This is incredibly tangential, but I was talking to a friend earlier and I realized how difficult it is to instill in someone the desire for altruism. Her reasoning was basically, "Yeah... I feel like I should care about cancer, and I do care a little, but honestly, I don't really care." This sort of off-hand egoism is something I wasn't used to; most smart people try to rationalize selfishness with crazy beliefs. But it's hard to argue with "I just don't care" other than to say "I bet you will have wanted to have cared", which is gramatically horrible and a pretty terrible argument.