Which One?

Allowing a form of Individualism form. This does not mean that you are aiming for a sole Collectivism, but a weaker form of individualism.

Depends on many factors. Either you kill the nigger, or the sandwich production line.

Society. But it needs to be built from the bottom up, society is a collection of individuals.

Collectivists think they think society is most important, but they actually think their individual whims are the most important and that society should bow to them.

So, then their own ideals are more out of self preservation then anything else?

I wish I was a collectivist, either a religious one, nationalist one or a political one. I just need some meaning in my life. I can't trick myself into believing in those spooks though.

But wouldn't identifying with a religious, political, or nationalist ideal through collective values and meanings be a choice that you could make almost anytime in your life that you wanted to? I mean, looking at the methodology of individualism is understanding that you can make your own choices, regardless of the social constructs and conventions - because it is your own personal choice.

Individualism ≠ Free will

I may be able to convince myself to be a communist revolutionary though. I can try.

A healthy balance between the two.

Allow a system where assholes cause minimal collateral damage while infringing on as few rights as possible.

Society is a collection of individuals. The rights of an individual are a check and balance to preserve the role of individuals as part of a society. A society can not work without individuals.

No, but individualism allows one to recognize that they still possess the moral or drive to simply say "No." The issue with most collectivist causes is that people become so invested that they cannot prevent themselves from doing otherwise. An individualist could at least restrain themselves.

Exactly.

A free society is a set of free individuals, but if an individual tries to use their freedom to take away the freedom of others out of narcissism masquerading as empathy, they should be apposed, because freedom of the society trumps the freedom of the individual.

That isn't to say a society shouldn't have laws and strong leadership however, but it should be fluid not brittle.
Both cancer and decapitation are deadly.

It's a balancing act. If society favors the individual too much there's anarchy. If it subsumes the individual for the society as a whole there's oppression.
Like any other aspect of life it's all about balance. Nobody in this world did it all alone, but at the end of the day you are the only person you can truly trust to have your best interests at heart (from your perspective)

>if an individual tries to use their freedom to take away the freedom of others out of narcissism masquerading as empathy
What if they try to take away the freedom of others because

>muh property
>muh rights

On a related note:

The majority of economists assume that people acting rationally will always pursue self-interest. But some theorists claim that to behave in an altruistic fashion is in fact more rational than acting in self-interest. Does this mean we are acting irrationally?

Which of the two do you support?

So, how would one design a society which embraces a strong leadership, but does not trump the individual?

Consent of the sheeple.

U.S. presidential system (in theory, not in practice).

Well, depending on who and what they are referencing - most situations are self resolving. For example, if a car manufacturer chooses to be racist and disallows the sale of vehicles to a certain racial group, then the outcome of such a choice is that they will lose a wide customer base. People will vote with their money and will partake in something that meets their needs. So, in the end the racist car manufacturer is receiving less profits then an average car manufacturer. So, the situation is settled and the matter is resolved without government influence. In terms of altruism, people could conspire against the racist car manufacturer in which they run him out of business, but that is again going as far as to say that the society has set this as an important objective that must be fulfilled. Likely, no, but it does provide a scenario in which self interest and altruism could be described.

Okay, let me give you an example based on the same car manufacturer scenario.

It would be altruistic for our car manufacturer to create cars with fewer carbon emissions because if the fewer carbon emissions the better the future will be for the entirety of the planet (and himself of course) - let's assume that the greenhouse emission/global warming thing is true to avoid getting side-tracked.

However as evidenced recently by VW and other manufacturers, they produce cars that emit not just the maximum amount allowed but even more than is allowed. This is rational in the short-term (money) but against it in the long-term. Is this a rational or an irrational act.

And this is just the supply-side of things. I haven't thought of a good example on the demand side of the market.

What does one define as irrational and rational, based on altruism and individualism?

It's a rational act, because the value of good for society is divided by your relative share of society as an individual.

