Is it ok to do something nice for someone else for your own self-interest?

[reuben_tate]

Usually, when person A does something nice for person B, society sees person A as a "good" person.

However, should we view person A differently if we later find out that person A had a net benefit out of doing that act?

At least for me personally, I don't think much of it, since in this case, I would see this as a "win-win" situation. One doesn't need to "lose" to be considered a good person.

However, in society's view, things start to change when large corporations do "good" things. The reason being is because it is painfully obvious that the company is getting huge gains in publicity for their supposed acts of kindness and those gains in publicity is more than enough to offset the costs of their "kind" act.

However, that doesn't change the fact that the company or corporation did something good for others. Did the company ONLY do this act of kindness for the publicity; do they really care about the people the have affected? We can't get into the minds of people that organize these things to find out so we'll never know.

One might be tempted to say that helping others and making huge gains from it like the ones seen in corporations are a bad thing. But what if a large company or corporation genuinely actually wanted to do something good? It would very difficult for them because unless the corporation actually took efforts to make sure their actions didn't spill out to the public, their act of kindness is going to become publicly known and then they will be accused of only doing the thing as a publicity stunt.

So, what are your views and thoughts when it comes to corporations doing supposedly "good" things for people?

PS This is the video that inspired me to make this thread:
http://distractify.com/people/westje...stmas-miracle/

[Dynam0]

Companies need to make profitable gains in order to remain competitive; so if the company is managed effectively, any act of charity is carefully planned out with financial cost-benefits weighed, keep in mind I'm talking about large-scale corporations and not a local business.

Many businesses are using the "save the environment" platform more and more today than ever. How much the company values this platform on a moral level is irrelevant, since it sends a positive message and entices the consumer to buy their product. "If I buy Product X from Company A, they will plant 10 trees. Even though it costs 10 dollars more, it's good for the environment!!"

On a philosophical level, I would argue that anything someone does is a selfish act on some level. I've tried explaining this before and get very defensive responses from people who "just want to do something nice for someone without getting anything in return." The problem with that logic is that they are getting something in return; the satisfaction and joy of helping a person in need. It might sound ridiculous, but I argue that no act is completely selfless and charitable because there is always a motive or desirable outcome behind any decision. Of course there is selfishness that is ignorant or worse, indifferent of the damage it might cause others which is in no way comparable to a selfish act of kindness

[omega_grunt666]

Honestly only gave a situation like this thought when blizzard did it:

It was probably a few years ago now, but they were working on a new (WoW) pet/mount for the blizzard store and the finished models were leaked. Then there was a disaster in japan so they donated cash from sales to help out. But instead of putting up the new pet/mount they delayed it and re-packaged one of the older "exclusive" rewards from the WoW TCG. (different name same skin/model/animations)

I have nothing against them for helping out, but keeping the readily available things they could of sold for much more (and in return, raised more for the relief efforts) just for bigger profits later was definitely a dick move. But you couldn't bring up any sort of discussion about it without being shot down for "being greedy".

But 99 times out of 100, I don't see a problem with it. Like you said, win-win.

[Izzy]

Sure it is "ok", but it is certainly not as honorable as doing something nice for someone without having personal gains.

[Mollocephalus]

When you're doing something without any apparent personal gains you're actually still satisfying an inner impulse. No matter what the return is, there has to be one, or you wouldn't do that action at all. Just a heads up.

[Izzy]

Still better than doing things out of fear of being punished.

Being nice to people because it makes you feel good is as good as it gets.

[XelNya]

Originally Posted by Izzy

Being nice to people because it makes you feel good is as good as it gets.

Eh. I don't really feel it's that great. It just seems more natural than anything?

[Izzy]

Originally Posted by XelNya

Eh. I don't really feel it's that great. It just seems more natural than anything?

Then I guess there is no way to be nice and for it to be a legit act of kindness.

