/WeirdPeople.pdf
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - TheOperator 7y ago
    This is a huge asterisk. It's hard to generalize the moral leanings of the entire population from mechanical turk. This study really only applies to a specific population of people.
- frank0631 7y ago
  Does anyone else watch The Good Place? I really like The Good Place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c-AawAKZ14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c-AawAKZ14
wongarsu 7y ago
There was some interesting discussion on reddit about this https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/cx7me3/morality_study_we_admire_dogooders_we_just_dont/ https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/cx7me3/morality...
reportgunner 7y ago
I haven't read the article yet, but what is this title? I thought that one of the characteristics of altruism is that it's not attractive. Definition of altruism: >unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others charitable acts motivated purely by altruism >behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species edit after skimming the article: Perhaps they meant to say "Altruists are not always attractive"
- deleted 7y ago
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- kazinator 7y ago
  I feel you're splitting some sort of grammatical and/or semantic hair there. Like, for instance, what is the difference between "obesity is unattractive" and "the fat are unnatractive", really. In "altruism is unattractive", it looks like there is a rhetorical device being used known as metonymy: referring to a subject indirectly by naming an attribute or adjunct of that subject in its place; it in fact means "altruists are unattractive".
ranie93 7y ago
A related piece from Jeremy Waldron on the topic of "moral distance": "The parable of the Good Samaritan, as it has become known, is cited most often by moral philosophers to open a debate about the duty to rescue [...] We all agree that it was wrong for the thieves to attack the man, and that it would be equally wrong for the Samaritan, the priest, or the Levite to join in such an attack. The hard question is: do the Samaritan, the priest, or the Levite also have an obligation to help the man who fell among thieves?" https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/menonfall16/files/2016/08/Jeremy-Waldron-Who-is-My-Neighbor.pdf https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/menonfall16/files/2016...
- gowld 7y ago
  How is that Waldron's commentary and not the original parable?
tarkin2 7y ago
People look for mates who will care for them. If you value the group over the individual then that's less likely. The ideal, surely, is someone who looks after themselves, their partner and their friends foremost and the group after that. When those two things come into conflict, however...
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  Exactly. I know altruists who don't take care of themselves but instead need help from others. They are sort of generous but I always wonder if they are really generous if in turn their lifestyle is not self sufficient. For example if somebody helped somebody else with a big vet bill but now I am being asked to buy a car for that person I feel that actually I am the real giver and the person that thinks she is generous is not giving anything of her own but basically is giving away my money. I have come to believe that the first duty of an adult is to be self sufficient. Only then you can be truly generous or altruistic in a sustainable way.
  - TheOperator 7y ago
    I've been taking money from government, family, or wealthy friends most of my life. Yet I've also given more than I've received to most of the friends I've known. I've thought much about how selfish or generous I was. You can get really cynical and say that altruism doesn't exist at all if you really get cynical and that people are just trying to fire off pleasure receptors in their brains. Ultimately though yes people who give to others are altruistic. Some people you will give money to will keep every penny, some will give away every cent they can. The former are selfish the latter altruistic and there is no need to overcomplicate things. I've only become more self-sufficient over time and today am a net "giver". Did I just become less selfish over time? No I've actually started valuing selfishness MORE over time because it became more appealing as I became stronger. Focusing on results confuses things because people in bad situations CAN'T be as giving as somebody in a good one. Somebody in a good situation can be generous enough to change people's lives without any meaningful personal sacrifice. A person who is a taker and has no desire to stop being one is not truly altruistic though. Selfishly taking from others and being performatively charitable is selfishness in the veil of altruism. The desire to be seen as the "real giver" is also selfish.
whatshisface 7y ago
Deontological agents are the most predictable because they can tell you their moral rules, and if they aren't too complicated, you can "compute" them yourself if you're wondering what they are about to do. Consequentialists aren't predictable unless you know them so well that you can forecast all of their utility calculations, value judgements, and mistakes. Being able to predict someone's behaviors makes them a lot more trustworthy.
- dlkf 7y ago
  Nailed it. I'd go so far as to suggest that mere reliability - and not deontological ethics - is probably where all the effect is coming from. In the article's example, the problem with the anti-hawaii-trip partner is not that they care about victims of malaria, it's that they seem to be reneging on an agreement.
neilv 7y ago
Update to het. male dating best practices: Be tall, confident, and deontological.
- cookieswumchorr 7y ago
