Is there truly such a thing as a selfless act?

[Phil153]

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But WHY do you DO it, then

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This comes down to the very nature of consciousness, and is ultimately an unanswerable question. It's certainly not as simple as some think.

People on this board (Sklansky included) try to shoehorn emotion based decisions into rational cost-benefit analysis, invoking some faith-based evolutionary reason (with zero evidence) when they hit a brick wall. It's as bad as creationism.

edit: I probably misunderstood your question. If you mean "why debate it", because some people (such as Sklansky) DON'T see it as a stupid question, and believe their rational analysis is all there is to it.

[ShakeZula06]

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Do you really think that a father diving in front of a bus receives a "happiness" reward for diving in front of a bus to save his child?

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The dad would rather see himself die then the child. Depending on the definition of selfless it may or may not be.

[SNOWBALL]

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YES.
There is a species of beetle that eats it's mother from the inside and explodes out of her when it is born. Evolution is ABSOLUTELY NOT YOUR FRIEND.
We are NOT evolved to life happy, healthy lives. We are evolved to reproduce and make sure our children survive. A lot of the time that means living a miserable life because our genes tell us to.

The semantical argument of "oh well you wouldn't make that choice if it didn't make you happy" is utter BS. Do you really think that a father diving in front of a bus receives a "happiness" reward for diving in front of a bus to save his child? Obviously not. Furthermore, he does NOT believe that he will receive a happiness reward either.



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Happiness = things that aid in survival/reproduction. Its silly to claim we aren't evolved to be happy...we wouldn't be happy if it wasn't to encourage us to do the things we are supposed to do.

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yes well happiness is secondary or tertiary or whatever. The primary thing is passing on genes, not living a rewarding life. Think for a minute or two about how dangerous and painful childbirth is, then multiply that by ten or whatever because for most of human history, women kept having kids regardless of the fact that:

1. Kids suck, A LOT
and
2. You might die in childbirth.

The only reason menopause exists is because nature doesn't like to lay too big of odds, i.e. a woman getting pregnant at 50 could die and then be unable to rear the rest of her idiot kids, so after having a certain number of kids, nature says "ok, that's enough, we're not gonna lay those kind of odds"

Living a rewarding life often contradicts your reproductive imperative. Most of humanity have lived terrible existences, and many today continue to live terrible existences. (Just a quick example: imagine a world without any kind of anaesthetic). However, their negative life EV doesn't lead them to committ suicide, and I doubt it's because of religious reasons. I think it's because of our survival instincts and our reproductive imperative.

In conclusion: life is absurd and to be born is an insult.

[Jimmy Afternoon]

My whole question is this: If there is no such thing as a selfless act, and every rational act we make must have some utility, then are we all just Machiavellian when it comes to friends and loved ones? that is, do we do things for people only to benefit ourselves or to make a deposit that we plan on withdrawing later with interest? Does a rational person live by making a cost=benefit analysis of how greedy, selfish, and manipulative he can be without losing friends and the optimal selfish effeciency? And if that's the case, then isn't what we call sociopathic behavior optimal? Thanks for any insight.

[SNOWBALL]

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The dad would rather see himself die then the child. Depending on the definition of selfless it may or may not be.


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ok change dying to "paralyzed for life and living in crippling pain" and then offer him the alternative of taking a blue pill, forgetting about his kid, and the kid dying. There will be a surprising amount of bus divers. This has nothing to do with utility, because THERE IS NO UNITARY SELF. The human body/brain is like a computer with a lot of malware on it fighting itself, and we all have a permanent frontrow seat to the show.

[Taraz]

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In conclusion: life is absurd and to be born is an insult.

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"Yeah, life is pain, life if only pain. We're all taught to believe in happy fairy tale endings . . . But there is only blackness . . . Dark, depressing loneliness that eats at your soul."

[SNOWBALL]

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"Yeah, life is pain, life if only pain. We're all taught to believe in happy fairy tale endings . . . But there is only blackness . . . Dark, depressing loneliness that eats at your soul."


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In case it wasn't obvious, I was mainly talking about people that live on less than a dollar a day.

[Taraz]

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"Yeah, life is pain, life if only pain. We're all taught to believe in happy fairy tale endings . . . But there is only blackness . . . Dark, depressing loneliness that eats at your soul."


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In case it wasn't obvious, I was mainly talking about people that live on less than a dollar a day.

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Yeah, I know, I just got this flash of South Park when I was reading what you were saying.

Life in the Third World is incredibly hard, but seeing a smile on one of those kids' faces is one of the most amazing things in the world. It reminds me that just because life can be unbearable at times doesn't mean that it's not a life unworth living.

[bunny]

I think there are. Phil153's examples are good, also things you do out of duty, even if they are a pain. Sure you can (and it seems the majority here do) say "Aha, but you only follow your sense of duty because it makes you feel good." but I dont see the point of adopting that view. The fact is there are things we do because we want to and things we do because we are obligated to, concatenating them all into the category "things we do" and claiming there is no meaningful distinction just seems to lose information as far as I'm concerned.

[David Sklansky]

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I believe people can and do make selfless decisions all the time, but if you analyze everything from the point of a rational/logical mind, as Sklansky does, then such a thing isn't possible.

Selfless decisions to me are where you put aside your wants for the benefit of others. This can be as simple as being polite to someone you dislike, even though you'd rather make him feel like crap and would suffer no consequences if you did so. Or getting your girlfriend off even though you'd rather just fall asleep. Understanding and considering the feelings of others, and making a conscious choice to act differently for their benefit, even though it causes you distress, discomfort, cognitive dissonance, or annoyance, is a purely selfless act IMO.

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But wait. I DO most of those things. In fact I do one of those things quite a bit. So where exactly do you think we disagree? Maybe it is that don't fool myself into thinking that the reason I do those things is anything other than the fact that for one reason or another, I am getting some sort of satisfaction, that more than makes up for the discomfort.