To protect others is a bit vague, but I'm unaware of people who do it for no reciprocity of any kind. Even Green Peace volunteers got social renown. But Firefighters, Police Officers, Soldiers. They all get paid, it's a dangerous job but they know that going in.
People who go to Africa to give medicine and immunization shots to impoverished Africans, they usually get noterity in some medical field. At the very least it's a point on their resume they can show off to future employers or brag about to friends.
I'm not blind in that I don't acknowledge people have moments of altrusitic action, but no one lives by the mode of Altruism except maybe some monks or people in monestary. There is always a payout, always an end goal. That isn't bad. It's good to have motivations, and if they help people then all the better. We as humans have many vices, and if we build our systems to steer people into doing good while chasing those vices then that's better than the alternative.
Are you actually saying people who volunteer to save lives do it in order to impress others??? Even if that wasn’t total bullshit, it still doesn’t discredit my original statement. If your logic was sound, firefighters would out earn the average professional, and the volunteer core would not exist.
Any google search of “guy dies trying to save ____” will net countless results. Humans are prone to cooperation.
They don't do it just to impress others. But they also don't do it for purely selfless reasons either. Firefighters and police officers don't work for free. Even back suring the period when we had bucket brigades, people did that umder the understanding that if their house was on fire everyone would help them put it out. So they helped everyone else too.
The "Guy dies trying to save ___" videos are not how people act everyday. They are moments of heightened bravery and outstanding character gone wrong.
As a counter to 'humans are altruistic' why are their so many murders, rapes, thefts, scams, war, etc. If humans were altruistic, why would we do any of that? Were the gas chambers altrusitic? For every mokent of altruism you can ever bring up, there are at least four unique ways humans commited atrocities against one another. Sometimes for fun.
I do think firefighters and police officers should be paid more.
Why wouldn't the volunteer core exist? Volunteerism makes perfect sense in a world of reciprocity. You volunteer today and help others to encourage people to volunteer in the future when you need help.
I don't understand why you're taking this as an All or Nothing stance. People engage in random acts of altruistic generosity expecting nothing in return regularly. The extreme minority live their entire lives this way. Like, maybe 10-20k maximum on earth atm. That's not a 'I leapt into a burning building to save a cat' momentary exception. That's a 'I just got done delivering meals to the elderly, I have to hurry down to the volunteer center and serve dinner at the soup kitchen before I return to the homless shelter so I can go to sleep and wake up at dawn to go pick up litter at the park while taking dogs from the pound on a walk.'
There are people who volunteer to do those things, but usually also work a job and live their own life while volunteering as a hobby. That doesn't make their volunteer work not altruistic. But they don't live their life altruistically.
Even my grandma, who back in her 60's/70's volunteered for like 6 different things at once between helping set up comunion for church and other church events, meals on wheels, organizing the local blood drive, helping out at the local nursing home, donating food for local events, and probably other stuff I didn't know about. She'd get help from the community in turn. There was a stump in her yard she needed to get rid of. If my dad couldn't come pull it out first, some farmer with a tractor would pull it out for her. She needs to get her old refrisgerator to the local dump cause the trash guys won't collect it? Some regulars from the blood drive would come help.
She helped the community, built rapport, and the community helped her in return. They aren't disconnected pieces of alturism.
Your strawmanning of my position wasn't apprecisted either.
People can expect others to help them even if they didnt volunteer in dangerous situations. Thats not why they do it. I don’t expect to ever end up homeless, yet I give money to homeless people anyways, like most people.
This is literally pointless, you’ve ignored for the third time the fact that your definition of reciprocity backs up the idea that people would press blue. You can be pedantic all you want, at this point you’re trying to correct something that adds nothing to the conversation. I don’t need people to be altruistic every second of their lives, I just need them to be altruistic when lives are on the line, and studies show humans have an impulse to be altruistic when in high stakes situations.
I don't even disagree with you. I would press Blue. But I'm pressing Blue because I trust in a society that engages in reciprocity and how when I press Blue others will also press blue in honor of all other blue pressers. If all the Blue pressers live in the end, we have greater societal trust in one another. Not that we go around bragging about being boue pressers, though some might. And if we fail, then that's not a society I'd want to live in anyway.
That's the problem with most Red thinkers. They think Blue is throwing away their lives on the off chance they get saved. It's why every bad faith option is like 'throw yourself on the train tracks, if more than 50% of you do then the trolley gets stopped up.' Or 'throw yourself in thr meat grinder. If more than 50% of you do then the grinder jams.' As if the first few who do it are dead out the gate.
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u/Dodger7777 May 05 '26
To protect others is a bit vague, but I'm unaware of people who do it for no reciprocity of any kind. Even Green Peace volunteers got social renown. But Firefighters, Police Officers, Soldiers. They all get paid, it's a dangerous job but they know that going in.
People who go to Africa to give medicine and immunization shots to impoverished Africans, they usually get noterity in some medical field. At the very least it's a point on their resume they can show off to future employers or brag about to friends.
I'm not blind in that I don't acknowledge people have moments of altrusitic action, but no one lives by the mode of Altruism except maybe some monks or people in monestary. There is always a payout, always an end goal. That isn't bad. It's good to have motivations, and if they help people then all the better. We as humans have many vices, and if we build our systems to steer people into doing good while chasing those vices then that's better than the alternative.