How to make other people pay for your stuff

[CoccoBill]

I think there's a long way to go from there being no pure altruism (which I agree might be true) to all altruism having all or mostly selfish motives. What I mean is that while I can accept that maybe some selfish motivator can be found within all actions, I'm not at all sure those are the driving or only motivators in all cases.

[Poopadoop]

Two friends are in the Army together, in combat. One guy throws himself on a grenade to save his friend. He makes a choice to sacrifice himself so his friend will live, even though it means he will die. He would have lived and his friend died if he hadn't done it. They both had a wife and 2.7 children at home, nice cars, and good jobs.

Selfish cunt.

[OngBonga]

He did it for his ego, obviously. He just wants to be a hero.

[Poopadoop]

Natural selection doesn't favour heroes who die. Otherwise everyone would do it.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Natural selection doesn't favour heroes who die. Otherwise everyone would do it.

Irrelevant. Reality doesn't matter; perception matters.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Two friends are in the Army together, in combat. One guy throws himself on a grenade to save his friend. He makes a choice to sacrifice himself so his friend will live, even though it means he will die. He would have lived and his friend died if he hadn't done it. They both had a wife and 2.7 children at home, nice cars, and good jobs.

Selfish cunt.

I agree it was selfish, but why is he a cunt?

Is it cause he gave his life to save someone who isn't you?

[MadMojoMonkey]

I think there's a long way to go from there being no pure altruism (which I agree might be true) to all altruism having all or mostly selfish motives. What I mean is that while I can accept that maybe some selfish motivator can be found within all actions, I'm not at all sure those are the driving or only motivators in all cases.

Can you elaborate on this?
I like that you're throwing a wrench into my assumption that the presence of selfish reasoning must be the paramount criteria.

[CoccoBill]

Can you elaborate on this?
I like that you're throwing a wrench into my assumption that the presence of selfish reasoning must be the paramount criteria.

Well why would they be? While it's tempting to think there's exactly one explanation to every action or decision, I doubt that's the case. To say that all our actions are selfish means it's the driving force behind all our actions. Why would that be the case? If I have multiple motives to do something, why does it have to be the selfishness that trumps all other motives and determines how I act? What is this assumption based on? I need proof to back that claim up, and I think we're firmly into no-free-will territory if we're not consciously able to override our selfish desires. What I think is that there are at least 2 completely different and separate decision processes, the conscious and the unconscious one.

The unconscious one can be called intuition or whatever, but that's the one that's based on emotions, feelings and urges, and no doubt selfish urges play a huge part in that. I'm willing to concede those decisions are always on some level selfish.

The conscious ones are the ones where we use our cognitive functions to come to a decision. Surely most of us at least some of the time try to "be" unselfish, and strive for what's "right". For these decisions to also be selfish, it would require us to either be fooling ourselves into thinking we based the decision on unselfish reasons, or for others reasons be incapable of overriding our selfish urges. I'm not convinced that both or even either of them is true all of the time for all people, which would be necessary if all our actions were selfish.

[Jack Sawyer]

At the end of Independence Day, when Randy Quaid flies straight into the mothership because he was out of missiles and kills himself in the process while taking the bitch out, was that a selfish move on his part?

*Edit: It's a '96 movie, so fuck spoilers. You had more than 20 years to watch it.