My own thoughts and reactions are somewhat illegible to me, so I’m not certain this is my true objection.
That makes sense. I feel like that happens to me sometimes as well.
But I think our disagreement is what I mentioned above: Utility functions and cost-benefit calculations are tools for decisions and predictions, where “altruism” and moral judgements are orthogonal and not really measurable using the same tools.
I see. That sounds correct. (And also probably isn’t worth diving into here.)
I do agree with your (and Tim Urban’s) observation that “emotional distance” is a thing, and it varies in import among people. I’ve often modeled it (for myself) as an inverse-square relationship about how much emotional investment I have based on informational distance (how often I interact with them), but that’s not quite right. I don’t agree with using this observation to measure altruism or moral judgement.
Gotcha. After posting and discussing in the comments a bit, this is something that I wish I had hit on in the post. That even if “altruism” isn’t quite the right concept, there’s probably some related concept (like “emotional distance”) that maps to what I discussed in the post.
That makes sense. I feel like that happens to me sometimes as well.
I see. That sounds correct. (And also probably isn’t worth diving into here.)
Gotcha. After posting and discussing in the comments a bit, this is something that I wish I had hit on in the post. That even if “altruism” isn’t quite the right concept, there’s probably some related concept (like “emotional distance”) that maps to what I discussed in the post.