According to the principle of enlightened self-interest, you should help other people because this will help you in the long run. I've seen it argued that this is the reason why people have an instinct to help others. I don't think that this would mean helping people the way an Effective Altruist would. It would mean giving the way people instinctually do. You give gifts to friends, give to your community, give to children's hospitals, that sort of thing.
This makes me wonder about what I'm calling enlightened altruism. If you get power from helping people in that way, then you can use the power to help people effectively.
Well, we can use the outside view here. If we look at people who are particularly successful, did they get that way by helping others? What's the proportion relative to poor people?
I don't think this backs up the idea of enlightened self-interest very well. Sure, you have to "play by the rules" to be successful, but going above and beyond doesn't seem to lead to additional success.
Another question we might ask is "where do peoples' instincts for giving come from?" If you believe Dawkins et al., it's the selfishness of genes, which does ...
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