2026-03-11
Optimal moral strategy is to think you are altruistic
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- I just noticed recently that if I was only interested in saving my own life, I am willing to get a few hundred people killed at best. But if I was interested in saving the whole world, I would even be willing to get a hundred million people killed.
- This is also guesswork, it is hard to guess in advance of actually facing the situation, how I would react.
- "Capitalism" is the most popular moral justification for hurting people at scale. There are multiple other justifications.
- If you are a politician or billionaire, it seems like it is better for you to think of yourself as altruistic (not just pretend that for the public), because thinking of yourself as altruistic reduces the constraints on what you can or cannot do, morally speaking.
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