  if you tell girls that you are deontological they will think you have money, because, you know, those dentists are expensive
  - sebastianconcpt 7y ago
    Hypergamy don't care about definitions but says that she liked what you suggested there.
- neilv 7y ago
  It seemed all these attraction priorities are mostly vestigial.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
kstenerud 7y ago
It comes down to trust. You trust those who are in your group, and whom you believe will consistently act in the interests of your group. Consequentialists are distrusted because they deliberately choose to disregard social group weighting and circles of loyalty in their moral decisions. That's not to say that all consequentialist actions are disliked; only those that come at significant cost to your group (of any size - even 2). The article says that people like a consequentialist political leader, but that's not entirely correct. They like a political leader who is consequentialist for entirely "in-group" decisions. The moment he prioritizes outside peoples welfare at a high cost to his own, no matter how much objective "good" it brings, he'll soon find himself out of office. A leader who is too deontologist with his in-group decisions will be seen as corrupt for helping out his cronies. In fact, this whole "consequentialist vs deontologist" kind of misses the point. Deontologists ARE consequentialists for entirely in-group decisions, and that's how social creatures like it, and how evolution would have shaped social animals. Trump's appeal comes in a large part due to his motto: "America First", even if it's at the cost of everything else.
- Throw_Away_6389 7y ago
  Also note how the label "do-gooder" is particularly often applied to people who care too much about foreigners or animals, but rarely to people who care too much about their friends.
JulianMorrison 7y ago
They are probably not a utilitarian. They are probably suffering distorted deontology of an anti-self sort. Pure consequentialism is computationally implausible. There are seven and a half billion humans. How can you consider them equally? How could you even have enough knowledge to try? I think that people who try to be consequentialist are emulating it and generally poorly.
- Throw_Away_6389 7y ago
  You can't know exactly what is best, but you can act to the best of your knowledge. Just because you can't do something perfectly doesn't mean you shouldn't do it as well as possible.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    The fun stuff happens when deontologist meets conflict between their moral or other laws... It always happens and is a fact of life. That's how you can gauge how "lawful" someone is - using simple D&D model of morality. The other axis is altruism vs egoism. So lawful good is deontological altruist, while chaotic evil is non-deontological egoist. There are decent stereotypical descriptions in SRD. https://open5e.com/characters/background.html https://open5e.com/characters/background.html
newintellectual 7y ago
A roundabout way of saying that altruism - self-sacrifice - is always very ugly.
caymanjim 7y ago
Altruism is almost always false. It's usually selfish. People do things which are, on the surface, selfless and benevolent. But they do them because it makes them feel better in some way, or to assuage guilt, due to peer pressure, or increasingly due to pathological virtue signalling. It's not necessarily bad when someone does something "altruistic" for these reasons, but the people who are the most visible and vocal about it are the ones who are the least honest about it. They are gaining (or at least think they are gaining) the most social credit, and they expect the most reciprocation. If you do something "kind" but expect or demand recognition, you're not altruistic; you're just taking your payment in other ways. This manifests in myriad ways we've all seen: church bake sale tyrants, celebrity cause-o-holics, corporate misdirectors, activism tourists, etc. It's only altruism if it costs you something and you gain nothing in return. Even if you quietly and anonymously help others, but in turn sleep better at night and feel beatific, you're gaining something. If you think it'll get you into heaven or some other incorporeal reward, you're being selfish. In almost all cases, this is a good thing, but true altruism doesn't exist.
- deleted 7y ago
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- deleted 7y ago
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michalu 7y ago
Nothing that new. It's been established the attraction is rather heavily linked to the dark triad traits: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychology-uncovers-sex-appeal-dark-personalities/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychology-uncove... ... one of them being narcissism and the rationale is that self-centered people have higher chances of survival, therefore they're a good "genetic match."
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  I'd add "are perceived" to that statement. Agents never have actual knowledge of survival odds and we don't even have statistics like that...
deleted 7y ago
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marc_abonce 7y ago
> Yet consequentialism involves endorsing not just instrumental harm, but also impartial beneficence, treating the well-being of every individual as equally important. I think that impartial beneficence applies as much to deontology as it does to consequentialism though, doesn't it? If I'm not mistaken, impartial beneficence is categorical under the Kingdom of Ends. Conversely, the assumption that consequentialism always leads to altruism mainly applies for utilitarianism, but not necessarily for all forms of consequentialism. So I don't think it's a good idea to conflate deontology with in-group favoritism and vice versa as the article seems to imply.

