I’m surprised by the vehemence of your response; if something I wrote was particularly annoying to you, I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t trying to be annoying! (In particular, I wrote five paragraphs rather than just e.g. the first sentence) because I thought it would save both of us some back-and-forth about exactly what terms like “self-interest” mean.)
If I’m understanding right, you’re annoyed at least in part because you reckon I’m just saying the same thing you already said/implied and trying to make it look like a disagreement. I don’t think we’re just saying the same thing in different words (e.g., I think some altruism is “selfless” in a useful sense; I don’t think “shifting one’s sense of self” is how genuinely-other-regarding altruism generally comes about). Of course I could have misunderstood you, in which case again I’m sorry about that.
You simply hit a hot button for me in terms of LW culture. It’s a spot I just haven’t really integrated yet.
So, I’m sorry I don’t yet have the skill to both draw a boundary and also be kind & socially smooth here. Thank you for your grace.
I don’t think we’re just saying the same thing in different words
I agree. I don’t think we’re saying the same thing at all.
I do think it entirely amounts to an objection to how I use the words “self-interest” and “selfless” though. Nothing you’ve said gives me any sense that you’re even orienting to the main point I was making.
(That’s the hot button, by the way. The way LW culture fixates on every tiny detail with the eye of a programmer looking for typos, even when said details absolutely do not fucking matter in the given context. It triggers the hell out of me to have my point ignored for the sake of zooming in on some tiny irrelevant detail. That’s my bullshit though. You’re doing LW culture right, and you’re just getting caught in the blast of my emotional limitations on this issue. I stand by my anger, but you don’t deserve to get hit with it.)
I don’t think “shifting one’s sense of self” is how genuinely-other-regarding altruism generally comes about
I wasn’t trying to say that shifting one’s sense of self was how one generally comes to that kind of altruism. It was an example. Hence the word “say” in the relevant sentence: “So when someone, say, shifts their sense of self…”
I agree that I was not responding to the main point you were making. I was responding to a peripheral issue that I think also matters. Sometimes when I do that I preface it with something like “Nitpick:” or “I know this is a side issue, but”; this time I didn’t; maybe I should have.
Why didn’t I respond to your main point? Well, honestly, largely because I’m not sure I understand it. When you talk about “weaponizing Good Guy (tm) badges” I get the impression that you expect your intended audience to recognize the exact phenomenon you have in mind, and to know exactly what the “(tm)” and the “badges” are sneering at; apparently I am not part of that intended audience, because I have to puzzle it out by hand.
I am fairly sure you mean something along these lines:
we imagine that there is (or, that there is supposed to be) purely selfless altruism
this somehow makes it possible for fakers to gain social status by looking as if they are being impressively selflessly-altruistic
since social status is zero-sum, by doing that they are hurting everyone else, hence “weaponizing Good Guy (tm) badges” (the badges are worn, unironically, by the fakers, and it’s them that the “(tm)” and “badges” are sneering at)
having seen this happen, people develop an allergy to things that look like “trying to look impressively selfishly-altruistic” and this is one cause of what OP is describing
The last bit certainly seems reasonable; my only objection is that it seems to be basically a restatement of what OP already said, namely that altruistic actions are treated as status-grabs and attacked as such, rather than an explanation.
The first bit puzzles me because it seems to blame the fakery on the “fiction of selfless altruism” and I don’t see how that’s supposed to work. If no one believed in “selfless altruism” then the things fakers would have to do would be a little different—they’d have to put more effort into looking extra-altruistic rather than into looking selfless—but if it’s meant to be obvious that fakery would be much more difficult or more costly in that scenario, I don’t see why.
(“Weaponizing” feels waaay overstated to me, too. Even when apparent altruism is pure fakery and aimed entirely at making the fake-altruist look good, I’m pretty sure it’s almost always for the sake of making them look better rather than of making others look worse, and I think it’s wrong to call something a weapon when its primary use is not harming others. If I earn money I am not “weaponizing cash” even though every penny I have effectively makes everyone else a tiny bit poorer. If I learn things that make me better at my job I am not “weaponizing knowledge” even though improving my own promotion prospects reduces others’ a bit. Even if instead of actually getting better at my job I just get better at flattering my managers, I think “weaponizing” is quite the wrong term. I have similar feelings about the “(tm)” and the “badges” and the “social lever”, though not so strongly. I guess I have a personal trigger that’s somewhat the inverse of yours: I don’t like it when it seems like most of the argument someone’s making is not actually being made but, so to speak, smuggled in in the connotations or presuppositions of their words, and I think this makes me more inclined to pick nits. That’s part of what is happening here.)