Let's say you live in a village of 100 people. If you help a stranger embezzle $100 worth of tax funds, he will give you $10. Your share of the $100 as a member of the village is $1. You stand to gain a gross of $10, which is a net gain of $9. Selling out your village is a rational act as an individual. The problem is if everyone else can do it too.

What's also rational as an individual is to agree to a social contract with 99 other people who might each have the same opportunity to steal $1 from you, a potential loss of $99, in exchange for giving up your opportunity to gain $9. This is a rational choice as an individual and a society.

But there's one more possibility. You agree to both the social contract, but embezzle the taxes anyways, resulting in a profit of $9 for you, but without the loss of $99 from other people doing it. By lying and not getting caught, you have minimized your losses and maximized your gains, making this the most rational choice as an individual.

Also you die before there's any long term effects of your village being $90 poorer.

Does this define that it is impossible for the individual to be altruistic?

Neither.

The species itself is priority until we have a relatively widespread presence in space.

No, people can be hardwired to not renege on social contract.

You you have two villages of 100 people that both have a social contract, but one has a genepool with altruistic people, and the other has a genepool with greedy selfish liars, the genepool of the village of altruistic people is going to be richer.

Alturism is rational for a genepool and society, but not for an individual. If your society and genepool produces altruistic people through nature and nurture, at least to your village, it is rational for the genes and the social structure.

But surely, given that you're a member of that society, what is good for your society is also by extension good for you? In a less immediate way perhaps.

>the value of good for society is divided by your relative share of society as an individual

Only if making your village $90 poorer will lead to a shittier village that will make you personally more than $9 poorer at some point in the future, compared to the $9 gain from being an accomplice in embezzlement.

However, is it realistic to assume societies are altruistic enough to allow something like what you described to happen?

It's possible for people to be altruistic if the genes or societal rules benefited from it when shaping the personality of the individual.

I think it's scientifically proven that people can be hardwired to be altruistic. Ignore the endorphin argument, it's a red herring. Endorphins (and emotions in general) are the mechanism which genes through nature, and society through nurture influences the individual's rationality. Because the brain's rationality is at the mercy of emotions which tell the brain what to prioritize and what is rationally rewarding or unrewarding.

The endorphin argument would say that objectively the ultimate good is being able to have a lifestyle which you can pump as much endorphin and opiates into your brain for as long as possible. This is obviously false, therefore, you can be alturistic because of endorphins and it is still alturism.

Endorphins are how society tweaks the rational part of your brain to sometimes prioritize what is good for society, over what is good for you. For the most part, you as an individual do not control your genes or your upbringing.

Alturism is the result of rationality of a collection of individuals, and meta-rationalization. There still must be a balance though, too much alturism can be bad, just like too much individualism.

Just to step in here, I know that many describe "rational behavior" as something that maximizes one's own profit/good (and that means often selfish behavior) but that's nothing more than a rhetoric tactic.
"Rational acts" or behavior merely means that one's choices and acts are logically and factually in line with their knowledge and values.

f.ex. If someone truly believes that jumping off a bridge will cause them to be born again as Elvis, and they have facts to support their belief, and they wish to be born again as Elvis: it would be "rational" to jump off a bridge.

I don't know what you mean by more important. In general, neither are important at all, as there is no general sense in which one can say everything is either important or unimportant. To a government or a state, both are only important insofar as they further the state's only desire- to expand and control. There is no way of using the state toward your own ends; the supposed democratic "control" of the state is a silly invention of the modern era. The individual is always working towards their own ends, either willingly or unwillingly, so to them, the needs of the individual are always more important; this does not mean that their needs may not intersect with the needs of others, or that helping others would never be in an individual's own self interest- it simply means that they are always interested in their own welfare. The society is a supposed cohesion of individuals that does not exist as an entity. It has no needs as it isn't really there.

