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Tyrrell_McAllister comments on A Suite of Pragmatic Considerations in Favor of Niceness - Less Wrong
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The way that you wrote seems to confuse reproductively fit with fit for getting me what I would want on reflection. Nothing needs to have changed since the ancestral environment. We just don't necessarily care that much about maximizing the number of our offspring.
So niceness has individual hedonic benefits but results in fewer offspring?
That seems plausible to me. I find it easy to imagine that being nicer than the reproductive optimum could make one happier, even in the ancestral environment. Of course, there are stupid ways to be nice that wouldn't make one happier. And I'm sure that one can be too nice. But why would we expect that the hedonic and reproductive optima were ever the same?
Niceness can also have individual benefits, if you need other people's voluntary cooperation. But in our society the role of voluntary cooperation is getting smaller, because it is replaced by institutions and financial transactions. Also the strangers you interact with online are unlikely to provide you any specific help in real life. (Speaking in general, because in your specific case their donations are welcome.)
Furthermore, in a small society where everyone knows everyone, your niceness or rudeness might also influence how people treat your relatives. Which in turn would provide your relatives an incentive to fix your behavior.
Sounds right. Of all practical purposes that I can casually think of, niceness seems bad only for getting sex (as a man) and for leadership of large groups, especially direct leadership of groups of more than a dozen extreme social inferiors.
Niceness really is compatible with, and indeed conducive to, getting lots of sex with lots of people. It is sex-negativity that makes the two incompatible.
I have to strongly disagree with this. First, you seem to be conflating "reproducing" with "getting sex". Maximizing the number of your offspring has less to do with having sex and more to do with obtaining resources to raise your offspring to maturity. If you give away too many of your resources, you won't have enough to raise your offspring.
Second, there are several different notions of niceness here. The one this post discusses has to do with phrasing communication, a form of social skills. This is different than giving away resources or not looking out for your own interests. Niceness in the sense of possessing social skills, maintaining allies and friends, and not being "miserable company" is exactly what helps get sex and lead large groups.