Discussion Do we make a difference?

[derpyderpins]

Before on here, I've tried encouraging people by saying things like:

Why do we matter?

Say we don't have personal reasons to live like family or pets, why do we matter? I hear people go on about how 'our life is valuable' but why? I genuinely cant think of a reason

sanctioned-suicide.net

The value you have to the world around you can spread beyond just your family and the people living in your home. As long as you aren't harming people, you are at that nominal value or 0 net value. Now say you go out about your day and you get something at the store, and you smile at the person checking you out and say "thank you", and they were having a shitty day but your manners made them forget about it for just a second, you just provided non-zero value to someone else. Beyond that, if you go home and post on here and someone who is struggling relates or you at least make them think about something in a way they hadn't, you've provided some non-zero value. Right now, typing this out has helped me clarify my thoughts on this subject, so you've provided non-zero value to me through this interaction.

I don't think so, anymore. I've tried to be good to people, but I don't think it matters on a small scale like this.

I'm starting to think the systems in society and the world around us are flexible, and even if you give some, if you're a normal, insignificant person, the system as a whole won't even notice. It compensates, adjusts, and continues on in the same way. You're tiny positive will be absorbed by a tiny negative elsewhere. Net 0.

People are going to keep being the same selfish people they always were. We're resilient, like cockroaches. We just keep surviving and moving towards what we want. The details and what happens on the way are of minimal consequence. The base drive and primal instinct will overpower the humanity at the important points. People let you down and turn on you when it's better for them.

I dunno. The question is, do you think we're able to matter at all on a day-to-day? Can the little people do anything?

 

[lamargue]

most people have independent wants which may not be understood. the typical function of providing utility to others requires the assumption that the act is something they value. moreover, i think providing utility manifests itself in the character of the individual. a man who helps an old lady with her groceries surely perceives the weight of his act: it makes him feel good, sure, but it's not strictly confined to the pleasure derived therefrom. it's knowing that that person is capable of helping others, and as such a feature that they perceive in themselves. but in a logic of independent wants, people will always value what brings them the most net pleasure/or what provides them the most use, like, for instance, a person who would prefer their friend group to share the same political views as he does.
if the old lady was, say, a philosopher who believed that no humans acted in good faith, she would chalk up the act of the young man as some desperate attempt to establish his own 'goodness' from the act, thus invalidating it from her perspective. yet the man is unaware of this, and thus continues to help other old ladies with their groceries. it's really a gamble; though i don't think he acted for the old lady's approval. he perceived that he could be of convenience to her.

but your thinking to me is something i think i can understand. when you speak of net impact, i assume that this can be modeled like nodes on a graph, where each member holds a certain value and the strands of the graph are assigned particular weights. i think that your impact really depends on clarifying the wants of the other. if the old woman was someone you grew to know and consistently help, you would become a part of her life rather than a small rare convenience. i think that the system functions to option certain values so as to make clear what is probably a normative want, like for instance if a third party clarified to the man that helping others is characteristic of generally good people and should be encouraged. that's only due to the wide-spread notion of altruism in our society.

but the more relationships you hold and contribute to, then surely you can pass net zero utility. or at least that's what i think, anyway.

 

[derpyderpins]

most people have independent wants which may not be understood. the typical function of providing utility to others requires the assumption that the act is something they value. moreover, i think providing utility manifests itself in the character of the individual. a man who helps an old lady with her groceries surely perceives the weight of his act: it makes him feel good, sure, but it's not strictly confined to the pleasure derived therefrom. it's knowing that that person is capable of helping others, and as such a feature that they perceive in themselves. but in a logic of independent wants, people will always value what brings them the most net pleasure/or what provides them the most use, like, for instance, a person who would prefer their friend group to share the same political views as he does.
if the old lady was, say, a philosopher who believed that no humans acted in good faith, she would chalk up the act of the young man as some desperate attempt to establish his own 'goodness' from the act, thus invalidating it from her perspective. yet the man is unaware of this, and thus continues to help other old ladies with their groceries. it's really a gamble; though i don't think he acted for the old lady's approval. he perceived that he could be of convenience to her.

