cognitive dissonance as deliberately choosing to be nasty so as to gain some small amount of fungible resource which can be spent on effective charity
Do you mean that choosing to be nasty can cause us to come to prefer nastiness (as a result of cognitive dissonance), and that this is an argument in favor of being nice?
Akrasia could work both ways—there’s a possibility that veganism could “use up” your charitableness, which would certainly be a bad thing. But on the other hand veganism might help you integrate socially with other vegan activists, which might be a motivating factor to give.
Alternatively, behaving altruistically could motivate you to pursue additional altruistic behaviors, creating a positive feedback cycle. This seems most plausible to me.
Do you mean that choosing to be nasty can cause us to come to prefer nastiness
Being nasty in order to achieve some greater good requires complicated reasoning which can feel wrong. I’d argue that it’s best to limit the amount of that kind of reasoning that we subscribe to—it feels like it could be demotivating, or that we could become desensitized to the feeling of wrongness, or something.
Do you mean that choosing to be nasty can cause us to come to prefer nastiness (as a result of cognitive dissonance), and that this is an argument in favor of being nice?
Alternatively, behaving altruistically could motivate you to pursue additional altruistic behaviors, creating a positive feedback cycle. This seems most plausible to me.
Being nasty in order to achieve some greater good requires complicated reasoning which can feel wrong. I’d argue that it’s best to limit the amount of that kind of reasoning that we subscribe to—it feels like it could be demotivating, or that we could become desensitized to the feeling of wrongness, or something.
I agree.