I admit to being perplexed by this and some other pro-altruism posts on LW. If we're trying to be rationalists, shouldn't we come out and say: "I don't often care about other's suffering, especially of those people I don't know personally, but I do try and signal that I care because this signaling benefits me. Sometimes this signaling benefits others too, which is nice".

I agree everyone likely benefits from a society structured to reward altruism. We all might be in need of altruism one day. But there seems to be a disconnect between the prose of articles like this one and what I thought was the general rationalist belief that altruism in extended societies largely exists for signaling reasons.

Also, the benefits of altruism seem significantly less substantial when the targets are animals. Outside of personal experience animals are just unable to return any favors. If I save the lives of some children in Africa, I can hope those people contribute to the global economy and help make the world a better place for my children. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about my food.

I realize the article starts with the conditional statement "if one cares about suffering", so my comments above aren't really a critique. A more direct critique would be "who really cares about suffering?". If we only care about signaling altruism then I think we should just come out and say that.

I like animals and have owned many pets, but I do not care about the suffering of animals far outside my personal experience. If I was surrounded by people who cared about such things then I likely would learn to as well; to do otherwise would signal barbarism. I might also learn to care if I was interested in signaling moral superiority over my peers.