Nobody writes a story whose moral is that you should be selfish and ignore the greater good,
This seems obviously false. Ayn Rand comes to mind as the most iconic example, but eg Camus’ The Stranger also had this as a major theme, as does various self-help books. It is also the implicit moral of JJ Thompson’s violinist thought-experiment. My impression from reading summaries is that it’s also a common theme for early 20th century Japanese novels (though I don’t like them so I never read one myself).
I didn’t mean that there’s literally no such thing whatsoever. But “be selfish and ignore the greater good” is constantly derided and is rarely even accepted, let alone presented as a good moral. The whole reason the rationalism community is tied to EA is rejection of selfishness.
Obviously self-help books are an exception, in the same way that pro-murder books are an exception to “murder isn’t widely accepted”.
This seems obviously false. Ayn Rand comes to mind as the most iconic example, but eg Camus’ The Stranger also had this as a major theme, as does various self-help books. It is also the implicit moral of JJ Thompson’s violinist thought-experiment. My impression from reading summaries is that it’s also a common theme for early 20th century Japanese novels (though I don’t like them so I never read one myself).
I didn’t mean that there’s literally no such thing whatsoever. But “be selfish and ignore the greater good” is constantly derided and is rarely even accepted, let alone presented as a good moral. The whole reason the rationalism community is tied to EA is rejection of selfishness.
Obviously self-help books are an exception, in the same way that pro-murder books are an exception to “murder isn’t widely accepted”.
Do you want to come up with some other “obvious exceptions” to your “Nobody says X” claim?
Tbh, I find this comment kinda bizarre.
Nobody means literally nobody by “nobody says X”.