How would you respond if I said I'm a rationalist, however I don't feel a strong motivation to make the world a better place?
With just this information, I'd likely say that being an aspiring rationalist doesn't really have anything to do with your goals, as its mostly about methods of reaching your goals, rather than telling you what your goals should be.
Following it up with this:
To be clear, I do recognize making the world a better place a good thing, I just don't feel much intrinsic motivation to actually do it.
Confuses me a bit, however.
If one of your goals is making the world a better place (that's how I'd rephrase the statement: "I do recognize making the world a better place is a good thing," saying as saying things like "X is good" generally means "X is a desirable state of the world we should strive for), your intrinsic motivation shouldn't matter one bit.
I have little intrinsic motivation of eating healthy. Preparing food is boring to me and I don't particularly enjoy eating most healthy things. I still try to eat healthy, because one of my goals is living for a very, very long time.
I guess in part it's because I expect genuinely trying to improve things (rather than making a token effort) to be a rather difficult and thankless task.
One the one hand: How difficult is it to give 10% (or even 5 or 1 percent, if your income is very low) to an effective charity?
On the other hand: So fucking what? You know how the world becomes a better place? By people doing things that are difficult and thankless because those things need to be done. The world doesn't become a better place by people sitting around waiting for the brief moment of inspiration in which they sorta want to solve a local problem.
Part of the reason, I think, is that I don't see myself being able to do something I really don't enjoy for long enough that it produces meaningful results. So in order for it work, it pretty much has to be something I actually like doing.
This is one of the many reasons why effective altruism works. It allows you to contribute to big problems, while you're doing something you enjoy and are good at.
(Or we can wait for /u/blacktrance to come in and try to convince you that egoism is the right way to go.)
If one of your goals is making the world a better place (that's how I'd rephrase the statement: "I do recognize making the world a better place is a good thing," saying as saying things like "X is good" generally means "X is a desirable state of the world we should strive for), your intrinsic motivation shouldn't matter one bit.
That's not exactly what I meant, but nevertheless this is a good point.
...On the other hand: So fucking what? You know how the world becomes a better place? By people doing things that are difficult and th
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