Pathological Altruism

[Emily Lake]

Yeah, Forbes is known for its liberal bias.

I've made no claims about Forbes, nor about their bias, nor about your own. I have some assumptions about your biases, based on my limited exposure to you, but they are just assumptions and I haven't enough information to form any rational conclusion at this point. Any protestations are your own.

That said, despite your protesting here, you have actually not demonstrated that the harm was more than superficial. Having to pay more money for a better product isn't exactly the end of the world when it comes to harm. Certainly not the same scale of harm say not having a doctor even though you need one but you can't get insurance because of a pre-existing condition. But if you aren't willing to dive into the numbers here you can pretend that liberals are pathological with their altruism.

I haven't pretended that liberals are 'pathological' with their altruism. Indeed, I have not specified either liberals or conservatives, nor any other flavor of political bent. I believe I've been quite clear to stay neutral in this; I believe that any individual is susceptible to this danger when guided more by belief than by objective rationality. I have no reason to think that conservatives would be any less susceptible than liberals. The topics they choose to champion may differ, but I suspect any person driven by political dogma is highly likely to bias their arguments in favor of positive outcomes for their approach and to dismiss the concerns raised by those they perceive as their opponents.

I rather suspect that you have cast me as your opponent, and in doing so you have decided to label me as "conservative" without regard to whether that label reflects my beliefs or comportment.

- - - Updated - - -

My rates are actually dropping for the second year in a row.

Certainly; in any distribution of disruptive change, some people will win out and others will lose. I am happy for you that you're on the winning side.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

When you approach a problem anew, altruism is a good starting point. What ever so often is taken as pathological altruism might be characterized as intellectual laziness. It is the assumption that "whatever I do is good." I am here now, and I will fix everything. That also goes by the name of narcissism. If you don't investigate how some plan to do good would actually work out in real time, then it is the plan and your sticking to it that is pathological and not the altruistic intent. That clearly is abandoned once one assumes "whatever I do will be fore everybody's good and I will take no backtalk or questioning."

An example I will give you is famine relief. Powdered milk companies in the 60's donated a lot of this stuff to relief efforts. They failed to take into account that powdered milk plus contaminated water (used to constitute it) could be real trouble. In famine conditions, it usually is due to water shortages. The only water available in a lot of locations where there is famine is apt to be contaminated with bacteria. This milk becomes an infusion of bacteria into a young body...sometimes killing it.

The intent of the contributors was to look good and "responsible." They simply had no idea of the conditions that prevailed in many locations where their donations turned up. It was a bad plan with an ulterior motive (to look good and seek public approval). The effort started out with altruistic intent. It simply became plan driven and was not corrected immediately. If they actually knew the conditions where their product would go, then their intent could very will be malicious intent. That is not altruism. There are a lot of shades of gray here, but I still think the original intent should be altruism, and at every point should remain altruism...like stop sending the milk or give the people something to sterilize the water. It is a matter of losing focus on the intent and being willing to alter your plans for the best result.

Excellent point.

Narcissism is egoism not altruism. Altruism, at its core and if it is to work, must begin with humility and the question "What do you need?" not the declaration "Here is what I am giving you."

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When you approach a problem anew, altruism is a good starting point. What ever so often is taken as pathological altruism might be characterized as intellectual laziness. It is the assumption that "whatever I do is good." I am here now, and I will fix everything. That also goes by the name of narcissism. If you don't investigate how some plan to do good would actually work out in real time, then it is the plan and your sticking to it that is pathological and not the altruistic intent. That clearly is abandoned once one assumes "whatever I do will be fore everybody's good and I will take no backtalk or questioning."

You're describing the same thing from a different vantage point.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It seems to me that the only examples of problems being presented here are examples of recklessness.

We have the word 'reckless'; it has nothing to do with altruism, and renaming it "pathological altruism" appears to be a rather tasteless attempt to excuse people for acting selfishly where altruism would be more acceptable.

Sure, recklessness can cause an act with altruistic intent to lead to disaster. But as recklessness can cause any act to lead to disaster regardless of intent, there seems to be zero reason to single out altruism as 'pathological'.

If you don't think things through, you are likely to fail, altruism or not.

You could call it that. The problem is that such "recklessness" is the norm--people see something heartbreaking and want to help, they don't have the ability to actually figure out all the implications. Even when governments act it's all too often to appease the public desire rather than after a careful evaluation of the good and bad points of the action.

