

George Price, Who Tried to Prove Selflessness Doesn’t Exist - Sideloader
https://motherboard.vice.com/read/george-price-altruism

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xianshou
He devoted the last few years of his life attempting to prove himself wrong by
sharing his property and belongings with the homeless, only to become more
depressed when some of them stole from him and he was eventually evicted. No
wonder his biography is called The Price of Altruism.

As one of the most important figures in the last forty years of evolutionary
theory, he would make an excellent addition to this list of geniuses with
bizarre beliefs: [http://kruel.co/2014/05/30/highly-intelligent-and-
successful...](http://kruel.co/2014/05/30/highly-intelligent-and-successful-
people-who-hold-weird-beliefs/#sthash.N53BYtps.GK0qdgmj.dpbs)

For me, stories like this symbolize the incredible compartmentalization of the
brain - we can think with complete clarity about the focus of our intellectual
passions, and still not have a clue about the rest.

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0359B02149AB
I don't agree with that, on the compartmentalization of the brain. Some of
what we think in one compartment of the brain can work concurrently in another
part of the brain, which can cause us to make all sorts of irrational leaps of
reasoning that we abstract over and call logic or rationalization.

It's pattern matching, and some people get too carried away with it, because
that pattern matching is typically what initially marked them as intelligent
by everyone else, and it works, most of the time, except when we have
paradoxes, which we just cover up with more symbolic logic, because we'd
prefer to explain logic with more logic, than explain it with common sense.

Some people can think with perfect clarity and be seen as crazy by everyone
else, just because people seem to want to observe things that way.

I mean, consider how the homeless who stole from this man may think. Many
patterns of which to reason with, none of which are purely mathematical or
logical.

I mean, on one hand, we use these things we've been taught mark intelligence
and cunning, half truths dressed up in eloquent, alluring, and rhetorically
deceptive wording, the rhythm and tempo of each sentence.

On the other hand, it's only the correlation between the Harvard 4.0 GPA and
being fascinated with the random dreams and images one's mind presents to
oneself day to day. You don't have to literally hallucinate in order to become
convinced that your hallucinations are real. That's often a problem with
language - day to day, we think some of it literally exists, and it doesn't
(or we at least can not prove that it does).

I don't know what George Price symbolizes, because I don't pretend to
understand him. But it gives me something to think about that is new.

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pegasus
I imagine that if one would thoroughly internalize the belief that we're
driven by purely rational, mechanistic forces, diving head-first into
irrationality in an attempt to search for (or somehow invent) freedom and
meaning, would be the only rational thing to do.

His case is discussed in the BBC documentary series "All Watched Over by
Machines of Loving Grace" by Adam Curtis, which is very much worth seeing.
It's wide-ranging and opinionated in a way that invites criticism, but always
fascinating and I think a point of view worth considering, especially for
technologists.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_%28TV_series%29)

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eli_gottlieb
>I imagine that if one would thoroughly internalize the belief that we're
driven by purely rational, mechanistic forces, diving head-first into
irrationality in an attempt to search for (or somehow invent) freedom and
meaning, would be the only rational thing to do.

Nah. Compatibilist free will is entirely real, and meaning is more-or-less a
built-in byproduct of living life. In fact, the most common reason people
"lack meaning" is precisely because they're trying to be as "free" as possible
by minimizing the attachments that make life meaningful.

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Red_Tarsius
Here's a different point of view: isn't it great that selflessness is
_hardwired_ into our very being? Of course, our actions are tied to a desired
outcome, but we value our legacy above our own physical and mental wellbeing.
imho the human race may be selfish, but the individual is prone to express
selflessness.

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downandout
The point is though that we perform selflessness acts because of the way it
makes _us_ feel. We aren't truly "selfless". Good deeds are a byproduct of our
desire to make ourselves feel better.

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jessriedel
You're arguing for psychological egoism. The problem is that, although many
acts of apparent selflessness have plausible selfish explanations, there are
clearly some that don't. (People laying down in front of tanks, etc.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism#Criticism...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism#Criticisms)

You either need to admit that some acts are selfless, or you end up just
defining "what someone selfishly wants" as "what someone chooses to do", which
isn't very useful.