The whole is more important than the sole, but not to the point the sole should ever be sacrificed to benefit the whole, because in the end the sole is a part of the whole.
What is good for the goose is good for the gander and what is bad for the goose is bad for the gander.

> If someone truly believes that jumping off a bridge will cause them to be born again as Elvis, and they have facts to support their belief, and they wish to be born again as Elvis: it would be "rational" to jump off a bridge.

Because he's attempting to maximize his own good to the best of his ability. You're the one resorting to a rhetoric tactic. He is attempting to use some sort of rational process which is most likely to benefit him, and the result of using this method of logic leads him to your result.

If I were to use a calculator because it is faster and more accurate than doing it by hand, but part of the display is broken so it sometimes displays a wrong number, it's still more usually rational to use the calculator. Just because it turns out that you got a wrong result when you used the calculator doesn't mean using the calculator was the wrong choice.

All you've done is added in risk of being wrong into the cost-benefit analysis.

To the self developing and perpetuating pattern, the thing of importance is it's existence, it's own continuation and evolution.

You seem to have missed my point so I'll change the example for you
f.ex. If someone truly believes that jumping off a bridge will cause all of humanity to be born again as Elvises, and they have facts to support their belief, and they know that everyone wants to become a Elvis and they wish to do good for all of humanity: it would be "rational" to jump off a bridge

Altruism in itself isn't irrational of rational. Whether an act is rational or irrational isn't determined by does it do good or bad or to whom does the good or bad happen: that is a separate issue.
The rationality is determined by whether the thinking process behind the act is logical and consistent.

>If someone truly believes
You can question the rationality of a belief, believing something does not make anything predicated on that belief rational.

>and they have facts to support their belief
This means they made their best attempt at being rational, whether the end result was correct or not.

> they know that everyone wants to become a Elvis and they wish to do good for all of humanity
You have to resort to a retarded premise to be taken for granted for you to attempt to try and make your example work and be "rational"

>Whether an act is rational or irrational isn't determined by does it do good or bad or to whom does the good or bad happen: that is a separate issue.
No, it is the primary issue of your example, because the person's end goal is to maximize "good". If I place a bet and 60% of the time I double my money, it's rational to place the bet if my goal is to increase my money on average, even though 40% of the time I'll lose my money. Your argument is basically focusing on saying that it's rational to place the bet even if you're the 40% that loses. This is true, even if those odds are only my own estimations, if my estimations are right most of the time. But then you go off on a tangent to try and say it has nothing to do with any sort of optimization.

Neither or us is using the strict dictionary definition of rational, and you know very well what is meant by rational in the context of this thread. When determining the merits of society versus the individual, we're obviously talking about the maximizing of some sort of benefit, and we don't need to go making up the fact that if you're a satanist it's rational for you to want to see the world burn and start a nuclear war.

>Neither or us is using the strict dictionary definition of rational, and you know very well what is meant by rational in the context of this thread
Yeah sure, and that's what I clarified in my first message: My point was that using the word "rational" in the way it was used in some of the posts is lazy use of the word and maybe even misleading if the intention was to have a clean and clear conversation. But I'm starting to doubt that is the intent.

It depends on the question or the game
There are games where cooperation is the best option, and games where it isn't

>I think it's scientifically proven that people can be hardwired to be altruistic.
Only if you change the definition to something that would contradict what is the general idea of altruism. As in: claiming that selflessness is not in fact selfless but selfish and benefits you after all, like Sociobiology did with kin selection or some economists do with the Homo Oeconomicus.

>Alturism is the result of rationality of a collection of individuals
Absolutely. It is a social phenomenon and cannot be explained away with an individualistic perspective.

Society is a spook and doesn't actually exist.

It is like heisenburg's uncertainty principle where the very act of observing things on a quantum scale can affect the outcome. When you try to micromanage society all you are effectively doing is giving certain individuals more authority who don't necessarily represent "society" or your high ideals.