 

[Deepak]

I'm still wondering what I was supposed to have learned by reading that paper, or what the point of this thread is.

My takeaways are that the OPs political opponents are guilty of 'pathological altruism', 19th century novel quotes are biblical in nature, and since some people make rash decisions that helping people without omniscient knowledge of the future is bad.

There are known knowns, and unknown knowns, and unknown unknowns, and known unknowns. And sometimes those unknown unknowns are actually unknown knowns, and if you don't know now you know.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

When you approach a problem anew, altruism is a good starting point. What ever so often is taken as pathological altruism might be characterized as intellectual laziness. It is the assumption that "whatever I do is good." I am here now, and I will fix everything. That also goes by the name of narcissism. If you don't investigate how some plan to do good would actually work out in real time, then it is the plan and your sticking to it that is pathological and not the altruistic intent. That clearly is abandoned once one assumes "whatever I do will be fore everybody's good and I will take no backtalk or questioning."

You're describing the same thing from a different vantage point.

Sam as what?

 

[DBT]

Not necessarily. I don't believe that the title of the linked article is claiming that ALL altruism is bad. I believe it is claiming that some people are pathological in their approach to altruism, in that they discount and ignore the potential negative outcomes in their zeal for taking altruistic action.

Exactly. I'm not saying all altruism is bad. I'm saying that all too often the "help" does more harm than good.

What about neglect? How often does neglecting the plight of the underdog, those that are not in a position to help themselves, do more good than harm?

 

[lpetrich]

Certain people here have claimed that helping people is worse than not helping people, even if not helping people makes them starve. That reminds me of When Right-Wing Blather Killed | Alternet

Famine Ireland combined the worst of feudalism and capitalism. Anglo-Irish landlords, given their land in “plantations” after decades of war in the 16th and 17th centuries to displace conquered Irish Catholics, were a big part of the problem. At least a quarter were absentee and only wanted the highest rents they could gouge; resident landlords preferred “conspicuous consumption” – Ireland enjoyed a million acres of deer parks and gardens – to building the infrastructure of modern agriculture.

So British leaders wanted to use the famine “to modernize the Irish agricultural economy, which was widely viewed as the principal source of Ireland’s poverty and chronic violence, and to improve the Irish character, which exhibited an alarming ‘dependence on government’ and was utterly lacking in the virtues of the new industrial age, such as self-discipline and initiative,” Kelly writes. Trevelyan told a colleague: God “sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson…[and it] must not be too mitigated.”

t was particularly easy to see the hand of God in the potato blight, because the potato was at the root of the lazy culture of the “aboriginal Irish,” according to Victorian moralists. “Why did the Irish have ‘domestic habits of the lowest and most degrading kind…more akin to the South Seas…than to the great civilized communities of the ancient world?” Potato dependency!” writes Kelly. “The little industry called for to rear the potato, and its prolific growth, leave the people to indolence and vice,” wrote one man in charge of Irish relief. “Food for the contented slave, not the hardy and the brave,” the Economist rhymed about the Irish staple.

In other words, potatoes were bad because growing them required too little work, even if doing so was commendably self-reliant.

The sorts of thing that certain people have said about blacks were also said by certain people about the Irish.

To justify shutting down aid mid-famine, the London Times editorialized that it was to help the poor Irish themselves. “Alas, the Irish peasant has tasted of famine and found it good…the deity of his faith was the government…it was a religion that holds ‘Man shall not labor by the sweat of his brow.” Sounds like Bill O’Reilly, only more clever. “There are times when harshness is the greatest humanity.” The Times’ “chief proprietor,” John Walter, put it more crudely. The Irish were no more ready for self-government than “the blacks,” he said in Parliament (he was also a Tory MP). ”The blacks have a proverb,” he explained. “‘If a nigger were not a nigger, the Irishman would be a nigger.’”

Back then, many English people considered Irish people a very different race, but genetic studies show that they are genetically very close. So by any sensible standards of genetics, they'd be one race or subrace. The English & Irish, together again - Gene Expression | DiscoverMagazine.com noting European Journal of Human Genetics - Abstract of article: Population structure and genome-wide patterns of variation in Ireland and Britain

Back to the Alternet article.