I’m surprised by the vehemence of your response; if something I wrote was particularly annoying to you, I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t trying to be annoying! (In particular, I wrote five paragraphs rather than just e.g. the first sentence) because I thought it would save both of us some back-and-forth about exactly what terms like “self-interest” mean.)
If I’m understanding right, you’re annoyed at least in part because you reckon I’m just saying the same thing you already said/implied and trying to make it look like a disagreement. I don’t think we’re just saying the same thing in different words (e.g., I think some altruism is “selfless” in a useful sense; I don’t think “shifting one’s sense of self” is how genuinely-other-regarding altruism generally comes about). Of course I could have misunderstood you, in which case again I’m sorry about that.
I wasn’t attempting to play any game.
You simply hit a hot button for me in terms of LW culture. It’s a spot I just haven’t really integrated yet.
So, I’m sorry I don’t yet have the skill to both draw a boundary and also be kind & socially smooth here. Thank you for your grace.
I agree. I don’t think we’re saying the same thing at all.
I do think it entirely amounts to an objection to how I use the words “self-interest” and “selfless” though. Nothing you’ve said gives me any sense that you’re even orienting to the main point I was making.
(That’s the hot button, by the way. The way LW culture fixates on every tiny detail with the eye of a programmer looking for typos, even when said details absolutely do not fucking matter in the given context. It triggers the hell out of me to have my point ignored for the sake of zooming in on some tiny irrelevant detail. That’s my bullshit though. You’re doing LW culture right, and you’re just getting caught in the blast of my emotional limitations on this issue. I stand by my anger, but you don’t deserve to get hit with it.)
I wasn’t trying to say that shifting one’s sense of self was how one generally comes to that kind of altruism. It was an example. Hence the word “say” in the relevant sentence: “So when someone, say, shifts their sense of self…”
I agree that I was not responding to the main point you were making. I was responding to a peripheral issue that I think also matters. Sometimes when I do that I preface it with something like “Nitpick:” or “I know this is a side issue, but”; this time I didn’t; maybe I should have.
Why didn’t I respond to your main point? Well, honestly, largely because I’m not sure I understand it. When you talk about “weaponizing Good Guy (tm) badges” I get the impression that you expect your intended audience to recognize the exact phenomenon you have in mind, and to know exactly what the “(tm)” and the “badges” are sneering at; apparently I am not part of that intended audience, because I have to puzzle it out by hand.
I am fairly sure you mean something along these lines:
we imagine that there is (or, that there is supposed to be) purely selfless altruism
this somehow makes it possible for fakers to gain social status by looking as if they are being impressively selflessly-altruistic
since social status is zero-sum, by doing that they are hurting everyone else, hence “weaponizing Good Guy (tm) badges” (the badges are worn, unironically, by the fakers, and it’s them that the “(tm)” and “badges” are sneering at)
having seen this happen, people develop an allergy to things that look like “trying to look impressively selfishly-altruistic” and this is one cause of what OP is describing
The last bit certainly seems reasonable; my only objection is that it seems to be basically a restatement of what OP already said, namely that altruistic actions are treated as status-grabs and attacked as such, rather than an explanation.
The first bit puzzles me because it seems to blame the fakery on the “fiction of selfless altruism” and I don’t see how that’s supposed to work. If no one believed in “selfless altruism” then the things fakers would have to do would be a little different—they’d have to put more effort into looking extra-altruistic rather than into looking selfless—but if it’s meant to be obvious that fakery would be much more difficult or more costly in that scenario, I don’t see why.
(“Weaponizing” feels waaay overstated to me, too. Even when apparent altruism is pure fakery and aimed entirely at making the fake-altruist look good, I’m pretty sure it’s almost always for the sake of making them look better rather than of making others look worse, and I think it’s wrong to call something a weapon when its primary use is not harming others. If I earn money I am not “weaponizing cash” even though every penny I have effectively makes everyone else a tiny bit poorer. If I learn things that make me better at my job I am not “weaponizing knowledge” even though improving my own promotion prospects reduces others’ a bit. Even if instead of actually getting better at my job I just get better at flattering my managers, I think “weaponizing” is quite the wrong term. I have similar feelings about the “(tm)” and the “badges” and the “social lever”, though not so strongly. I guess I have a personal trigger that’s somewhat the inverse of yours: I don’t like it when it seems like most of the argument someone’s making is not actually being made but, so to speak, smuggled in in the connotations or presuppositions of their words, and I think this makes me more inclined to pick nits. That’s part of what is happening here.)