>biological reductionism
when will this meme finally die

>behavior of an animal that benefits another at its own expense.

Endorphin rush is not a benefit. It's a motivator. It's a mental indicator of a benefit. You get endorphins when you do something with a benefit, or at least that's how it's supposed to work. Obviously it doesn't always work out that way, but that's what your brain was evolved to do. Tricking your brain by taking drugs to simulate endorphins isn't a beneficial thing, it's just tricking your brain into thinking it is beneficial.

The idea of altruism being bad on average is retarded, and based on the stupid Christian meme of good means being completely selfless. I have had Christians tell me that mutually beneficial transactions aren't good because you benefit from them. It doesn't matter if you help someone else at the same time, benefiting yourself diminishes the goodness. This is beyond stupid.

If you give up $2 so someone can have $1, that's not a good thing. You've just destroyed $1 worth of value within a society. This is a bad thing, it's not a good thing. It's bad for you, it's bad for society, it's good for them. But you've a net loss of good.

If you do something because you hope someone would do the same for you, that is altruism. You have no guarantee or way of enforcing that your goodwill is ever reciprocated. You are benefiting another at your own expense, and you don't have to do it. Just because what comes around goes around means that it helps every member of society on average does not make the action not altruistic.

If you give up $1 so someone can save $2, that's a good thing. You've just added $1 worth of value within a society. This is a good thing, it's not a bad thing. It's bad for you, it's good for society, it's good for them. It doesn't matter that you benefit from other people doing the same. You did not benefit from that particular transaction, or even from your own personality trait. You benefit from everyone else doing that and having that personality trait.

>picture
Property is an entitlement, not a god given right. If you want to be a spooky, go ahead, just realize that property rights are a spook. The real reason you own something is because you have the power to defend it. If you want to be a spookster, it's a fairly coherent philosophy, as long as you don't pick and choose which spooks are spooks and which spooks aren't spooks.

>If you do something because you hope someone would do the same for you, that is altruism.
You are changing the definition of altruism to fit your own ideology.

the individual, as they shape society

>behavior of an animal that benefits another at its own expense

This is the definition of altruism. You gain no benefit from simply hoping. You could hope someone would help you and choose not to help someone else. The action itself is the determine factor, not the hope of reciprocation. Hoping or not hoping is not the determining factor in determining altruism. It is doing or not doing.

This is you trying to push that retarded ideal of the pure Christian selfless must be a net loss for on society ideal of good, which is in fact, bad. You are simply mad because you like to think of minds being perfect abstract rational entities, and not biological products and hate the idea of biological reductionism, which is why you shun the biological understanding of altruism.

How am I butthurt when you are the one building strawmen and using ad hominem.
You are the only one bringing "good" and "bad" and moral values into this.

Altruism is by definition selflessness behavior. Like I said in the beginning, the only way your argument works is if the behavior is by default not selfless, thus not altruistic.

>Altruism is by definition selflessness behavior
It's the behavior itself that needs to be selfless.

>Like I said in the beginning, the only way your argument works is if the behavior is by default not selfless, thus not altruistic.
No, that's your ideology.

>As in: claiming that selflessness is not in fact selfless but selfish and benefits you after all
You don't understand what selfish and selfless mean at all. You receive no benefit from the selfless act itself. You receive benefit from being grouped together with other selfless people in a society. You don't act altruistic so you can be included in this group, being altruistic gives you no benefit.

Fostering altruism is something genes and social structures do. Individuals have the capacity for altruism as a product of their genes and upbringing. Altruism is self serving to the gene pool and to the society. That doesn't mean it's self-serving to the individual or than any given act of altruism is self-serving to the individual.

If you can consider a gene or a society selfish, then yes, altruism is selfish. But altruism is a behavior of an individual within a society. It is not a selfish act for an individual.

If the individual could expect the same help from others regardless of whether he performs acts of "altruism" for others, that means any act of "altruism" incurs a cost on the individual they would not have to bear, and benefits themselves in no way, indeed making the act of "altruism" in fact altruistic.

