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Comment by vadiml | Hacker News Reader

Risking one’s own well being to help the community is basically a definition of an altruistic behaviour. Nobody and i mean NOBODY can reach and keep the position of CEO of big international corporation by exhibiting altruistic tendencies. The environment is too competitive and it promotes egoism and punishes altruism. (BTW, The same reasoning stand for political leadership too). So, I don’t think we can really expect this call to be heard…

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Okay, let's not call on powerful people to do the right thing then. I mean they were the ones with the ambition to influence the world, so it's pointless to even ask them to have some morals.

Where do you see a connection between influencing the world for personal gains and having morals?

Uh, in the comment I was responding to?

That is a problem to be solved then.

no it isn't a problem to be solved, it is a property of the world (of human psyche), like gravity is a property of matter.

Properties of the world can still be problems to be solved. Gravity is a problem solved by rockets. What is the solution to the gravity of human avarice?

if you put it that way, the only solution is to brute force it (i.e., have cheap, limitless energy, which is easy for any and everyone to utilize).

Sorry, but this is a textbook example of oversimplification.

Isn't saying this is a oversimplification, an oversimplification?

I'd say it is basic game theory and statistics. If we have population of individuals who exhibit three types of behaviour: A - altruistic (1% of population) E - egoistic (1% ...) N - Normal (randomly A or B 98% of population) Let's them play a game where E - type has muuuuch better chances to win.... It is obvious that the proportion of E - types in the winner population will grow during the tournament. This explain the current state of world affaires: Usually 'Supreme Leader' is the "biggest bastard of them all"...

It's basic extrapolating-without-data is what it is. You have a theory, well, let's call it a hypothesis ("a person who reaches CEO level is someone who will not behave altruistically"). You even have a simple model which mostly agrees with the hypothesis (not completely, I'll note) and which relies on several more untested hypotheses. Both the hypothesis and the model predict certain things about the world. You can check! Are those predictions borne out in reality? (˙˙˙ʎʃʃɐǝɹ ʇoᴎ :ɹǝʍsu∀)

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