NancyLebovitz comments on Magical Healing Powers - Less Wrong Discussion
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There's a difference between "you should help other people and it's very important" and "helping other people is so important that you should treat your quality of life as irrelevant". The latter leads to some combination of burnout, despair, and apathy, though possibly with some useful work done on the way to burnout.
The problem is precisely that people are reluctant to admit that they choose not burning out over helping others.
I don't believe "helping other people is so important that you should treat your quality of life as irrelevant", because of the negative consequences you describe.
(I still don't see a basilisk here.)
You don't believe that, but
that's how some people see the utilitarian calculation.