70 points by EndXA 7y ago

The main study which prompted this article is available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103117308181 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210311... Abstract: > Previous work has demonstrated that people are more likely to trust “deontological” agents who reject harming one person to save many others than “consequentialist” agents who endorse such instrumental harms, which could explain the higher prevalence of non-consequentialist moral intuitions. Yet consequentialism involves endorsing not just instrumental harm, but also impartial beneficence, treating the well-being of every individual as equally important. In four studies (total N = 2086), we investigated preferences for consequentialist vs. non-consequentialist social partners endorsing instrumental harm or impartial beneficence and examined how such preferences varied across different types of social relationships. Our results demonstrate robust preferences for non-consequentialist over consequentialist agents in the domain of instrumental harm, and weaker – but still evident – preferences in the domain of impartial beneficence. In the domain of instrumental harm, non-consequentialist agents were consistently viewed as more moral and trustworthy, preferred for a range of social roles, and entrusted with more money in economic exchanges. In the domain of impartial beneficence, preferences for non-consequentialist agents were observed for close interpersonal relationships requiring direct interaction (friend, spouse) but not for more distant roles with little-to-no personal interaction (political leader). Collectively our findings demonstrate that preferences for non-consequentialist agents are sensitive to the different dimensions of consequentialist thinking and the relational context.

CSSer 7y ago
For those who have studied Philosophical Ethics in High School or Undergrad, you'll probably be familiar with the term "deontological" (lit. 'derived from god') but are perhaps not used to the term "consequentialist" or "consequentialism". Per the study, "consequentialism" is Utilitarianism, which may be more familiar to you. > "...said to be making a “consequentialist” (or “utilitarian”) judgment in line with consequentialist ethical theories (Bentham, 1789/1983; Mill, 1863)."
- jfengel 7y ago
  Strictly, there are other forms of consequentialism besides utilitarianism, though utilitarianism is perhaps the most familiar. Consequentialism means (duh) judging your morality based on the consequences of your actions. Utilitarianism means making that judgment in terms of some quantifiable "utility" or "value". But there are other ways to make that judgment, including applying intuition or even applying some kind of deontological deity-given rules. The utilitarian framework is so broad that it can be extended to cover all of this, and to cover deontology for that matter ("utility is defined as following the rules of X ethical framework").
  - Throw_Away_6389 7y ago
    >The utilitarian framework is so broad that it can be extended to cover all of this, and to cover deontology for that matter ("utility is defined as following the rules of X ethical framework"). But for it to be utilitarianism you have to apply this universally. So making someone follow the ethical framework is just as good as following it yourself (something deontologists generally disagree with). The utilitarian calculus had to give actions that make other people follow the ethical framework a negative utility in such a way that you will always come out only following the ethical framework for yourself.
  - gowld 7y ago
    For example, a deontological ethic might say "you must not drive drunk" under a theory of negligence, and "you must not negotiate with terrorists", but a consequentialist ethic might say "you may drive drunk but not kill someone while driving" and "you should acquiesce to terroristic threats to prevent a murder". And a utilitarian ethic would measure how many lives would be lost under each choice, and perhaps assign variable value to those lives (by age or health or potential future productive output)
- al_form2000 7y ago
  Hate to nitpick, but 'deont' in deontology does not come from the (latin) root "deus', rather from the Greek root 'deont' - that which pertains to duty.
k__ 7y ago
TL;DR People like you if you wouldn't sacrifice them for the benefit of the group.
- ken 7y ago
  I see a lot more subtlety here than that. This is already a pop summary of work published in the "Journal of Experimental Social Psychology". Do we need to reduce every piece of information to a 10-word summary?
  - k__ 7y ago
    It is. They also say you like people more who spend their time and money on you and not on some strangers who need those resources more than you. Anyway, I just wrote this "summary" because I had the impression the diction was a bit heavy for mere mortals :)
SiempreViernes 7y ago
No mention of culture in the article, and apparently the Mechanical Turk population isn't actually that large[0], seems like this is likely to be a pretty WEIRD[1] result. The WEIRD paper actually references evidence that altruistic behaviour is punished in some cultures (Figure 4), so to do a study of something similar without a good handle on the cultural background of the participants seems pretty trash. The do have the nicest open science solution I've ever seen though, with very pretty Rweave (or some other notebook) renderings easily available: https://osf.io/xecdt/ https://osf.io/xecdt/ [0]: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/psychologists-grow-increasingly-dependent-online-research-subjects https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/psychologists-grow-i... [1]: https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/WeirdPeople.pdf https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/WeirdPeople.pdf
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- TheOperator 7y ago
  This is a huge asterisk. It's hard to generalize the moral leanings of the entire population from mechanical turk. This study really only applies to a specific population of people.
frank0631 7y ago
Does anyone else watch The Good Place? I really like The Good Place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c-AawAKZ14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c-AawAKZ14

wongarsu 7y ago

There was some interesting discussion on reddit about this https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/cx7me3/morality_study_we_admire_dogooders_we_just_dont/ https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/cx7me3/morality...