Still, it’s striking the extent to which so many American Irish Catholics have historical amnesia, not just about the famine, but about the way we rose in this country: By fiercely building our own parallel society, with our own churches, non-profits and schools, while grabbing the reins of government and making sure no Trevelyan would ever hold our fate in his indifferent hands again. “Two institutions reached out and offered refuge to [Irish] immigrants,” Kelly writes: “The Catholic church…and the Democratic party, in the form of Tammany Hall, which provided jobs in return for political favors.” Government built the Irish Catholic middle class, whether by protecting unionization or by outright public sector employment, and helped other white immigrant groups in similar ways.

 

[Togo]

Have we seen any reason to regard altruism as particularly prone to a negative downside, when compared against any other motive?

I mean, I get that actions sometimes have negative consequences. But surely those downsides depend on the action taken, not the motive. If in one country someone creates a new medical device because they want to save lives, while in the next door country someone creates a new medical device because they want to make a profit, is the potential downside not exactly the same in each case?

I'm just not seeing why altruism is any more suspicious or prone to downsides than other form of human motivation.

My understanding, and the position that I am arguing from, is that the motivation is irrelevant. It is the outcomes that matter. Specifically, it is the foreseeable and predictable outcomes.

Then it's not altruism that is pathological. It can't be. Because altruism is a motivation.

Any action can be harmful sure. But there's nothing special about altruism, as opposed to any other motive.

I tend to fall slightly on the side of not actively taking steps that cause harm, as opposed to failing to take steps that might help. It's a very close line... but "First, do no harm". From that principle, I would argue that it is paramount that those seeking altruistic policies, especially political actions, address the likelihood of negative outcomes in an objective and honest fashion.

But why just altruistic policies? Surely any policy is equally likely to cause harm?

Say I invent a machine that turns rain into fresh strawberries, and I turn it on. There will be good things that come from this action - such as more people enjoying fruit, healthier diet, etc. And there will be bad things, such as increased tooth decay, putting strawberry farms out of business, slippery roads, and a nation-wide shortage of cold cream. But it doesn't matter a jot whether my intention was to bring the bounty of strawberries to everyone because I care about them, or whether I actually intended to murder a fellow mad scientist by burying his lab in several tons of soft fruit.

The altruism, or lack of it, is no relevance whatsoever.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

My rates are actually dropping for the second year in a row.

Certainly; in any distribution of disruptive change, some people will win out and others will lose. I am happy for you that you're on the winning side.

Actually the "win" for me is that the organization I work for can no longer pocket the difference between what they have been taking out of my paycheck for insurance and what it actually costs. So the "win" is that my employer is no longer able to get a kickback.

- - - Updated - - -

Certain people here have claimed that helping people is worse than not helping people, even if not helping people makes them starve. That reminds me of When Right-Wing Blather Killed | Alternet

In other words, potatoes were bad because growing them required too little work, even if doing so was commendably self-reliant.

The sorts of thing that certain people have said about blacks were also said by certain people about the Irish.

To justify shutting down aid mid-famine, the London Times editorialized that it was to help the poor Irish themselves. “Alas, the Irish peasant has tasted of famine and found it good…the deity of his faith was the government…it was a religion that holds ‘Man shall not labor by the sweat of his brow.” Sounds like Bill O’Reilly, only more clever. “There are times when harshness is the greatest humanity.” The Times’ “chief proprietor,” John Walter, put it more crudely. The Irish were no more ready for self-government than “the blacks,” he said in Parliament (he was also a Tory MP). ”The blacks have a proverb,” he explained. “‘If a nigger were not a nigger, the Irishman would be a nigger.’”

Back then, many English people considered Irish people a very different race, but genetic studies show that they are genetically very close. So by any sensible standards of genetics, they'd be one race or subrace. The English & Irish, together again - Gene Expression | DiscoverMagazine.com noting European Journal of Human Genetics - Abstract of article: Population structure and genome-wide patterns of variation in Ireland and Britain

Back to the Alternet article.

Still, it’s striking the extent to which so many American Irish Catholics have historical amnesia, not just about the famine, but about the way we rose in this country: By fiercely building our own parallel society, with our own churches, non-profits and schools, while grabbing the reins of government and making sure no Trevelyan would ever hold our fate in his indifferent hands again. “Two institutions reached out and offered refuge to [Irish] immigrants,” Kelly writes: “The Catholic church…and the Democratic party, in the form of Tammany Hall, which provided jobs in return for political favors.” Government built the Irish Catholic middle class, whether by protecting unionization or by outright public sector employment, and helped other white immigrant groups in similar ways.

