From: Jef Allbright (Groups@jefallbright.com)
Date: Sat Jun 22 2002 - 12:09:45 MDT
Lee writes
> We all understand the facts of the situation. All you've done
> is to remove a useful concept from the English language: since
> everything is selfish, it no longer serves a role in description;
> nor do words such as "philanthropy", "unselfish", and "altruistic".
Yes, we've agreed on the baseline, now let's move on to more productive
discussion of these concepts.
> But how do we more usefully describe someone who admires a certain
> waitress, or appreciates her service, and leaves a large tip in a
> restaurant he or she is certain never to visit again? It is
> pointless, IMO, to analyze this as a *selfish* act.
In the last few months, I have gone out of my way to praise excellent
service, for example calling the head office of a retailer to let them know
what excellent, *caring* service one of their employees provided, and
another time going up to speak with the manager of a restaurant about the
excellent service I received.
In both cases, I think my motivations were two-fold:
(1) [~ 80%] I was motivated by a rational desire to do my part to improve
the world around me, by providing positive feedback on good service - why? -
because I want my world to improve.
(2) [~20%] I was motivated by my wetware to do something nice for someone
and get a warm fuzzy feeling as a result.
In my opinion, both of these motivations were completely selfish. It seems
that you are implying that there's something more. Please help me understand
if there is.
> if you are game, is my thought experiment: if you learned that
> for sure you were the only real person, would your behavior change
> in any ways over time?
I gave your thought experiment another earnest try, and here's what I came
up with:
(1) In my case, I would find it very interesting to learn the "truth" about
the universe being some being's simulation, and I would play around with
ideas for how to hack the system based on this new understanding. My
interactions with other people (simulated or not) would remain exactly the
same and I would still care about them the same way. This reminds me of my
childhood, when people would tell me that one difference "between people and
animals" is that people have a soul and animals don't. My own experience is
that this distinction doesn't exist, and likewise in your simulation, I
would not perceive or care about any unmeasurable difference in the people
in my simulated life.
(2) I think many other people would have a strong reaction to this new
knowledge, some would be angry, some would be depressed. To me this behavior
would be pointless and indicative of a lower level of self awareness on
average in current society. [Following Eliezer's cue, I will point out, but
not apologize for the apparent arrogance of my last statement.]
I feel that I may be still missing your point, however. I mentioned earlier
the question about "how can an atheist be a moral person?" A related
question is "how can an unbeliever feel awe of the universe?" Could it be
that these questions relate in some way to this intangible quality that I
think you're referring to?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:58 MST