But I wouldn't say that it's an ultimate motivator, because to me that sounds like it implies that there's something final and/or superseding about altruism as a motivator, and I don't think that's true.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant to imply! Finally, I used the right words. Why don't you think it's true?

I don't see how one output could be more special than another.

I did just mean "inherently different" so we're clear here. I think what makes selfishness and goodness/altruism inherently different is that other psychological motivators, if you follow them back far enough, will lead people to act in a way that they either think will make them happy or that they think will make the world a happier place.

I'm curious - was this earth shattering or just pretty cool? I got the impression that you thought that humans are completely selfish by nature.

Well, the idea of being completely selfish by nature goes so completely against my intuition, I didn't really suspect it (but I wouldn't have ruled it out entirely). The "Yay!!" was about there being evidence/logic to support my intuition being true.

I think you may be misunderstanding something about how evolution works. I see that you now understand that we evolve to be "altruistic to our genes", but it's a common and understandable error to instinctively think about society as we know it. In actuality, we've been evolving very slowly over millions of years. Prisons have only existed for, idk, a couple hundred? (I realize you might understand this, but I'm commenting just in case you didn't)

Prisons didn't exist, but enemies did, and totally selfish people probably have more enemies... so yeah, I understand :)

I've sort of decided that it doesn't make sense at all to be "offended" by anything anyone says about you.

No, you're right! Whenever someone says something and adds "no offense" I remark that there must be something wrong with me, because I never take offense at anything. I've used your exact explanation to talk about criticism. I would rather hear it than not, because there's a chance someone recognizes a bad tendency/belief that I haven't already recognized in myself. I always ask for negative feedback from people, there's no downside to it (unless you already suffer from depression, or something).

In real life, the only time I feel offended/mildly annoyed by what someone flat-out claims I'm lying, like when my old teacher said he didn't believe me that I spent years earnestly praying for a stronger faith. But even as I was mildly annoyed, I understood his perspective completely because he either had to disbelieve me or disbelieve his entire understanding of the Bible and a God who answers prayer.

Yea, me too. But isn't it really great at the same time though! Like when I first read the Sequences, it just articulated so many things that I thought that I couldn't express. And it also introduced so many new things that I swear I would have arrived at. (And also introduced a bunch of new things that I don't think I would have arrived at)

Yeah, ditto all the way! It's entirely great :) I feel off the hook to go freely enjoy my life knowing it's extremely probable that somewhere else, people like you, people who are smarter than I am, will have the ambition to think through all the good ideas and bring them to fruition.