Jamie Loftus

Sam and a lot of his people were rationalists or rationalist adjacent.

Yeah.

Yeah, to give you an idea of how these people talk about utility functions, I'm going to read an excerpt from an article on this website titled Your Utility Function is Your Utility Function by David Udell.

I've been thinking a lot lately about exactly how altruistic I am.

The truth is that I'm not sure.

I care a lot about not dying and about my girlfriend and family and friends not dying and about all of humanity not dying.

and about all life on this planet not dying too.

And I care about the glorious transhuman future and all that, and the 10 to the 50th power or whatever possible good future lives hanging in the balance.

And I care about some of these things disproportionately to their apparent moral magnitude.

But what I care about is what I care about.

So you see what he's saying if you read between the lines there, what the most rational thing for me to do is whatever makes me feel best.

Don't let people shame you for spending your resources, you know, entirely on yourself and your own whims.

Like you're actually a hero if you do that.

The core of it is always being able to say that, like, well, if you suggest that, number one, I have a responsibility to other people and that that responsibility is to some extent out of my hands, which is what we all say when we're in a society.

Right.

I don't have kids.

I don't have a choice not to spend some of the significant amount of money I pay in taxes educating other people's kids.

Now, I'm not a complete piece of shit, so I'm fine with that because like I've I've done very well for myself and kids need educations.

That's just a nice way for the world to work.

But these people are more of the feeling that like, no, I should do whatever is possible to avoid paying for, you know, a public school system.