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SoullessAutomaton comments on Can Humanism Match Religion's Output? - Less Wrong
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Emphasis here on "most deserving". It's probably easier to get people to agree on which causes are good than on which causes are high priority.
Worse. How many rationalists can honestly say, "my own life is as bright and happy as I could make it"? Why go for holy causes when you can't fix your own life - maybe it's a compensation mechanism, as Eric Hoffer suggested? Honestly the seduction community comes out looking better in this respect.
If you're an egoist, the answer is "don't". For altruists, the answer is shut up and multiply.
You can get many more utilons if you buy them where (and while) they're cheap. If you are unhappy now, this may be very hard to change. You can probably get better mileage - in terms of expected utilons per unit of effort - if you concentrate on promoting developments that will permanently improve the human condition.
Failing that, assuming your own life is not severly messed up, you can likely still do better than by improving it further by finding people significantly less well-off than you are, and helping them. Research suggests that this is typically not as simple as giving them money, but even so it should be possible to make such help scale significantly better than attempts to significantly improve your own subjective well-being.
I don't care what you label it. I'm a bounded rationalist, and more so a bounded altruist - akrasia is a major issue for me. I will take all help from any of my mental modules to act in a more rational and altruistic manner I can get.
If you donate money to a cause then obviously it's an important part of your life and you believe that the donation makes it brighter and happier.
Not so.
My rationality is responsible for a lot of the good things in my life. Contrary to what the seduction community seem to believe AFAICT, being rational about sex can help get you laid, and without deception or dishonesty.
Clarification: "Rational" or "honest"? (That is, truth-believing or belief-telling?)
I think I'm being both, though I'm not sure if that's your question.
The writer who most closely represents the way I think about the subject is Greta Christina, who you may know of for her excellent atheism/skepticism posts.