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I have come to that conclusion myself over the years too. But "bad people" or aholes also have usefulness. You sometimes need people to challenge things that
by MatthiasWandel 3y ago
I have come to that conclusion myself over the years too.
But "bad people" or aholes also have usefulness. You sometimes need people to challenge things that only an unreasonable person would challenge. And you need the occasional Steve Jobs too.
But unlike altruistic people, we generally don't give the aholes as much credit. So, ironically, perhaps altruism is the better self serving strategy.
- jacquesm 3y agoYou can't have too many altruistic people. You can however have too many assholes and the number of assholes where this effect starts to dominate is not all that high. The fact that our societies reward asshole behavior as much as they do is a huge problem.
- naasking 3y agoNot sure that's true. You're assuming altruism has no failure modes or pathologies. I know plenty of people whose altruism is driven by various anxieties and neuroses, which makes them vulnerable to exploitation, at the very least. A whole society of altruists could easily be very fragile and thus vulnerable to the slightest defector or adversary (cf. Galaxy Quest). Some degree of assholes and psychopaths make for robust systems that protect against abuse, intentional or accidental.
- jacquesm 3y agoInteresting viewpoint. I'm sure some assholes and psychopaths would love to have a figleaf to explain their behavior. But in my experience: you can have 90% nice people and 10% assholes and it will wreck your life. Even 1:30 is probably still too many. And the failure modes and pathologies you describe are external: an exploiter is by definition not part of the group of altruists and that makes them a perfect example of how few assholes it takes to ruin things.
- naasking 3y agoSuggesting we benefit from and should tolerate some degree of assholes is not some kind of justification for asshole behaviour. It's a similar effect where we wouldn't care about computer security if criminals and black hats didn't exist, which would leave us incredibly vulnerable. This doesn't entail that we should proactively hire or encourage criminals and black hats to attack us. The fact that the problems I pointed out are external is because those were just the most obvious failure modes, do not take it as an exhaustive list.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoThere's a caveat though, the challenger needs to be a world beater nowadays since so many things are intertwined, a mediocore ahole just adds noise.
- hliyan 3y agoIn other words, societies that consist only of members who are highly strategic in their self-interest (i.e. altruistic) may be overly stable and lack the sort of disruptions or "mutations" that short-term thinkers introduce. Such societies are likely to stagnate. Consider, as very rough approximations, twentieth century America vs. ancient China.
- kibwen 3y agoWhile acknowledging the social utility of disruption, I see no reason to conclude that altruism is either incompatible or inversely correlated with the ability to disrupt.
- PakG1 3y agoInterestingly enough, it's the a-holes that seem to be getting the most credit and rewards in recent years. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, all the populist elected heads of state, etc. The kind people seem to be the losers in recent history. Wish it were the opposite.
- NL807 3y agoBecause they are more visible due to their flamboyant personalities. I think this was always the case historically.
- _a_a_a_ 3y agoselection or reporting bias. You don't hear of the arseholes that fail.
- PakG1 3y agoThe ones that had a chance? Sure I do. The ones that didn't have a chance? I don't hear of the kinder people who failed either.
- coldtea 3y ago>The kind people seem to be the losers in recent history. You mean like back when it was kind people and not warlords, and rich scum, and Genghis Khan being the winers?