Sunday, March 27, 2022

When Moldbug Was Good & Reddit Altruism

Theory:
"You’re a witness to a horrific motorcycle accident. You run over to the man on the ground, pull his helmet off, hug him and give him CPR. Unfortunately, he would have been fine, except that you just severed his spinal cord. How do you feel? Is your reaction: “Oh well, at least I tried?”"

"How did the American people react when their Arab experiment didn’t go so well? I’ll tell you exactly how they reacted. “Oh well, at least we tried.”"

"And then they changed the channel. And that’s what’s wrong with callous altruism."


Reality:
"First time I've seen the reaction to "What you did very conceivably contributed to people you like very much being killed" be "whatever, don't care, please agree with my politics"."


Nitpick: call it irresponsible or dishonourable altruism. Yes, it's callous, but that's a side-effect of being irresponsible.

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