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Sep 24, 2022Liked by Brian Chau

"Ostensibly" not "Austensibly".

Otherwise, outstanding essay.

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Altruism does not exist. It is often an excuse for abuse, confidence tricks, to gain favour and position, to hide wrongdoing, to grab power, to escape the consequences of behaviour. All life on Earth - animal and vegetable - is motivated by self-interest, and how that is served varies. But no organism does anything for no reward. Flowers do not produce nectar because they want to help the bees.

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The EA and rationalist communities are full of spiritually sick people who say things like “hmm why wouldn’t I let my wife have sex with other men? According to my utilitarian calculation the most effectively altruistic thing to do is to let her and her other sexual partners maximise their sexual pleasure. Jealousy is not rational plus we both already voluntarily made ourselves infertile like the prophet Peter Singer taught.“

Absolutely disgusting.

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> brand loyalty to legacy institutions that epitomized the causes of ineffective altruism.

I'm not sure I understand what that means -- which institutions? what actions or beliefs are affected by this loyalty?

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cactus join our discord https://discord.gg/YvVJMXTapA for faang employees, kalash pastrorlists and ABDs who took indstury money and crushed their adivsors dreams. anyone reading this is welcome actually b/c your reading cactus's substack.

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