[coldtea]

What's illogical about it? In fact being a psychopath is the most logical thing (promoting your interests with cold logic with care or mercy for others).

All other behaviors need either a faith in some God or man-given morality, ethics, or emotions like love, mercy etc (which, as emotions, are not logical).

Of course one can logically come to the conclusion that behaving moraly instead of like a psychopath is better for humanity. But even in that case, giving a damn for what's better for humanity (instead of what maximizes your benefits in your lifespan) is illogical.

[icebraining]

Why would caring for yourself be "more logical" than for others? I don't think the concept even applies.

Logic concerns itself with the validity of reasoning: Given X and Y, you can validly infer Z - it doesn't concern itself with the goals. So, unless there's an underlying axiom that supports the assertion that you should promote your interests above others', it's not "more logical" to do so than to dedicate your life to others.

[jerf]

If you wish to understand Spock the character, and the Vulcans in general, at least to the extent that a species written by dozens of writers has a philosophy, it's important to understand that they don't follow lower-case "logic", but upper-case "Logic". It is, itself, essentially a religion (or philosophy if you want to be perhaps a bit more kind) that does in fact carry some base assumptions at its core.

In the particular case of Vulcans, you can definitely have huge, raging arguments about what exactly those base assumptions are, again, given that they were written by dozens of writers, many of whom really weren't trying.

Today you can see the real-life equivalent in the Rationalist movement, which while it certainly permits a certain amount of variance in the base assumptions, does tend to come with a basic set of axioms at the bottom as well.

It would go beyond the scope of what fits in an HN message to actually explain those. (Plus I have some serious philosophical criticisms, which would make it even longer, and also means perhaps I'm not the best person to even try.) My point is merely that when discussing this sort of "logic" it is very important to separate strict mathematical "logic" from the vague set of quasi-religion/philosophical "Logics" that do in fact come with enough base presuppositions to make it possible to debate things like whether enlightened self-interest is or is not "better" than, say, some degree of deliberately self-negating altruism. Upper-case Logic and mathematical lower-case logic are two different words. (And Logic is a family, too, not one well-defined thing.)

[coldtea]

>Why would caring for yourself be "more logical" than for others?

Because you ARE yourself, and the obvious thing is to maximize your strength.

And because caring for others implies "love", "affection", "altruism" (emotions, not rational calculations) and even sacrificing your interests for others, whereas helping yourself is immediately advantageous for you and is in your default interest.

[icebraining]

Because you ARE yourself, and the obvious thing is to maximize your strength.

So what? Why is it logical to do the most obvious thing?

And because caring for others implies "love", "affection", "altruism" (emotions, not rational calculations) and even sacrificing your interests for others, whereas helping yourself is immediately advantageous for you and is in your default interest.

Even if there is a "default interest", you don't arrive to it by logical reasoning - it's no more logical than an emotion.

[coldtea]

>So what? Why is it logical to do the most obvious thing?

Because that's how logic works. We are not discussing Logic the mathematical formalism (A=A, A=C, A!=B => B!=C) here.

[icebraining]

I understand we are not discussing the mathematical formalism, but that doesn't answer my question.

Logical thinking is reasoning; just doing something because it feels obvious doesn't sound like application of reasoning. Many obvious things are reveled to be inadvisable when carefully considered.

Also, I don't believe that taking care of yourself is obvious if you remove emotions. Self-preservation is an emotional instinct, not some logical axiom.

[coldtea]

>Logical thinking is reasoning; just doing something because it feels obvious doesn't sound like application of reasoning.

Reasoning is not abstract. Logical thinking has foundations and axioms -- and among those the idea that beings primarily try to help/save/advance/spread/enjoy/take-care-of themselves is paramount.

[xixi77]

The "obvious thing" is an assumption of the person's preferences. It is entirely possible for a person's happiness/utility to depend on happiness/utility of other people, and it seems likely for such dependence to be evolutionary advantageous -- in the most trivial example, it is clearly advantageous to be helpful to own children -- plus, as someone said, people are not stupid.

It is of course also possible to rationally emulate such behavior, as well as emulate emotions, but it may not be easy, and might come at a substantial cognitive cost.

