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technicalities 2 Sep 2022 7:56 UTC
7 points
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Nice work!
PS: I reckon “EA looks unkind” is a more accurate title.
Stephen McAleese 1 Sep 2022 16:37 UTC
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Interesting post. I like how it introduced the idea that kindness can improve relationships which seems important and beneficial. It’s great that people perform acts of kindness to improve their relationships.
“These findings are consistent with the theory that the function of altruism is to foster cooperative relationships with others.”
However, I think there are reasons for being altruistic other than improving relationships. For example, charities such as the Against Malaria Foundation are saving lives.
Also, if we only give money to people we know, we won’t be benefitting the people in the world who need resources such as money the most. People we don’t know in poor countries are often the most in need and are probably too poor to reciprocate.
Max Krasnow 1 Sep 2022 17:16 UTC
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Thanks, Stephen, we agree! (I work with Oliver on this.) An important distinction to make, though, is between the proximate motivation and the ultimate design of the psychology involved in that motivation. For example, most people would agree that it is intuitively obvious that if someone buys bed nets for an anonymous person on the other side of the world who will never know their name, there could be no (proximate) motivation to make a relationship with that person. But, there is a mountain of research supporting the theory that the psychology involved does indeed have that (ultimate) design, and that matters for the specific details of whether particular interventions/treatments are effective or not. In the case of anonymity, the psychology involved appears designed to be extremely reluctant to construe a situation as truly anonymous, even when people would say explicitly that they know they are anonymous.

See, for example: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/epl/files/krasnow2019_article_theimportanceofbeinghonestevid.pdf
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/epl/files/psychological_science-2016-krasnow-etal.pdf
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/epl/files/scientificreports_krasnowdeltontoobycosmides2013.pdf
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/epl/publications/evolution-direct-reciprocity-under-uncertainty-can-explain-human-generosity-one-0