Adirian comments on Fake Selfishness - Less Wrong

28 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 November 2007 02:31AM

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Comment author: Adirian 08 November 2007 04:56:04AM 5 points [-]

I must point out that "whenever they want to be nice to someone" entails a desire to be nice to someone. Your very phrase defines it as being in their interests to be nice to someone. Rationalization isn't even necessary here. You wanted to do something - you did it. Selfishness isn't that complicated.

My guess would be that this individual had read Atlas Shrugged and hadn't fully understood what selfish meant in the context. Ayn Rand was setting out to redefine the word, not to glorify the "old" meaning.