Exactly.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It seems to me that the only examples of problems being presented here are examples of recklessness.

We have the word 'reckless'; it has nothing to do with altruism, and renaming it "pathological altruism" appears to be a rather tasteless attempt to excuse people for acting selfishly where altruism would be more acceptable.

Sure, recklessness can cause an act with altruistic intent to lead to disaster. But as recklessness can cause any act to lead to disaster regardless of intent, there seems to be zero reason to single out altruism as 'pathological'.

If you don't think things through, you are likely to fail, altruism or not.

You could call it that. The problem is that such "recklessness" is the norm--people see something heartbreaking and want to help, they don't have the ability to actually figure out all the implications. Even when governments act it's all too often to appease the public desire rather than after a careful evaluation of the good and bad points of the action.

So, donations to charities, bad or good? Making certain grandma doesn't freeze or boil to death, bad or good?

 

[Nice Squirrel]

So, donations to charities, bad or good? Making certain grandma doesn't freeze or boil to death, bad or good?

Bad. Charities just enable people to eat and live well. People need to suffer in order to appreciate the little things in life like starvation. Grandma is no longer productive and has worn out her usefulness, you should shoot her mooching dog in front of her to teach her that she needs to earn her keep.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My understanding, and the position that I am arguing from, is that the motivation is irrelevant. It is the outcomes that matter. Specifically, it is the foreseeable and predictable outcomes.

Then it's not altruism that is pathological. It can't be. Because altruism is a motivation.

Any action can be harmful sure. But there's nothing special about altruism, as opposed to any other motive.

Nobody has said all altruism is pathological, you're arguing against a strawman.

- - - Updated - - -

You could call it that. The problem is that such "recklessness" is the norm--people see something heartbreaking and want to help, they don't have the ability to actually figure out all the implications. Even when governments act it's all too often to appease the public desire rather than after a careful evaluation of the good and bad points of the action.

So, donations to charities, bad or good? Making certain grandma doesn't freeze or boil to death, bad or good?

Actually, mostly bad.

The problem is the high percentage of "charity" money that goes to funding the charity rather than doing good works. All in all it's a very inefficient way of providing help.

 

[ksen]

And yet these inefficient private charities are what the conservatives want us to rely on for a social safety net.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

And yet these inefficient private charities are what the conservatives want us to rely on for a social safety net.

Oh, you know that when government assistance ends, the charities will suddenly overflow with money as the poor and dependent will suddenly start small businesses. The crippled will jump out of their wheelchairs and yell, "hooray, we are free!" And unicorns will fly out of my butt.

 

[ksen]

Everybody already knows that. :sheesh:

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You could call it that. The problem is that such "recklessness" is the norm--people see something heartbreaking and want to help, they don't have the ability to actually figure out all the implications. Even when governments act it's all too often to appease the public desire rather than after a careful evaluation of the good and bad points of the action.

So, donations to charities, bad or good? Making certain grandma doesn't freeze or boil to death, bad or good?

Actually, mostly bad.

The problem is the high percentage of "charity" money that goes to funding the charity rather than doing good works.

Care to justify this claim. That was a rhetorical question. I know you never back up your claims. While I understand some charities can be overhead heavy, your statement implies the vast majority are.

All in all it's a very inefficient way of providing help.

Good point. I'll start sending checks to the nation of Liberia instead of Doctors Without Borders.

 

[Emily Lake]

There are known knowns, and unknown knowns, and unknown unknowns, and known unknowns. And sometimes those unknown unknowns are actually unknown knowns, and if you don't know now you know.

This is inapt in context, Deepak. We're talking about future contingent events... so technically, nothing is either known or unknown, as none of it has occurred at the time of decision. It's about predictability, or more accurately, reasonable foreseeability since most of these things can't be given an accurate probability and the methodologies for assigning and evaluating uncertain probabilities are most likely beyond the average person (let alone politician).

More realistically, there are:

1. known potentialities
2. unknown potentialities
3. known but dismissed potentialities

In truth, humans aren't particularly good at assessing likelihoods. When it gets beyond a simple "draw a ball from a bucket" scenario, we very quickly get very bad at intuitively weighing the relative probabilities of events. Bayesian probability has been the bane of more than one college student for a reason - it's not at all intuitive.

We tend to get even worse at it when you incorporate emotion and belief into the scenario. And that's where the meat of this topic comes into play. It's not about items 1 or 2 in the list above, it's about item 3.

