I think the world's top altruist is the person who desires the image of success the most.
Who cares? You just spent half this thread claiming that success is subjective. Bill Gates and James Harrison are going by their own ideas of altruistic success, not yours.
(For what it's worth, I personally do consider James Harrison successful at helping people. It explicitly was his goal, he made a pledge and everything.)
You just spent half this thread claiming that success is subjective
Really? I'm pretty sure I didn't. Success is hard to define, but that doesn't mean it's subjective.
Bill Gates and James Harrison are going by their own ideas of altruistic success, not yours.
Oh really? Can you read their minds? I've read about Bill Gates motivations and I didn't see the word altruism once. It's all good and well to claim Bill Gates is part of your movement but for all you know he's never heard of it.
Why don't you call Jesus an altruist? Or some other religious figure?
This is availability bias. There are clearly other factors differentiating Somalia and the US. If there weren't, there would be massive starvation in Somalia because you can't get by on $145 a year in the US.
There is, in fact, massive starvation in Somalia, price differences notwithstanding. The first sentence of the first link from a Google search for "malnutrition statistics somalia" says that "Somalia has some of the highest malnutrition rates in the world".
Malnutrition and Starvation are different things. It's much better to be malnourished than to starve. And it's much harder to feed people the optimal food than to just feed them some food...
But you're missing the point. There are successful people in Somalia, if you manage to not be malnourished in Somalia then you are successful (unless you value eating bad food for religious reasons...).
I think the world's top altruist is the person who desires the image of success the most.
Please tell us more about your inside information on the psychology of Bill and Melinda Gates.
what Ayn Rand meant when she used it
You do understand, don't you, that Ayn Rand did not invent the term "altruism"?
Please tell us more about your inside information on the psychology of Bill and Melinda Gates
I have none. Just an opinion that given my posts downvote counts suggests that I shouldn't share.
Ayn Rand did not invent the term "altruism"?
Neither did the Effective Altruism people. But Ayn Rand's books have sold a lot and are read by influential people, so I'll use her definition until I have a reason not to.
That's not an example, it's a claim with no evidence to support it. Give me an example of a person who has succeeded with only luck. There are about seven billion candidates so it shouldn't be hard to select one.
James Harrison is the first example that leaps to my mind. His blood plasma contains a unique antibody which can be used to treat Rhesus disease, which seems like a near-perfect example of pure luck: neither he nor his parents nor anyone earned those antibodies in any useful sense of the word. He just coincidentally discovered that he had them. His lifetime blood donations are estimated to have treated two million children.
Now, James Harrison surely gets some credit for his. He has, after all, donated blood a thousand times, which is far better than most of us. And he made a pledge to start donating blood before he learned about his antibodies!
But a thousand blood donations, if you don't happen to have unique biology, will be multiple orders of magnitude less effective at helping people than James Harrison was, for the same effort. To find people as successful in their goal of helping others as James Harrison, you have to look far beyond "people who donate blood regularly". Perhaps Bill Gates, having become one of the richest men alive and then dedicating his life to charity, can claim to have accomplished more?
When blind luck can put some random guy in the same league as the world's top altruist, it seems unreasonable to claim that literally nobody succeeds primarily through luck or by accident.
What is really important is subjective.
So? Whatever you subjectively consider really important, you can get unlucky on those things. Also, some things like "not starving to death" or "not constantly being in pain" are subjectively important to basically everyone, and some get unlucky on these too.
I hadn't heard of James Harrison before. I would consider him successful, of course that doesn't mean that he considers himself successful or that you consider him successful.
I wouldn't view donating blood as inherently good either. There have been times when people were given money to donate blood, but then AIDS came about...
When blind luck can put some random guy in the same league as the world's top altruist
Ahh... you think the world's top altruist is successful... That's what we disagree about. I think the world's top altruist is the person who desires the image of success the most.
FWIW the definition of Altruism I am using is NOT the same as the EA people... they've culturally appropriated that term and made it mean something very different from what Ayn Rand meant when she used it.
Give me an example of a person who has succeeded with only luck.
The annual US GDP per capita is $55,036. For Somalia, it's $145. I cannot give you a specific example of someone who succeeded by luck, but I can assure you that successful people are not born in the US by chance.
African people often have different values than non-African people.
