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nebulous comments on Utilitarians probably wasting time on recreation - Less Wrong Discussion
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It is obvious that the trade off is there--I thought that people weren't taking the option of helping people at their own expense because they didn't know that that option caused more benefit overall than the option of having fun at others' expense. The reason that people who know about efficient charity aren't helping people at their own expense is instead apparently an objection to utilitarianism in general. I had thought before posting that most people at Less Wrong were utilitarians.
As for your questions, I'm a high school student, so I want to spend my money on college to increase my chances of making much more money later in life so that I can donate more to efficient charities.
Some amateur etymology, for those enamored of distinctions:
Most people here seem to be consequentialists, and consequentialism is merely the view that an action's goodness is defined by its outcome. Most are also 'utilitarians', seemingly meaning that they believe expected utility maximization is the correct metric for ranking outcomes, where 'utility' refers simply to the output of an agent's utility function. Probably most are also 'altruists', where altruism is the view that doing good things for others is good for oneself.
This is a departure from how the terms are used in the ethical literature. There, 'utilitarianism' tends to refer to an agent-neutral consequentialist moral theory; that is, my survival doesn't matter any more than yours. Also, 'altruism' in ethics refers to a theory that looks just like utilitarianism but discounts the agent entirely; think Christian self-sacrifice.
Our use of the term 'utility' has its roots in game theory, decision theory, and economics; our 'utilitarianism' seems to be an offshoot of that. Our use of the term 'altruism' seems to come from anthropology by way of evolutionary psychology.
Utilitarianism isn't a synonym for altruism. You can be a utilitarian and value your own happiness above that of others.
It's worth noting that this is a departure from the way these terms are commonly used in the ethics literature.
You're right, thanks for pointing that out.
Ah, thank you. Now I know more proper uses of the words "utilitarian" and "altruist", that should help me communicate.
Edit: Just read thomblake's comment. Now I'm back to using "utilitarian" to mean "altruistic value-maximizer".