bjfar
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bjfar has not written any posts yet.
bjfar has not written any posts yet.
Along these lines, why do each of us individually do pretty much nothing, or at best something pretty minimal, to help the millions of people in the real world living in poverty or dying from preventable diseases? It seems to me our empathy has only a "limited range", something like the "monkeysphere" effect I suppose, whereby we only really care about those closest to us. We have some abstract empathy for the less fortunate, but not enough to really do much about it.
I can imagine also that empathy asymptotes to almost zero at the emotional distance of simulated people (and that we can only think about large numbers of people logarithmically, so... (read more)
"Maladaptive" is subjective though. One's utility function may be such that their utility is only increased by explaining/understanding things. Of course if you mean that this drive supercedes eating and drink (I exaggerate), so that you undermine your ability to increase this utility in the long run, then I of course agree.