Item 3 ends up collecting several different categories of decisions:
The most acceptable of them are potentialities that are both improbable and immaterial - they're very unlikely to occur, and if they do occur, they have no real impact one way or another. Those are safe to dismiss.

• The next most acceptable set are events that are immaterial, but not improbable - they have a non-negligible likelihood of occurring, but they have little to no measurable effect. These aren't always safe to dismiss, because if the likelihood is very, very high, or if the prevalence of the effect is very large, then a distributed immateriality at the seriatim level can still have a material effect at the aggregate level. Depending on the nature of the question being asked, there may be other disruptive factors that need to be taken into consideration before concluding that the event can safely be dismissed.
• Next down are those that are material, but improbable. These should be evaluated or at least considered. There's some art here - some events are highly improbable but also highly immaterial... but the improbability so far dwarfs the materiality that one can safely set it aside: For example, the probability that a meteor lands directly on your house is not zero, and if it happens it would be devastating, but it's so extraordinarily improbable that it's safe to set it aside in the general category of "acts of god" and let your homeowner's policy handle it.
• The last category are neither necessarily improbable nor necessarily immaterial... but are assumed to be one or the other (or both) for external reasons - generally reasons of emotion or belief. That's where the danger is... and also where the arguments occur.

- - - Updated - - -

Certain people here have claimed that helping people is worse than not helping people

Nobody in this thread has made this claim.

 

[ksen]

Certain people here have claimed that helping people is worse than not helping people

Nobody in this thread has made this claim.

So, donations to charities, bad or good? Making certain grandma doesn't freeze or boil to death, bad or good?

Actually, mostly bad.

 

[Emily Lake]

Then it's not altruism that is pathological. It can't be. Because altruism is a motivation.

Any action can be harmful sure. But there's nothing special about altruism, as opposed to any other motive.

.....

The altruism, or lack of it, is no relevance whatsoever.

It's true that any action can be harmful or helpful, but I think that your dismissal of the entirety of the topic on that basis is premature.

Consider, for a moment, if it were possible to easily and completely divide all actions into one group or the other based on the combination of their motivations. You'd have two categories: Actions Intended to Help and Actions Intended to Harm. For the purpose of this example, we'll temporarily ignore neutral actions.

Now within each of those categories of motivation, you also have the actual outcome of the action:

• A) Actions Intended to Help
• ... 1) Which Actually Help
• ... 2) Which Actually Harm
• B) Actions Intended to Harm
• ... 1) Which Actually Help
• ... 2) Which Actually Harm

Now, we can ignore A1 and B2 for discussion (Actions Intended to Help Which Actually Help and Actions Intended to Harm Which Actually Harm). They both do exactly what they were intended to do, so there is nothing interesting to discuss in this context.

I submit to you that Item B1 is also not of interest. Actions Intended to Harm Which Actually Help are happy coincidences, and for most normal humans we're content to accept unintended beneficial consequences as serendipity.

But Item A2 causes us concern and worry. Actions Intended to Help Which Actually Harm is something that makes most normal humans stop and evaluate the situation. "What went wrong?" is probably the first thing that comes to mind. A significant element of childhood is learning from one's mistakes, learning from accidents, so that that they aren't repeated. And the emphasis of that lesson is on being able to foresee and expect those negative outcomes.

So then, Item A2 actually has two subdivisions to it:
Actions Intended to Help Which Actually Harm
... Which we believe could have reasonably been foreseen as harmful
... Which we believe could not have reasonably been foreseen as harmful

If the outcome could not have reasonably been foreseen as harmful, then it is an accident. We're expected to learn from it and carry on. But if it is reasonable that the harmful outcome could have been foreseen, it is either ignored or dismissed, then that's an entirely different situation. At this point it is effectively negligence and recklessness.

And this is where the article's terminology comes in to play. We could certainly quibble about whether the technical term "pathological" is appropriate to use. It may not be. But I think that the sentiment being expressed is valid: That there exist some people, especially in the realm of politics, for whom the desire to take an Action Intended to Help is so strong that the desire overrides concerns and risks associated with the action that would make it reasonably foresseable as a harmful action.

Their DESIRE to take action in a helpful way, their desire to help, is so strong that it subsumes all objections and causes them to dismiss reasonable concerns of harm.

Thus they may still be acting from a motivation of altruism - they truly desire to help. But they would effectively be allowing that desire to lead them into negligence and recklessness.