Reminds me of debating Bentham in high school. If the feeling of self-interest of a murderer acts upon is greater than the self-interest of someone not to be murdered, etc...
Maybe the point is not to reduce judgment to one qualitative idea.
It’s also subjective and dependent on the persons values, beliefs, etc.
The broader point is that self-interest is not purely logical because humans are not purely logical beings.
What act exactly do people believe to be in their self-interest? Why are you claiming it's the anti-social ones and not the pro-social if the believe is not rooted on reality?
Humans are intrinsically irrational. That is a plain and simple fact. Humans operate exclusively on what they think is true instead of what is objective fact. Subjectively an individual human acts in ways that are roughly rational and coherent within their belief system and world view. The problem is that this frame of reference is entirely subjective and is only tangentially related to consensus objective reality. Assuming that you can apply your own reasoning and logic to all other humans is fallacy.
You must accept the fact that other people do not share your world view and will not act with what you, personally deem to be rationality.
Yes
> That is a plain and simple fact
No
You've not examined the cognitive resources required to properly locate "fact" when humans have other interests, like staying alive and providing for their families. The mechanism seems to encourage directional stances rather than comprehensive ones.
* I wave some sort of unreal RFC 2119 wand at you *
a) Internet privacy is in one's self-interest
b) Many erroneously believe privacy on the internet to be goal of terrorists, hackers, etc.
c) A subset of these people then act against their own self-interest by vocally supporting mass surveillance, or voting in candidates who do so, in the name of the apparent self-interest of safety
I also didn't say anything about pro/antisocial people... different person.
"People act to their own benefit" is an empty generalization that adds no useful information by itself and free of context like that only serves to mislead people. It's only true if "benefit" is explicitly undefined, and only useful if you contextualize it to an specific action and benefit that you can empirically determine it's validity, like in the article.
> I also didn't say anything about pro/antisocial people
The article, and the entire discussion is about pro/antisocial behavior.
I think it is a useful generalization when you possess a theory of mind, however. In low-trust environments, assuming criminal self-interest is often what keeps people safe... if you're basing your decision on a lack of information, wariness is warranted. Not every social environment is a conversational environment.
At any given decision point, people are more likely to pick the option that provides some benefit to them. That looks very different from consistently picking the choice that is eventually best for them.
I largely agree with you, but I would tweak it to say "Humans are decent at doing what's best for them given their own values and knowledge".
^as in any situation, there is always the <1% of outliers
"Stupid people are the most dangerous people" -- Carlos Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
https://gandalf.fee.urv.cat/professors/AntonioQuesada/Curs19...
"All I wanna do is have a little fun before I die" Says the man next to me out of nowhere It's apropos of nothing, he says his name is William I'm sure he's Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy And he's plain ugly to me And I wonder if he's ever had a day of fun in his whole life We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday In a bar that faces a giant car wash The good people of the world Are washing their cars on their lunch break Hosing and scrubbing as best they can in skirts in suits
These are regularly rich and at upper echelons of politics.
Having actual ethical limitations is what limits enrichment and gain of power. And while most gamblers loose, some win big and then gain power.
This is a line I see often by people (not you, just to be clear) puzzled because somebody didn't "vote for their own self interest" or at least that is the perception of the person making the statement. I've seen variations of it for at least 30 years. You'd often see it around pressure campaigns to unionize especially.
The shock about the perception is always funny to me, because it reads as shock that someone refused a bribe or was not easily manipulated.
So when someone "votes against their self-interest", this person tends to think of those others as malfunctioning. Perhaps they're too stupid to correctly deduce the path to achieving the results they want. Though he might be willing to consider they're mentally ill.
If he were forced (somehow) to consider that other people want things different from what he wants, it could be some sort of existential crisis as far as he's concerned. How could two competing interests even exist in a sane or fair universe, and which should prevail if they are mutually exclusive? What if, somehow, his own interests were destined to lose out?
There are examples where "what he wants them to do" can actually be for them to vote to help themselves.
For example, people voting to give themselves, their family, and their friends better access to health care; instead many people prevent themselves from getting better health care because if they did that would mean other people (and specifically the 'wrong kind' of other people) would also get it:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_of_Whiteness
So people are screwing themselves/family to screw other folks over. They are actively harming themselves out of spite.
This simply isn't the case. It presupposes that you should know what the other person wants. You don't... and even when you know it (because they've told you), you ignore it because it's not what you would prefer that they want. It's a really simply concept, but you're probably incapable of conceiving of it. Other people in the world around you are props that the universe invented so the world could be as you envision it.
>For example, people voting to give themselves, their family, and their friends better access to health care;
I don't want "better access to health care". I know what you mean by that phrase, but I do not want this. My brain doesn't work like yours, I do not have the same preferences or desires that you do. I am not "voting against my interests", it's just that my interests are alien to you. I understand your preferences quite well (to a degree, at least) and I acknowledge that those are different than my own. You, though, can't acknowledge the same of me... the best you can come up with is that I'm somehow mistaken, confused, or brainwashed. Even this comment is likely incomprehensible.
>So people are screwing themselves/family to screw other folks over.
My family wouldn't be better off from this... we're not cattle for the farmer to provide health care for. It is not harming me or mine, we're up to the challenge.
> This simply isn't the case. It presupposes that you should know what the other person wants. You don't... and even when you know it (because they've told you), you ignore it because it's not what you would prefer that they want.
I'm not ignoring it. I do know it (in certain cases) because they've said so: they want to see certain people(s) suffering:
* http://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/...
