System 1 and System 2 in applied rationality: people often have low motivation if their intuitions conflict with their analysis. If you’re pretty sure something is correct, it’s good to support it with emotional drivers like friendship or chocolate.
Signalling: if you’re trying to model why people do good, a lot of it can be explained by assuming that they are trying to make themselves good. It seems like it might be a major driver of charitable behaviour.
One additional piece of advice that I might mention relating to these two points: it’s fine to act out of selfish motives. If you realize that you’re actually working on some altruistic project because you want to gain status, get social approval, make a good impression on people of your preferred sex(es) - great! If those motives cause you to work harder on worthwhile projects, then there’s no point in beating yourself up for being human and caring about yourself as well. Just be honest to yourself about your motives, whatever they are.
Often we might tell ourselves that we’re doing something for an altruistic reason, while in our gut we don’t realize until later that we’re really doing something that looks like it could be for very selfish reasons. Also, human brains are enough of a kludge that we can act for different reasons. Cooperation is helping others in a way that also helps oneself: it’s selfish and altruistic.
Thanks, this is good advice.
One additional piece of advice that I might mention relating to these two points: it’s fine to act out of selfish motives. If you realize that you’re actually working on some altruistic project because you want to gain status, get social approval, make a good impression on people of your preferred sex(es) - great! If those motives cause you to work harder on worthwhile projects, then there’s no point in beating yourself up for being human and caring about yourself as well. Just be honest to yourself about your motives, whatever they are.
+1
Often we might tell ourselves that we’re doing something for an altruistic reason, while in our gut we don’t realize until later that we’re really doing something that looks like it could be for very selfish reasons. Also, human brains are enough of a kludge that we can act for different reasons. Cooperation is helping others in a way that also helps oneself: it’s selfish and altruistic.