In addition, I would imagine that being able to feel certain emotions yourself must be of great help in predicting behavior of people who do feel those emotions. For example, I am still not sure what can or cannot trigger jealousy, having never felt it myself -- there is a learned list of things that can do it, but by construction it is never complete; it would have been nice to have some sort of an intuitive understanding. And it extends much further, e.g. I've seen studies demonstrating how people with good emotional intelligence tend to be better stock traders.

[PepeGomez]

>whereas helping yourself is immediately advantageous for you and is in your default interest.

No it isn't, it's basically suicidal. We wouldn't evolve to be mostly altruistic if being altruistic was bad for our survival.

[coldtea]

>No it isn't, it's basically suicidal. We wouldn't evolve to be mostly altruistic if being altruistic was bad for our survival.

Evolving concerns the species (and its survival) not the individual and its survival.

It literally has nothing to do with your individual survival (except depending on you surviving long enough to make offspring).

Heck, awful as it is, if you raped 2000 women and gave progeny to 2000 kids it would be considered great from an evolutionary aspect -- far more than "being altruistic".

[PepeGomez]

That's nonsense, individuals don't keep their species (or often even completely different species) alive unselfishly against their own interests. Such phenotypes would soon disappear if it was so. Altruism evolved because it's good for the individual's survival.

When you try to harm something or somebody for your own benefit, there are two possibilities:

Either such behavior is common enough and the target has a defense mechanism against it and in that case you will fail and you may even get hurt.

Or, it has never been too common and in that case you may succeed temporarily. However, the fact that the weakness is being exploited creates a pressure on the potential targets to find ways, or even evolve, to get rid of it. You may succesfully exploit it, but your descendants will find it harder and harder to live that way, and they may even die out.

On the other hand, when an individual is beneficial to other idividuals, it encourages them to support it, or over time even evolve traits that will allow them to better keep those of its kind alive and it will be easier and easier over time for it and its descendants to survive and have offspring of their own.

It's basically the real life equivalent of karma. Altruism evolved because individuals and species breed each other to be good.

[david_ar]

Not really, Nash equilibria aren't necessarily the best outcome for any individual (cf the prisoner's dilemma). Cooperation is usually better than every-man-for-himself for everyone involved, hence why social animals evolve altruistic traits. Of course, selfishness works at the expense of an altruistic majority, but that's why people don't like to associate with psychopaths

[coldtea]

That's in game theory. Not many people are ever offered a bona fide "prisoner's dilemma".

In most actual real life situations you can get far ahead by behaving as a sociopath.

>Of course, selfishness works at the expense of an altruistic majority, but that's why people don't like to associate with psychopaths

The thing is that as a sociopath you don't even have to show that you are that to people. You can still pretend to be altruistic (to your advantage) and still push your personal agenda whenever possible covertly.

[PepeGomez]

>The thing is that as a sociopath you don't even have to show that you are that to people. You can still pretend to be altruistic (to your advantage) and still push your personal agenda whenever possible covertly.

People aren't stupid.

[david_ar]

Prisoner's dilemma may be an exaggerated example, but it's a strawman argument to conclude that game theory isn't applicable to real life.

[david_ar]

Just to be clear, I'm not saying selfishness doesn't exist, or that cheating the system doesn't work for some people. My point is that altruism is not "illogical", and it doesn't require "a faith in some God or man-given morality, ethics, or emotions like love, mercy etc" to make sense as the parent content suggested.

[oldmanjay]

Selfishness exists outside of pathology. In fact, I don't know a single human who is not selfish on some level and I suspect such a creature doesn't exist. We do have a huge number of armchair psychiatrists making invalid long-distance diagnoses of people they don't like but that's not really the same thing.

[david_ar]

I never claimed that nobody was at least a little selfish, I was simply arguing that it isn't illogical that most people aren't sociopaths.

[jameshart]

I believe the traditional 'logical' argument is that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"...

[coldtea]

There's no logic (as in hard rational calculation about getting your maximum advantage) involved that argument -- it's a value judgement promoting sacrificing personal enjoyment, needs, interests etc. for others.

[valarauca1]

Desiring personal enjoyment is illogical according to:

Buddhism, Stoicism, Cyncism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Neopythagoreanism.

All schools of thought that actively advocate against self desire and state that it is something that you must first purge yourself of before you can achieve happiness.

A lot of pure logical schools advocate that want and desire is the root of all suffering. The difference between these schools and say Randianism is they reject one can suffer of the soul.

You do not desire an end of suffering, but you desire an end of desire.