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lmm comments on What false beliefs have you held and why were you wrong? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Done out of conscious self-interest, rather than for moral reasons. (I'm well aware that our moral reasoning was optimized by evolution for self-interest; nevertheless, I think the distinction is real).
I'm not sure the distinction is real.
Do you have any examples?
It's a difference in one's conscious reasoning rather than in one's actions, so my only direct examples are my own and intransmissible. You can infer it from "who you are in the dark" cases where you happened to observe someone who believed they would be unobserved and still did the altruistic thing, but obv. that requires being confident they weren't just playing the game one level higher than you.
Let's say you see someone who gives 25% of their income to the charities GiveWell recommends and says they do this because they think it's the right thing to do. This is enough money that if they're optimizing for your own happiness, social status, long term welfare, or pretty much anything else about them there are almost certainly better ways they could spend it. I guess you could say "they're not being altruistic, they're doing a poor job of acting in their own self-interest" but that seems like a pretty big stretch.
Doesn't matter what "they say" in regard to what the right thing to do is, right? It only matters if the act is pure altruism—that is, the giver gets no benefit, or even sacrifices, for the recipient.
My understanding (a la The Selfish Gene) is that the replicating genes of humanity will benefit from even fully anonymous gifts to people we've never met. Altruism is actually self-interested at the gene (or "replicator") level, no matter how purely altruistic (or 'selfless' and 'moral') an action may seen at the level of the organism.
What do you mean by pure altruism? Is my desire for food pure only if I don't enjoy it?
Selfishness and altruism are phenomenoms that people discuss on the abstraction level of psychology. It makes no sense to talk about the self interest of genes not only because they're the wrong abstraction level, but also because they're not prescient like brains are. The selfish gene is a figure of speech.
Sort of, yes. In the context of my reply, I mean an action to a recipient that is, as I said, no benefit, or even a sacrifice, to the giver.
If a soldier dove on a grenade to save an enemy soldier who'd killed his mother, I'd be impressed in terms of it's apparent altruism...though I could imagine there'd be a Darwinian explanation (even if it doesn't occur to me in the moment.)
I think Dawkins admits 'selfish' was the wrong term to use. But it's helpful to think of a replicator-centric mechanism for evolution, versus anything on the organism level.
What about an environmental or a neurological or a psychological explanation? What's so special about genes as a causative factor?
The main reason for this is because people constantly misunderstand it.
It certainly is the right way to think about evolution, and I also think the figure of speech is nice to have if not misunderstood.
I'd imagine you'd be right. (Sufficient belief in an afterlife might do it.) Though I don't know if I'd rule out the genes.
Nonetheless.
Exactly my thought.
They are an important factor in everything the soldier does, for instance they set limits to what kinds of beliefs he can have given his experiences. Genes don't do anything at all without the environment they interact with however.
So would you consider altruistic pleasure as a benefit?
Sure. I think so. Doesn't evolution make many altruistic actions pleasurable?
What predictions might you make about human behavior that someone who believed in altruism would not?
My impression is that when people say they believe altruism exists, they mean that they believe people derive pleasure from altruistic behavior. There are some people like Kantians who might be imagining something else and I agree that version of altruism is wrong. But I think that view of altruism is a minority one.
Let's imagine a computer simulation that has various organisms. Some of these organisms are programmed to sacrifice their own lives for the lives of others in their area who have no genetic relationship at all. Is it accurate to describe the behavior of these organisms as altruistic?
Are you aware that group selection has come back into scientific acceptability since the 80s? The original experiments assumed static populations, but when you allow populations to have varying growth rates group selectionism does much much better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_selection
For there to be a real distinction you don't need there to be no benefit to the giver, just less benefit than the giver could have gotten in other ways. Yes, a fully anonymous gift to someone you'll never meet does make you feel good, but because of scope insensitivity the difference between donating 10% and 20% of income has incredibly little benefit to the giver.
If I see someone donate 20% when 10% would have almost the same benefits to them, and that money could instead if spent selfishly buy other things they would have enjoyed a lot, then their claim that they're doing it because it's the right thing to do seems pretty plausible.
(One counter is that if they will be unhappy donating less than they believe they ought to, then there is a real difference between 10% and 20%.)