I’m also more in favor of cooperation than altruism, but I want to encourage altruists to displace their natural boredom-prone diminishing-returns pleasure seeking for more rational utility boosting. Surely there’s some enlightened satisfaction to be had in achieving a “high score” on actual benefits caused, like the Gates’ foundation.
The popular programming-advice site stackoverflow quantifies your “altruistic” contribution in a number (more meaningful somehow than on a mere discussion site such as this; you’re actually helping individuals achieve real goals). Many people are extremely addicted to increasing this number. If utility could be as reliably quantified, then altruists would certainly pursue it in the same game-like fashion.
I quit using stackoverflow after a few weeks of achieving nearly the maximum possible daily score; boredom (in theproblems I was solving) was a factor, but equally I was disgusted by the habitual nature (easily an hour a day at times) of my reward-seeking.
Yes, utilons aren’t the same as warm fuzzies.
I’m also more in favor of cooperation than altruism, but I want to encourage altruists to displace their natural boredom-prone diminishing-returns pleasure seeking for more rational utility boosting. Surely there’s some enlightened satisfaction to be had in achieving a “high score” on actual benefits caused, like the Gates’ foundation.
The popular programming-advice site stackoverflow quantifies your “altruistic” contribution in a number (more meaningful somehow than on a mere discussion site such as this; you’re actually helping individuals achieve real goals). Many people are extremely addicted to increasing this number. If utility could be as reliably quantified, then altruists would certainly pursue it in the same game-like fashion.
I quit using stackoverflow after a few weeks of achieving nearly the maximum possible daily score; boredom (in theproblems I was solving) was a factor, but equally I was disgusted by the habitual nature (easily an hour a day at times) of my reward-seeking.