reportgunner 7y ago

I haven't read the article yet, but what is this title? I thought that one of the characteristics of altruism is that it's not attractive. Definition of altruism: >unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others charitable acts motivated purely by altruism >behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species edit after skimming the article: Perhaps they meant to say "Altruists are not always attractive"

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
kazinator 7y ago
I feel you're splitting some sort of grammatical and/or semantic hair there. Like, for instance, what is the difference between "obesity is unattractive" and "the fat are unnatractive", really. In "altruism is unattractive", it looks like there is a rhetorical device being used known as metonymy: referring to a subject indirectly by naming an attribute or adjunct of that subject in its place; it in fact means "altruists are unattractive".

ranie93 7y ago

A related piece from Jeremy Waldron on the topic of "moral distance": "The parable of the Good Samaritan, as it has become known, is cited most often by moral philosophers to open a debate about the duty to rescue [...] We all agree that it was wrong for the thieves to attack the man, and that it would be equally wrong for the Samaritan, the priest, or the Levite to join in such an attack. The hard question is: do the Samaritan, the priest, or the Levite also have an obligation to help the man who fell among thieves?" https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/menonfall16/files/2016/08/Jeremy-Waldron-Who-is-My-Neighbor.pdf https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/menonfall16/files/2016...

gowld 7y ago
How is that Waldron's commentary and not the original parable?

tarkin2 7y ago

People look for mates who will care for them. If you value the group over the individual then that's less likely. The ideal, surely, is someone who looks after themselves, their partner and their friends foremost and the group after that. When those two things come into conflict, however...

Ididntdothis 7y ago
Exactly. I know altruists who don't take care of themselves but instead need help from others. They are sort of generous but I always wonder if they are really generous if in turn their lifestyle is not self sufficient. For example if somebody helped somebody else with a big vet bill but now I am being asked to buy a car for that person I feel that actually I am the real giver and the person that thinks she is generous is not giving anything of her own but basically is giving away my money. I have come to believe that the first duty of an adult is to be self sufficient. Only then you can be truly generous or altruistic in a sustainable way.
- TheOperator 7y ago
  I've been taking money from government, family, or wealthy friends most of my life. Yet I've also given more than I've received to most of the friends I've known. I've thought much about how selfish or generous I was. You can get really cynical and say that altruism doesn't exist at all if you really get cynical and that people are just trying to fire off pleasure receptors in their brains. Ultimately though yes people who give to others are altruistic. Some people you will give money to will keep every penny, some will give away every cent they can. The former are selfish the latter altruistic and there is no need to overcomplicate things. I've only become more self-sufficient over time and today am a net "giver". Did I just become less selfish over time? No I've actually started valuing selfishness MORE over time because it became more appealing as I became stronger. Focusing on results confuses things because people in bad situations CAN'T be as giving as somebody in a good one. Somebody in a good situation can be generous enough to change people's lives without any meaningful personal sacrifice. A person who is a taker and has no desire to stop being one is not truly altruistic though. Selfishly taking from others and being performatively charitable is selfishness in the veil of altruism. The desire to be seen as the "real giver" is also selfish.

whatshisface 7y ago

Deontological agents are the most predictable because they can tell you their moral rules, and if they aren't too complicated, you can "compute" them yourself if you're wondering what they are about to do. Consequentialists aren't predictable unless you know them so well that you can forecast all of their utility calculations, value judgements, and mistakes. Being able to predict someone's behaviors makes them a lot more trustworthy.

dlkf 7y ago
Nailed it. I'd go so far as to suggest that mere reliability - and not deontological ethics - is probably where all the effect is coming from. In the article's example, the problem with the anti-hawaii-trip partner is not that they care about victims of malaria, it's that they seem to be reneging on an agreement.

neilv 7y ago

Update to het. male dating best practices: Be tall, confident, and deontological.

