You sound a little too defensive there, perhaps thou protests too much?

Only joking, but no it is not "projection". It is definition. It goes something like "people do what they want to so if they donate something to others it is because they wanted to do it and therefore it was not selfless."

It's a pretty stupid and pointless definition though, probably sprung from someone's need to economicsify human nature. Even then you can easily get around it by defining selflessness to be the selfish need to give to others.

The idea, cynical as it may seem, comes from the perspective that the feedback loops that govern basic behavior are set up for survival and that things that make you happy are more like survival than not. So it becomes very difficult if you introspect deep enough to not answer "why did you do that" with "it made me feel good" which is viewable as selfish.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/imperfect-spirituali...

Seems to me you've just selected a prior perspective - "the feedback loops that govern basic behavior are set up for survival" - which doesn't allow for altruism.

I see reasoning like this online all the time. A person donates $10 billion, and people say they it must have given them a warm fuzzy feeling, and that feeling is by definition worth $10 billion, because that's what they paid for it. As if the idea of selflessness or human goodness or anything existing outside the real of rational economic exchange is so challenging they find it more plausible that a warm feeling is worth $10 billion.

(Not that I think MrBeast is particularly an example of altruism - although it's probably an example of good)

I was about to type that maybe it's about intention, but then I realised that expectation of feeling good is a reward based motivation.

Having behaviours that benefit your group rewarded and reinforced seems an obvious survival trait. It feels good, like reproduction. I wonder it's purely societal evolution or if there's a genetic component there.

Maybe it's hard to reconcile all this because calling something altruism is subjective, since we are not all knowing.

Selfish means to lack consideration for others or to be concerned only with your needs. A donation that makes you feel good but benefits others doesn’t really fit that term. If it’s done purely to advance yourself through brand or something like that, or gain financial opportunities then I think I’d agree it could be selfish.

Like those act of kindness videos on YouTube with millions of views and earning the creators thousands of dollars.