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Altruism Isn’t Always Attractive
31–40 of 48 posts
Re: Altruism Isn’t Always Attractive
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those who have studied Philosophical Ethics in High School or Undergrad, you'll probably be familiar with the term "deontological" (lit. 'derived from god') but are perhaps not used to the term "consequentialist" or "consequentialism". Per the study, "consequentialism" is Utilitarianism, which may be more familiar to you. > "...said to be making a “consequentialist” (or “utilitarian”) judgment in line with conseq…
Hate to nitpick, but 'deont' in deontology does not come from the (latin) root "deus', rather from the Greek root 'deont' - that which pertains to duty.
Hhm, after researching a bit, it appears I was taught incorrectly. Thank you for pointing that out. Nevertheless, isn't that a very subtle distinction? If I define my sense of duty from God's will, isn't the contrast against utilitarianism more or less the same?
From wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics)
> One thing that clearly distinguishes Kantian deontologism from divine command deontology is that Kantianism maintains that man, as a rational being, makes the moral law universal, whereas divine command maintains that God makes the moral law universal.
I was taught that Kant was a devout Christian, but it appears that this is the subject of some debate...
Again from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant):
> The nature of Kant's religious ideas continues to be the subject of philosophical dispute, with viewpoints ranging from the impression that he was an initial advocate of atheism who at some point developed an ontological argument for God, to more critical treatments epitomized by Nietzsche, who claimed that Kant had "theologian blood"
Re: Altruism Isn’t Always Attractive
#33They are probably not a utilitarian. They are probably suffering distorted deontology of an anti-self sort. Pure consequentialism is computationally implausible . There are seven and a half billion humans. How can you consider them equally? How could you even have enough knowledge to try? I think that people who try to be consequentialist are emulating it and generally poorly.
You can't know exactly what is best, but you can act to the best of your knowledge. Just because you can't do something perfectly doesn't mean you shouldn't do it as well as possible.
The fun stuff happens when deontologist meets conflict between their moral or other laws...
It always happens and is a fact of life. That's how you can gauge how "lawful" someone is - using simple D&D model of morality.
The other axis is altruism vs egoism.
So lawful good is deontological altruist, while chaotic evil is non-deontological egoist. There are decent stereotypical descriptions in SRD.
Re: Altruism Isn’t Always Attractive
#34Nothing that new. It's been established the attraction is rather heavily linked to the dark triad traits: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychology-uncove... ... one of them being narcissism and the rationale is that self-centered people have higher chances of survival, therefore they're a good "genetic match."
I'd add "are perceived" to that statement. Agents never have actual knowledge of survival odds and we don't even have statistics like that...
Re: Altruism Isn’t Always Attractive
#35Update to het. male dating best practices: Be tall, confident, and deontological .
It seemed all these attraction priorities are mostly vestigial.
Re: Altruism Isn’t Always Attractive
#36I haven't read the article yet, but what is this title? I thought that one of the characteristics of altruism is that it's not attractive. Definition of altruism: >unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others charitable acts motivated purely by altruism >behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species edit after skimming the article: Per…
I feel you're splitting some sort of grammatical and/or semantic hair there.
Like, for instance, what is the difference between "obesity is unattractive" and "the fat are unnatractive", really.
In "altruism is unattractive", it looks like there is a rhetorical device being used known as metonymy: referring to a subject indirectly by naming an attribute or adjunct of that subject in its place; it in fact means "altruists are unattractive".
Re: Altruism Isn’t Always Attractive
#37Update to het. male dating best practices: Be tall, confident, and deontological .
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Re: Altruism Isn’t Always Attractive
#38> Yet consequentialism involves endorsing not just instrumental harm, but also impartial beneficence, treating the well-being of every individual as equally important.
I think that impartial beneficence applies as much to deontology as it does to consequentialism though, doesn't it? If I'm not mistaken, impartial beneficence is categorical under the Kingdom of Ends. Conversely, the assumption that consequentialism always leads to altruism mainly applies for utilitarianism, but not necessarily for all forms of consequentialism.
So I don't think it's a good idea to conflate deontology with in-group favoritism and vice versa as the article seems to imply.
Re: Altruism Isn’t Always Attractive
#39The main study which prompted this article is available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210311... Abstract: > Previous work has demonstrated that people are more likely to trust “deontological” agents who reject harming one person to save many others than “consequentialist” agents who endorse such instrumental harms, which could explain the higher prevalence of non-consequentialist moral i…
No mention of culture in the article, and apparently the Mechanical Turk population isn't actually that large[0], seems like this is likely to be a pretty WEIRD[1] result. The WEIRD paper actually references evidence that altruistic behaviour is punished in some cultures (Figure 4), so to do a study of something similar without a good handle on the cultural background of the participants seems pretty trash. The do ha…
This is a huge asterisk. It's hard to generalize the moral leanings of the entire population from mechanical turk. This study really only applies to a specific population of people.
Re: Altruism Isn’t Always Attractive
#40Deontological agents are the most predictable because they can tell you their moral rules, and if they aren't too complicated, you can "compute" them yourself if you're wondering what they are about to do. Consequentialists aren't predictable unless you know them so well that you can forecast all of their utility calculations, value judgements, and mistakes. Being able to predict someone's behaviors makes them a lot…
Nailed it. I'd go so far as to suggest that mere reliability - and not deontological ethics - is probably where all the effect is coming from. In the article's example, the problem with the anti-hawaii-trip partner is not that they care about victims of malaria, it's that they seem to be reneging on an agreement.