J_Thomas comments on Fake Selfishness - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: J_Thomas 15 November 2007 01:01:32PM 0 points [-]

Mark, altruists have to deal with their costs too.

It's possible for an altruist to value the thousandth altruistic meal as much as the first, but as his resources shrink the value of the alternatives rises. If I provide meals for a hundred thousand starving people and then I have nothing left and I become a starving person myself, that isn't good. At some point I want to keep enough capital to maintain my continuing ability to feed starving people.

I'm not claiming that it's true that no altruist experiences diminishing returns, or even that there is an altruist who doesn't experience diminishing returns. But the behavior doesn't prove that there couldn't be, and so this isn't a killing blow.