gjm comments on Avoiding the emergency room - Less Wrong

7 Post author: NancyLebovitz 14 May 2013 08:23PM

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Comment author: gjm 25 May 2013 09:50:27PM 0 points [-]

Per Rand, your feelings are not the standard of morality.

I wasn't suggesting that they are. Per Rand, my feelings are the standard of whether I'm being "altruistic" or not, and my question was about that.

You have a prior problem [...] You have not defined a moral code based on principles, but are making ad hoc evaluations of preference.

I don't see how you infer from what I wrote that I "have not defined a moral code based on principles".

if your intent is to sacrifice your values to the values of others, if that is the standard by which you judge [...]

It seems obvious to me (perhaps this makes me a whim-worshipping subjectivist) that neither "always sacrifice your interests to those of others" nor "always sacrifice your interests to those of others" is remotely a sane policy. (I've put "interests" in place of your "values" because I don't think anyone's really talking about sacrificing values.)

Suppose I propose the following policy: "Consider your own interests and those of others as of equal weight". Does Rand, and do Objectivists generally, consider that policy "evil"?

What about "Consider your own interests as weighing, so far as one can quantify them, 100x more than those of strangers and some intermediate amount for family, friends, etc."? Note that living according to this policy will sometimes lead you to act in a way that furthers your own interests less than you could have done in favour of the interests of others; even of strangers.