army1987 comments on Why Don't People Help Others More? - Less Wrong

36 Post author: peter_hurford 13 August 2012 11:34PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (85)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: [deleted] 16 August 2012 10:17:00PM *  0 points [-]

In this scenario I just don't think “rational” and “altruistic” are compatible (not even using an approximation to an acausal decision theory and assuming that so do other people, which makes altruism rational in the prisoners' dilemma). I'd just run the fuck away.

Anyway, this isn't analogous at all to the scenario in the study. There's no way you'll harm anyone (including yourself) by asking the researcher if she's OK and (say) calling an ambulance or something if she isn't.

Comment author: Raemon 16 August 2012 10:22:12PM *  0 points [-]

I think there is a very good case that a hypothetical rational agent motivated entirely by helping others would run away - that doesn't mean it isn't altruistic, just that there is realistically nothing to do to help others except leave to survive and find other others to help.