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Amanojack comments on Open Thread: April 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong
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Around here, we seem to have a tacit theory of ethics. If you make a statement consistent with it, you will not be questioned.
The theory is that though we tend to think that we're selfless beings, we're actually not, and the sole reason we act selfless at all is to make other people think we really are selfless, and the reason we think we're selfless is because thinking we're selfless makes it easier to convince others that we're selfless.
The thing is, I haven't seen much justification of this theory. I might have seen some here, some there, but I don't recall any one big attempt at justifying this theory once and for all. Where is that justification?
One would be hard-pressed to find a more perfect example of doublethink than the popular notion of selflessness.
Selflessness is supposed to be praiseworthy, but if we try to clarify the meaning of "selfless person" we either get
A person who's greatest (or only) satisfaction comes from helping others, or
A person who derives no pleasure at all from helping others (not even anticipated indirect future pleasure), but does it anyway
Neither of these are generally considered praiseworthy: (1) is clearly someone acting for purely selfish* reasons, and (2) is just a robotic servant. Yet somehow a sort of "quantum superposition" of these two is held to be both possible and praiseworthy.
*The common usage of "selfish" is an analogous kind of doublethink/newspeak
ETA: I, and probably many others, consider (1) praiseworthy, but if that's the definition of selfless then the standard LW argument you mentioned applies to it.