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Selfishness and Altruism (awful.systems)
submitted 3 days ago by CinnasVerses@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems
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An opposition between altruism and selfishness seems important to Yud. 23-year-old Yud said "I was pretty much entirely altruistic in terms of raw motivations" and his Pathfinder fic has a whole theology of selfishness. His protagonists have a deep longing to be world-historical figures and be admired by the world. Dreams of controlling and manipulating people to get what you want are woven into his community like mould spores in a condemned building.

Has anyone unpicked this? Is talking about selfishness and altrusm common in LessWrong like pretending to use Bayesian statistics?

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[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Why spend so much time worrying about this I wonder, does he think that if he stops the acausalrobotgod it doesnt count if he did it for ego reasons?

Also this sentence is ver funny:

No offense, Ben, but this is very simple stuff - in fact, it's right there in the Zen definition of altruism I quoted. This is a very straightforward trap by comparison with any of the political-emotion mindtwisters, much less the subtle emergent phenomena that show up in a pleasure-pain architecture.

Emp mine, very simple stuff, creates a very weird sentence after that.

this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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