From: Jef Allbright (jef@jefallbright.net)
Date: Sat Sep 28 2002 - 00:36:03 MDT
Lee writes, very nicely:
>I would agree, although I do think that one needs to distinguish
> between genuine altruism and altruism that benefits the *individual*
> (not necessarily his genes). Do you agree?
You and I may have to agree to disagree on this, since I already gave it my
best shot some time ago.
To my mind, there is no "genuine" altruism, but only behavior that we
commonly call altruism that I would always trace back to providing some sort
of actual / perceived / genetic benefit to the one acting it out.
I can understand someone sincerely dedicating his life to a project to save
humanity, and this would truly fit the conventional definition of altruism,
but I'm saying that it's useful to see this behavior in terms of the
individual being driven to satisfy internal goals.
I can also imagine a type of dysfunctional psychological state where a
person would really go around sacrificing himself rather indiscriminately
and with no regard for himself, but I don't you think mean that.
I am familiar with your living in a simulation thought-experiment, but that
would make no difference in my feelings toward others or my behavior if I
were to find myself living in it. Assuming that the simulation would
continue to respond and evolve in a natural way, I would continue to be
"nice" to the entities in the simulation whether I thought it was "real" or
not. For the same reason that I can't really tell whether I'm in that kind
of simulation right now.
- Jef
>> In my opinion, if we could ever get past the quibbling over
>> definitions we could move on to more interesting and fruitful
>> discussion of the role of "altruism" now and in the future,
>> examples of altruism in other species, and non-zero sum
>> interactions in general. Now *that* could be interesting.
>
> I'm all ears, and hope you're going to be able to continue
> to help here.
>
> Lee
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