Okay, I think I see what happened. Your original point was really this:
This isn’t a religious community and ‘rational’ is not or should not be just the local jargon for ’anything asserted to be morally good
-- with which I agree. However, the following statements distracted from that point and confused me:
The examples listed are not rational. They are examples of ‘altruism’ for the sake of a ‘warm feeling’ and signalling
I make a call for a different response. I encourage people to resist the influence, suppress the irrational urge take actions that are neither optimal signals nor an optimal instrument for satisfying their altruistic values.
These made it sound like you were saying “No! Don’t contribute to those causes! Doing so would be irrational, since they’re not philanthropically optimal!” (I unfortunately have a high prior on that type of argument being made here.) My natural response, which I automatically fired off when I saw that your comment had 17 upvotes, is that there’s nothing irrational about liking to do small good deeds (warm fuzzies) separately from saving the planet.
However, as I understand you now, you don’t necessarily see anything wrong with those causes; it’s just that you disapprove of the label “rationality” being used to describe their goodness—rather than, say, just plain “goodness”.
Okay, I think I see what happened. Your original point was really this:
-- with which I agree. However, the following statements distracted from that point and confused me:
These made it sound like you were saying “No! Don’t contribute to those causes! Doing so would be irrational, since they’re not philanthropically optimal!” (I unfortunately have a high prior on that type of argument being made here.) My natural response, which I automatically fired off when I saw that your comment had 17 upvotes, is that there’s nothing irrational about liking to do small good deeds (warm fuzzies) separately from saving the planet.
However, as I understand you now, you don’t necessarily see anything wrong with those causes; it’s just that you disapprove of the label “rationality” being used to describe their goodness—rather than, say, just plain “goodness”.
Is this right?