As of 2005, there were 2.6 billion people who lived on the equivalent of under $2 per day [source]. What possible values could they have where that could be considered success?
The annual US GDP per capita is $55,036. For Somalia, it's $145
This is availability bias. There are clearly other factors differentiating Somalia and the US. If there weren't, there would be massive starvation in Somalia because you can't get by on $145 a year in the US.
I can assure you that successful people are not born in the US by chance.
Really? Do you think successful people don't have children? And that they don't try to make these children US citizens by 'immigrating' (often illegally) to the USA? I can assure you this happens frequently.
As of 2005, there were 2.6 billion people who lived on the equivalent of under $2 per day
Yes, but most of those people live in areas where $2 goes a long way.
What possible values could they have where that could be considered success?
That's up for them to define, not for you to define. Why should they care about your standards? Let them say they are successful if they believe they are successful. You lose nothing but your ego by acknowledging somebody else's success.
So successful people get lucky, but on average everybody gets lucky sometimes.
But not everybody wins sometimes the lottery.
Is that supposed to be funny? The fact that you have a computer means you have won something. I'd be willing to guess that more technologies will emerge and you'll use them. That's like winning a lottery. But you don't get more successful unless you make intelligent decisions. Stupid decisions are punished, there are exceptions to this...
But seriously, lottery is a loaded term. It's often used as a metaphor for 'capitalist trick' (which smart people avoid).
The counterexample is the many people who have succeeded through luck. Everybody gets lucky sometimes, but they might not get lucky on the really important things. If you're born to a poor family in Africa, the law of large numbers is not going to make up for this setback.
Given what I know if Ayn Rand, I'm inclined to think that the quote is suggesting that successful people deserve to be successful, so you shouldn't take their money and give it to unsuccessful people.
The counterexample is the many people who have succeeded through luck
That's not an example, it's a claim with no evidence to support it. Give me an example of a person who has succeeded with only luck. There are about seven billion candidates so it shouldn't be hard to select one.
Everybody gets lucky sometimes, but they might not get lucky on the really important things
What is really important is subjective.
If you're born to a poor family in Africa, the law of large numbers is not going to make up for this setback.
Time will tell. African people often have different values than non-African people. Their value of success probably isn't the same as your's.
Given what I know if Ayn Rand
It seems like what you know about Ayn Rand comes from textbook propaganda. Nothing you've said has convinced me you've read thousands of pages of what she wrote.
I'm inclined to think that the quote is suggesting that successful people deserve to be successful, so you shouldn't take their money and give it to unsuccessful people.
This isn't an unreasonable assumption. But it's incorrect. Money is just one factor in success. Ayn Rand realized that, which is why her books are still read today and why most authors of her day (all of whom are now dead) don't have books which sell in large numbers.
They sound like no true Scotsman to me. And they make the whole thing tautological. Would you consider it worth quoting if she said "nobody ever achieves anything by luck, except for the times they get lucky"? Or "happiness is only achieved through honest use of your intelligence if it's achieved through honest use of your intelligence"?
Did you read what you linked to?
"No true Scotsman is an informal fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion.[1] When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim ("no Scotsman would do such a thing"), rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule ("no true Scotsman would do such a thing")"
Where is the counterexample? Success refers to an abstract concept. Luck and success are different things. Luck usually contributes to success, but luck usually implies undeserved success. So successful people get lucky, but on average everybody gets lucky sometimes. The quote encourages people to focus on the things in which luck plays a minor factor. That's what intelligence is for, intelligence is not for optimizing luck.
And yes, that does make it tautological. So what?
"Don’t let anybody discourage you or tell you that intelligence doesn’t pay or that success in life has to be achieved through dishonesty or through sheer blind luck. That is not true. Real success is never accidental and real happiness cannot be found except by the honest use of your intelligence."
Ayn Rand
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There's a couple of things going on there. One is that Somalia is in fact a very malnourished country. Another is that the GDP figures DanielLC cites are nominal, not based on purchasing power parity, and therefore can be skewed by exchange rates. The currencies of poor third-world nations tend to be very weak, so going by nominal GDP will end up making them look even poorer than they actually are.
PPP estimates for Somalia seem uncommon for some reason, but the CIA estimated a per-capita annual value of around $600 USD in 2010.
Thanks for the information. My point is that money is a poor predictor of happiness and success.