Acts of altruism by the individual benefit the society. The society molds the individuals that are part of it to be altruistic. The individual is the one performing acts of altruism, not the society. The individual sees no benefit from being altruistic. They see a benefit from other people in the society being altruistic. This is distinctly different from the individual benefiting from their act of altruism.

society is more important until the individual can become truly independent of society. for the average person, this will not be attainable until a close to post scarcity society is realized.

It's most important to develop as an individual in society.

If the system aides you and you alone - then we talk about dictatorship.

Opposition.

Though what rights and property are you thinking of that would clash with the freedom of others?

You are arguing for methodological holism and I agree with what you said here 100%.

The disagreement stems from the original claim I responded to, that it is scientifically proven that altruism is hard wired and essentially genetic. That would be an individualistic perspective and any explorations in that area presume that altruism is by default not selfless, because it somehow benefits the individual. As far as I am aware scientific evidence shows that humans are genetically inclined to be selfish, rather than altruistic.

So in order to understand altruism as the selfless behavior that it is by definition, one would have to look at it collectively, rather than on the basis of genetics.

The way you continued the discussion I assumed you want argue that altruism is in fact selfish behavior and an extension of the individuals genetic predispositions.

The theory resulted in the practice.

The society, as they shape the individual

Benefittig every individual will benefit the collective (aka society), but harming the individuals for the sake of collective will still harm the collective.

> that it is scientifically proven that altruism is hard wired and essentially genetic
I said it is possible to be hardwired. I also said society molds the individuals that are part of it. No one is born out of the womb knowing the constitution.

>That would be an individualistic perspective and any explorations in that area presume that altruism is by default not selfless, because it somehow benefits the individual.
If you weren't so anti-biology, you'd realize there was a book by Master Fedora Richard Dawkins called the selfish gene. Genes do not exclusively belong to the individual.

>The way you continued the discussion I assumed you want argue that altruism is in fact selfish behavior and an extension of the individuals genetic predispositions.
It is not selfish. Selfish is in reference to the individual. Genetically disposed altruism is in reference to the gene.

If a grandparent sacrifices their life to save their grandchild, this is altruism. The grandparent has nothing to personally gain, but loses everything on an individual level. It's self-serving not to the grandparent, but the grandparent's gene by sacrificing a gene carrier that is infertile for the sake of a gene carrier that is fertile.

You keep conflating what is selfish for a genetic/social pattern that form member individuals is the same as selfishness of the individual. It's not.

What is self serving is being part of a group where other people are altruistic. Societies and genes try to form individuals that are altruistic for this reason.

You really fail to understand the concept of the individual. This isn't even a biological concept. There's lots of philosophies on individualism, like spooking.

So, does this identify that a government cannot formally recognize the individual or the society and if so - can a government legitimately design a system in which this is accurately depicted?

>You really fail to understand the concept of the individual. This isn't even a biological concept.
No one even said that. But ok, I do not understand it. You are right. I concede.

The part you seem to be stuck on is this.

If people entered a contract with each other to help each other in times of need, and put a computer chip in their brain to make sure they actually did it, this is self-serving and selfish because membership of the group relies on you making this choice. This is not altruistic, you enter the collective because it benefits you on average.

But you are born with your genes, you don't choose your genes or the society you enter. Your parents and society create you as a member. Your altruism is a result of them. It is others imposing a sense of altruism on you, not you deciding to be altruistic to gain membership. It is the other way around, you are created as a member of that group, and therefore made to be altruistic by the forces that benefit from altruism, society and genes.

Individuals are literally created by social units and genes, at the very least a pair of parents. More broadly speaking, your familial relatives and your community. Individuals do not spring forth from the mud and band together and form societies of individuals.

So, out of all things considered the society is the more important factor that must be accounted for, being that we collect into groups out of our basis for survival...