Richard_Hollerith2 comments on Formative Youth - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 February 2009 11:02PM

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Comment author: Richard_Hollerith2 01 March 2009 12:44:53PM 0 points [-]

For someone to use these pages to promote their online store would be bad, obviously.

But it is natural for humans to pursue fame, reputation, adherents and followers as arduously as humans pursue commercial profit.

And the pursuit of these things can detract from a public conversation for the same reason that pursuit of commericial profit can.

And of course a common component of a bid for fame, reputation, adherents or followers is claims of virtues.

I am not advocating as a standard the avoidance of all claims of virtues because sometimes they are helpful.

But a claim of a virtue when there is no way for the reader to confirm the presence of the virtue seems to have all the bad effects of such a claim without any of the good effects.

Altruism is not about sacrifice. It is not even about avoiding self-benefit.

I think sacrifice and avoiding self-benefit came up in this conversation because they are the usual ways in which readers confirm claims of altruistic virtue.