George_Weinberg comments on Fake Selfishness - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: George_Weinberg 08 November 2007 08:39:27PM 1 point [-]

"Selfish" in the negative sense means not just pursuing one's own interests, but doing so heedless of the harm one's actions may be causing others. I don't think there are many proponents of "selfishness" in this sense.

There are people that are "selfless" in the sense that they not only don't act according to their direct self-interest, they even abandon their own concepts of true and false, right and wrong, trusting some external authority to make these judgments for them. Religious, political, whatever. People who praise selfishness are generally contrasting it with this kind of selflessness.