cookieswumchorr 7y ago
if you tell girls that you are deontological they will think you have money, because, you know, those dentists are expensive
- sebastianconcpt 7y ago
  Hypergamy don't care about definitions but says that she liked what you suggested there.
neilv 7y ago
It seemed all these attraction priorities are mostly vestigial.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

kstenerud 7y ago

It comes down to trust. You trust those who are in your group, and whom you believe will consistently act in the interests of your group. Consequentialists are distrusted because they deliberately choose to disregard social group weighting and circles of loyalty in their moral decisions. That's not to say that all consequentialist actions are disliked; only those that come at significant cost to your group (of any size - even 2). The article says that people like a consequentialist political leader, but that's not entirely correct. They like a political leader who is consequentialist for entirely "in-group" decisions. The moment he prioritizes outside peoples welfare at a high cost to his own, no matter how much objective "good" it brings, he'll soon find himself out of office. A leader who is too deontologist with his in-group decisions will be seen as corrupt for helping out his cronies. In fact, this whole "consequentialist vs deontologist" kind of misses the point. Deontologists ARE consequentialists for entirely in-group decisions, and that's how social creatures like it, and how evolution would have shaped social animals. Trump's appeal comes in a large part due to his motto: "America First", even if it's at the cost of everything else.

Throw_Away_6389 7y ago
Also note how the label "do-gooder" is particularly often applied to people who care too much about foreigners or animals, but rarely to people who care too much about their friends.

JulianMorrison 7y ago

They are probably not a utilitarian. They are probably suffering distorted deontology of an anti-self sort. Pure consequentialism is computationally implausible. There are seven and a half billion humans. How can you consider them equally? How could you even have enough knowledge to try? I think that people who try to be consequentialist are emulating it and generally poorly.

Throw_Away_6389 7y ago
You can't know exactly what is best, but you can act to the best of your knowledge. Just because you can't do something perfectly doesn't mean you shouldn't do it as well as possible.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  The fun stuff happens when deontologist meets conflict between their moral or other laws... It always happens and is a fact of life. That's how you can gauge how "lawful" someone is - using simple D&D model of morality. The other axis is altruism vs egoism. So lawful good is deontological altruist, while chaotic evil is non-deontological egoist. There are decent stereotypical descriptions in SRD. https://open5e.com/characters/background.html https://open5e.com/characters/background.html

newintellectual 7y ago

A roundabout way of saying that altruism - self-sacrifice - is always very ugly.

caymanjim 7y ago

Altruism is almost always false. It's usually selfish. People do things which are, on the surface, selfless and benevolent. But they do them because it makes them feel better in some way, or to assuage guilt, due to peer pressure, or increasingly due to pathological virtue signalling. It's not necessarily bad when someone does something "altruistic" for these reasons, but the people who are the most visible and vocal about it are the ones who are the least honest about it. They are gaining (or at least think they are gaining) the most social credit, and they expect the most reciprocation. If you do something "kind" but expect or demand recognition, you're not altruistic; you're just taking your payment in other ways. This manifests in myriad ways we've all seen: church bake sale tyrants, celebrity cause-o-holics, corporate misdirectors, activism tourists, etc. It's only altruism if it costs you something and you gain nothing in return. Even if you quietly and anonymously help others, but in turn sleep better at night and feel beatific, you're gaining something. If you think it'll get you into heaven or some other incorporeal reward, you're being selfish. In almost all cases, this is a good thing, but true altruism doesn't exist.

deleted 7y ago
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deleted 7y ago
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michalu 7y ago

Nothing that new. It's been established the attraction is rather heavily linked to the dark triad traits: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychology-uncovers-sex-appeal-dark-personalities/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychology-uncove... ... one of them being narcissism and the rationale is that self-centered people have higher chances of survival, therefore they're a good "genetic match."

AstralStorm 7y ago
I'd add "are perceived" to that statement. Agents never have actual knowledge of survival odds and we don't even have statistics like that...

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marc_abonce 7y ago

> Yet consequentialism involves endorsing not just instrumental harm, but also impartial beneficence, treating the well-being of every individual as equally important. I think that impartial beneficence applies as much to deontology as it does to consequentialism though, doesn't it? If I'm not mistaken, impartial beneficence is categorical under the Kingdom of Ends. Conversely, the assumption that consequentialism always leads to altruism mainly applies for utilitarianism, but not necessarily for all forms of consequentialism. So I don't think it's a good idea to conflate deontology with in-group favoritism and vice versa as the article seems to imply.