They often don't want to suffer themselves and are indignant when things come back and bite them in the ass:
* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Leopards_Eating_People%27s_Fa...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkeys_voting_for_Christmas
Though some don't care how much it costs them as long as it costs someone else more (or perceived as such by them):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
But someone's interests/desires of what they believe to be good, and what is actually good can be two different things. (And even if choosing between things that are actually good, one can choose a good that is not as good as what one could choose.)
Invoking Godwin's law: what the Nazis did was not objectively "bad", but simply something you do not agree with.
What? Left-leaning folks are stereotypically more secular and less likely to believe in the supernatural, so as materialists would have less of a foundation for any kind of "objective" morality.
Sorry, but sometimes people really do just vote against there own interests because they've been convinced of things that are wrong, or they misunderstand something. I expect you could even think of some examples if you tried.
And your whole post is just wildly making assumptions about someone you don't know: - "thinks of others as robots..." - "Everyone in the world must, as some precondition of the universe, be interested in all the same things" - "He cannot imagine that people external to himself have any real interests at all" - "this person tends to think of those others as malfunctioning" - "...it could be some sort of existential crisis as far as he's concerned" - "How could two competing interests even exist in a sane or fair universe" -
Perhaps you could have some faith? I doubt you've never voted for something you came to regret.
Incorrect. I do recognize their differences of preference. They do not want the same thing as me. The reverse isn't true. I do not think they're idiots because they want different things than me... you've mischaracterized what I've said. They are idiots because, they (and you) can't recognize that I want something different than what they (and you) want.
And, in your convoluted way of thinking, you can't even get the argument right. You stoop to accusing me of misunderstanding.
>And your whole post is just wildly making assumptions
What exactly is wild about it? You didn't hear me screaming this, mouth frothing, as 6 cops try to drag me to the ground from where I'd perched up on some platform with a bullhorn. No violence occurred. Nothing uncivilized, just carefully chosen words. My "assumptions" if they can even be called that at all, required decades to form. Nothing wild about that. Really, they were boring words, maybe even timid. I'd be wrong and I would know it if you hadn't even chosen to respond. But it itches in the back of your mind somehow, doesn't it? Just couldn't let it go?
>Perhaps you could have some faith? I
I would like that. I would want to have faith so very much. It's all I've ever wanted, even before I knew to articulate it as that. Why does everyone make that so impossible though?
"But it itches in the back of your mind somehow, doesn't it? Just couldn't let it go?" You think you're so damn clever don't you?
Every time I comment on any form of social media, I remember why I usually don't. Good day.
The point is, that the 'Right' are living in a bubble of cognitive dissonance, fantasy, simulacrum. Barely able to put one foot in front of the other as far as logic goes...
Literally the same group that were convinced by rich land owners that the having a Civil War for the land owners benefit, was a good idea. Going against their own self interest.
Bush, Obama, Biden. All the same, can't really tell the difference.
This time, it is different. Accepting a Jumbo Jet bribe? with no questions? Manipulating Oil Markets with a war? Having the IRS setup a 1.7 billion fund to pay off friends from a coup attempt?
This is the end.
The bubble is not a one side issue.
More false equivalences. Oh no, Hunter Biden had some Porn. That totally justifies going to war to distract from Epstein, and just as a bonus, its ok to make money on manipulating oil markets and make that mooola.
To the extent this is true, that is only because they believe those candidates will make their lives better. People often declare how their outgroup "votes against their own interests", and use it as some kind of indictment of those people's intelligence. But that is nothing more than a failure to understand people. Essentially nobody is out there voting for someone whom they believe will make their lives worse m
Calling voters selfish because they didn't vote for your candidate is just pure idiocy. Politics is a game of convincing and some strategies are more successful than others, one of the worse things you can do in politics is simply advocate (talking to others); which is why the majority of online discussions around politics revolves around advocacy, it's the cheapest and lowest impact thing an individual can do.
The GP did not call voters "selfish". It said
> People routinely vote for candidates that will worsen their lives [...]
Now, I would personally reword that as "People routinely vote for candidates despite evidence that these candidates policies will worsen one or more aspects of their lives ...".
But nowhere is there the suggestion that "you didn't vote for my preferred candidate and therefore you are selfish".
It’s inherently an argument that democracy does not work.
Clearly, voters are not casting votes based on objective measurements of the things that some candidates believe are important to them (e.g. household income, life expectancy, health care quality etc).
But that means either that they are voting based on other issues that they consider important, or they are not voting based on likely outcomes of a candidate's policy preferences at all.
It's not trivial to differentiate these two (and of course, there may even be a mixture of all 2, or even all 3, reasons to vote).
And sure, people may vote for a candidate (implicitly, for a policy) that benefits society as a whole even if it negatively impacts them. It does stretch credibility, however, to try to make the case this is what is happening when people earning median incomes or below vote for candidates who cut taxes on the wealthiest in a society, as well as reducing the share of GDP going to labor, and claiming "well, those folks just think this candidate is doing a good job on <cultural issue>". I'm not suggesting it is impossible that this happens sometimes, but across the entirety of working class Republican voters (for example) ... I find it hard to believe.
The suggestion wasn't overt, it was kind of implicity - telling people that they don't know their own self interest, even when they manifestly don't, is not very ahh "politic" :)
There certainly people who are selfless but in the distribution of personalities selfless feels more rare. And their is always a question to what extent. I think what Hannah Arendt really is getting at is that is possible to build a system that reinforces small compromises for reasonable benefit that leads the system to meltdown when everyone starts making small compromises
I don't think that assumption holds. People routinely vote for candidates that will worsen their lives, gamble, smoke, don't exercise, some people even don't brush their teeth.
On the other hand, there's as many examples of people being selfless as of people being selfish.
Human behavior is much more complex.