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mwengler comments on On manipulating others - Less Wrong
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It depends on your ethical approach. At core, I think utilitarianism is true. But it's complex to apply to dynamic situatuons, and as a practical rule of thumb for normal cases, virtue ethics helps. And in that model (as well as in any natural discussion), 'being someone's friend' to get favours is not in fact being someone's friend. It's deceiving them, and possibly you.
Are you at all familiar with the concepts of evolutionary psychology? Do you think we even have the capacity for friendship in some altruistic way, that while evolution was busy fine-tuning our eyes and our livers into remarkably efficient instruments, that it let the moral aspects of our personalities run open loop, disconnected from any benefit they might possibly bring to us?