From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Aug 08 2002 - 17:05:24 MDT
gts wrote:
>
> Again, so-called "altruistic" behaviors are motivated by a desire for
> the subjective experience of reward. This means they are not
> performed "without expecting a reward."
Please explain an altruist who actually sacrifices his or her life
in the course of altruism, at sufficient speed that there is no time for
brain-reward. Please also explain why altruists will forgo much larger
brain-rewards (measured in total neurotransmitter brain release or
whatever you like) in order to gain the small brain-reward of altruism.
Your statement, that altruistic desires are always motivated by the
subjective expectation of reward, is simply not true. People are
perfectly capable of conceiving of altruism as an ideal apart from its
evolutionary implementation and using that knowledge to refine their
behavior toward the ideal and away from maximal brain-reward. For
example, choosing to engage in long-term, highly leveraged altruism
which brings maximum benefit to a maximum number of people (Singularity
Institute), rather than blindly investing all altruistic resources to
maximize instinctive brain-reward (organizations that feature pictures
of big-eyed, starving children).
Maybe there aren't *enough* of those people, but there are some.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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