From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Jul 29 2002 - 23:54:41 MDT
Hal writes
> Generally, an altruist cares about other people. In this scenario,
> there are no other people. Hence an altruist would not behave kindly
> in this scenario.
Clear.
> An egoist manipulates other people to his own advantage. In this
> scenario, manipulation works just as well as it does in the real world.
> Hence an egoist would continue to behave "kindly" and "altruistically"
> in this scenario.
Yes, if you mean that he would behave no differently than now.
Even genuine altruists---or better, people who occasionally act
in a genuinely altruistic manner---also scheme for their own
advantage, sometimes butter up the boss, sometimes are polite
out of mere habit, and sometimes appear to be nice or sympathetic
just out of fear of the consequences. Since even altruists are
sometimes nice just for those reasons, it's quite difficult to
tell whether some act you routinely do is based on sincere
concern for others, or rather because sooner or later the
consequences will be bad for you.
So imagining what you'd do in the world where there were still
consequences---but no real people---could help one to unravel
his motives a bit.
> So I think that Lee's test can work in a sense, but the outcome may
> be the opposite of what some people would expect. The true altruist
> behaves non-altruistically, and vice versa.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. It looks on the
surface contradictory somehow ;-)
Are you saying, as I tried to above, that even people equipped
with altruistic circuitry that sometimes affects their behavior
for the most part act the same as the egotists? and that the
egotists for the most part---because of the social payoffs---
usually act the way that the "sincere altruists" do?
Lee
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