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Lawtonfogle
>(People laying down in front of tanks, etc.)

There are a couple ways to handle this.

First, humans are not inherently rational. How many times does a human desire
one goal but performs something that moves that goal further away from them,
perhaps to the extent they destroy any hope of obtaining that goal?

Second, there are social benefits to selflessness that we will tend to be able
to enjoy the benefits of but which are not always going to be there.

Consider a bird trained to press a button for food though the food only has a
chance of being produced. Even in cases where there isn't food, the bird is
still pressing the button to get food. Even when an outside observer knows the
next press will not generate food, the bird is still pressing it for food.
Even if we could inform the bird that food would not result from the next
press, the bird would likely make the decision anyways to disregard our advice
and press the button for the sake of food.

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zerooneinfinity
Can someone explain the equation better than the article?

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morpheous
Every time man tries to "disprove" the less desirable characteristics of human
nature. They inadvertently end up proving it themselves.

Case in point: man abandons wife and two young daughters to prove to the world
that human beings are not selfish.

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meesterdude
So, of course everything you do is for a selfish reason. You behave to fulfill
behavioral and emotional needs, but its mostly based on emotion; for without
that you would just sit and die. Emotions drive all, even "logic" and
"reasoning".

But, the issue is not that we act selfishly, for that will always be, as that
is how we can be autonomous; selflessness though, facilitates us acting as a
group instead. It is pro-social to improve things for others, and so there
must naturally be internal mechanisms that drive that behavior, and dopamine
is pretty good at getting behavioral responses.

But to say 'selflessness" doesn't exist is like saying there is no sun.
Selfless does not mean you get _nothing_ out of it, just that you get little
to nothing out of it; or may even end up suffering considerably for it.

Maybe our definition of selfishness/selflessness is skewed, but they both
exist.

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Dewie3
I haven't found much evidence for what I would call _selflessness_ , so I tend
not to believe in it.

What I mean by _selfish_ is:

\- You do it because you are motivated to do it for yourself. I get an ice
cream because I want an ice cream. I study for an exam because I want good
grades, not necessarily because I like the studying. I give my SO a back rub
because I like to see her smile, or just because I like to give a back rub. I
do my friend a favour because I'm afraid he's not gonna like me if I rebuff
him.

\- Doing things which benefit others can be done for selfish reasons; the
distinction is intent, not outcome.

\- I could probably fill in other examples but I can't really think (of
something) now.

Some might think that I'm a misanthrope for believing that all people are
selfish. But no, I'm a misanthrope for different reasons. I don't view being
entirely selfish as inherently bad, which I guess some people do. If someone
wants to do good by others, or at least not be in the way of others, that
desire is not _tainted_ because it is motivated by selfishness.

Maybe my definition of _selfish_ is so broadly applicable that it is quite
useless. What good is a word if all things are [that word] and not something
else, like an opposite?

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EliRivers
I have definitely seen people do things that make someone else happy, but
makes the first person less happy and provides that first person with no
benefit.

I'm just one data point on a screen, but is that evidence for what you would
call selflessness?

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kagamine
I suppose a cynic would claim that even though the giver is aware of the
unhappiness it causes them, material loss, status in the eyes of others etc,
the gain is made from "doing the right thing".

A real cynic would say that fighting in WWII was for the glory of dying an
heroic death. Posthumous acknowledgement of heroism and honor. But I happen to
think many of those who fought in that particular war knew their fate and
truly were selfless.

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EliRivers
The case I had in mind involved enabling a drug addict to get more drugs. The
only gain was that the addict became less unhappy for a time.

Anyway, I propose that given that humans (possibly barring autistics etc)
operate by building models of the minds of other people inside their own head,
if a person does something based on that model to help the modelled person
become more happy, it's a selfless act - I can quite literally create a model
of someone else inside my head, calculate how to make _them_ happy based on
that model, and then do it. I'm not modelling how _I_ can make myself feel
good, or modelling how I'll look like a big man for helping someone; I'm
modelling another person's emotions to work out how to make them happy.

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amelius
Isn't the answer to this question to be found in game theory?

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whitten
According to the article, the second part of Price's efforts was to apply game
theory to evolutionary biology.

So probably, the reason why you think the answer is in game theory is because
of his original work.