but your thinking to me is something i think i can understand. when you speak of net impact, i assume that this can be modeled like nodes on a graph, where each member holds a certain value and the strands of the graph are assigned particular weights. i think that your impact really depends on clarifying the wants of the other. if the old woman was someone you grew to know and consistently help, you would become a part of her life rather than a small rare convenience. i think that the system functions to option certain values so as to make clear what is probably a normative want, like for instance if a third party clarified to the man that helping others is characteristic of generally good people and should be encouraged. that's only due to the wide-spread notion of altruism in our society.

but the more relationships you hold and contribute to, then surely you can pass net zero utility. or at least that's what i think, anyway.

To continue the old lady / groceries example, I guess what I'm now contemplating is the comparison between the two scenarios: the man helps or he doesn't. I used to think that doing that little help was having a positive impact, even if tiny, which could then ripple into other good effects down the road. I'm now considering that the old lady will most likely get her groceries home anyway, and she has some built-in level of tolerance and stability that she won't be significantly affected by the difference over time in those scenarios. Similarly, the people she interact with have such tolerance.

If we zoom out, we'd consider that, for example, because the man doesn't help her, she has a heart attack and dies earlier than she otherwise would have. The larger community around her has built-in mechanisms for maintaining its stability, and the difference remains minimal. Just being honest. I guess this way I'm thinking is coming from a more negative view on people, generally. I'm no longer seeing individuals as special. I think we're all NPCs at the end of the day.

 

[lamargue]

To continue the old lady / groceries example, I guess what I'm now contemplating is the comparison between the two scenarios: the man helps or he doesn't. I used to think that doing that little help was having a positive impact, even if tiny, which could then ripple into other good effects down the road. I'm now considering that the old lady will most likely get her groceries home anyway, and she has some built-in level of tolerance and stability that she won't be significantly affected by the difference over time in those scenarios. Similarly, the people she interact with have such tolerance.

If we zoom out, we'd consider that, for example, because the man doesn't help her, she has a heart attack and dies earlier than she otherwise would have. The larger community around her has built-in mechanisms for maintaining its stability, and the difference remains minimal. Just being honest. I guess this way I'm thinking is coming from a more negative view on people, generally. I'm no longer seeing individuals as special. I think we're all NPCs at the end of the day.

yes, i suppose it depends on the act. helping an old lady is quite a small thing. it probably holds more weight in the man's view than that of the old lady's.

from the view of the wider community, i agree. but i would also like to think that the built-in mechanisms of the community involve, to some degree, valuing good acts above bad ones in order to maintain stability. a man who dedicates himself to helping others in a small community will be seen as a hero, a do-gooder, etc., which will in turn reflect that community's attitudes toward good. of course, if such a man were to disappear, it would seem that his contribution is minimal. i think that another would probably turn up in his place, since the community at that point has clarified its own position on good acts. it rewards those who do good, even if only marginally.

but yeah, if you take each member of the community as an independent entity, then it truly seems as if our do-gooder made a minimal impact. the logic of independent wants often clashes with our conception of good acts; so a good act may not snowball into positive effects if applied to a stranger. but consistent maintenance of these relations i think might; or at the very least, they provide some mechanism of reward to the do-gooder, who feels that his presence is valued in the community. he becomes an exemplar of how people perceive the community: as fundamentally good.

i think this is why if, say, a man were to murder his wife within the community, it would be crushed. not because a murder happened so close to where people reside with their families, but because their communal values are challenged. it's hard to believe that evil can exist in a place where good is so highly valued. but as you say: there are built-in mechanisms for maintaining stability, so i think that the community will recover if and only if it has some conception of good; if it values good, or good is rewarded.

but outside of the Slovakian village or quiet suburban neighborhood, i would agree with you. when the community becomes too large, the state apparatus modifies the normative values of all of its members so as to maintain its own power.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

I think most people can only ever hope to make small differences in some other peoples' lives but very few will ever get to make a big impact for the rest of humanity whether positive or negative.

I think it's also tough because many people don't even want to bother with other people they don't even care about. Whether that's anyone outside their friend circle, family, tribe, community, town, country, or even continent is up to the individual.