[BurningFrog]

People do things that benefit them, and avoid doing things that harm them.

They motivate their selfish actions, to others but also to themselves (Motivated Reasoning) with noble sounding arguments. Our brains are very good at coming up with those.

Once you understand and accept this, you can process the world on a higher level.

The hardest part is seeing when you do this yourself.

[hoophoop]

Let's stop with the performative cynicism on HN.

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that (mentally healthy) humans are pretty capable of empathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

> They motivate their selfish actions, to others but also to themselves (Motivated Reasoning) with noble sounding arguments

You are claiming that selfishness is the only driver but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning goes both ways.

Besides, why do you refer to people as "they"? Are you a bot?

[Analemma_]

Humans can have empathy. Publicly-traded corporations cannot.

[BurningFrog]

I agree that humans have a lot of empathy, and that selfishness is far from our only driver.

[BurningFrog]

The book to read to learn about this is "The Elephant in the Brain".

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H8K4G9G/