[Mollocephalus]

The payoff is always there. The inner payoff isn't readily visible to outsiders so it seems more "charitable" but it really isn't. In all honesty, mutual exchange is much more profitable and convenient for the whole environment. It creates a web of interactions which leads to greater growth for everyone involved. This means economically, technologically, morally and even emotionally. It's a win/win situation, as dynamer said.

[Reincarnate]

I don't think there's ever such a thing as true selflessness for reasons already stated.

Even altruism, at its core, has a selfish underpinning. In terms of evolution, we learned to do nice things for others because it, in some way, helped our survival in the past. If I do something nice for you, it increases the chances that you'll do something nice for me later if I am in need. This entire framework was also much more pronounced when we used to live in close-knit tribal societies where we'd meet the same people again and again and again. Altruism, in that context, meant you got to leverage the advantages of cooperation. Mutual cooperation tends to yield "synergy," which is a fancy word for "We can achieve more together than we could separately."

It's sort of like asking why we find art beautiful even though we didn't directly "evolve" such a thing for any reason. It's because the mechanisms we use when we examine art evolved under separate contexts. To use a vastly oversimplified example, maybe you like brighter colors over shitty, darker ones because that color differentiation was necessary in order for you to tell apart good fruit from rotten fruit. That impulse, now, is fired when you look at something that also has nice colors (even though it's not related to fruit anymore).

Same thing applies to why we enjoy music (even though we never directly "evolved" the need for music). All of our impulses are ultimately built from previous ones that had useful applications in other contexts.

Anyways I'm getting off topic, but this boils down to when mutual benefit is good vs. bad. IMO, helping someone in exchange for a "nice feeling" is pretty benign. Helping someone for publicity may turn some people off, but again it depends on the situation at hand.

Some people are selfish/practical and just want their problem solved. Others are principled and may not want to receive help unless there's evidence that it's "genuine," or maybe they don't want help if there is another cost being incurred. (e.g. "EvilCorp agreed to pay off my medical debt, but I disagree with their company and what they do and don't want them to gain publicity!").

But even a company whose CEO says "I want to help these people -- it's why I started this company!" is still acting on an impulse that is selfish on some level.

As with most things, everything is contextual.

[awein999]

I agree that everything we do is of interest to ourselves, that's just how life works and it's not necessary to get bogged down over. Therefore we have to embrace self-interest because we can't avoid it. If you are going to have self-interest no matter what, it's damn great that you use it to do nice things for others (the betterment of the world?) and you should be proud of yourself! We become richer people when we aren't afraid of who we are. The more people who intrinsically want to help others and take action, the better the world can be.

[Pseudo Enigma]

I think there is a difference between

Person A does something nice for Person B, gets something nice back
and
Person A does something nice for Person B, but only because they get something nice back.

It's probably different between each person how they respect this. Personally I think it's nice to let people feel like they are doing something nice, and if they get something out of it, that can be nice too. Even if the person only was thinking of what they were going to be getting out of it.

[iironiic]

In economics, for every action that one takes and every decision that one makes, there is an associated cost and an associated benefit. One of these economic concepts will outweigh the other. For companies and corporations, their major goal is to (as mentioned) make profits to keep it running, so every decision a company makes is extremely crucial to its success in the long term. Thus, a company must analyze their risk to make the best decision. Some would interpret that as a selfish act since I strongly believe that the level of selfishness is subjective to every individual.

Here's an example that we can/will experience at some point in our lives to emphasize this point. When we have feelings for someone we truly love, but the other cannot reciprocate those similar feelings, we all make a decision to respond to this. Some would pursue by strengthening the friendship and others would cut ties, burn the bridges, and move on. This decision highly depends on the individual's risk analysis (is it worth pursuing this friendship or should I just move on?). Some would say that "if you truly love someone, it's best to respect their decisions and truly care about their happiness." Is this a selfish statement or a selfless statement? There is no right answer, because quite frankly, there is a reasonable argument for both sides.

From experience though, I do strongly believe that if you are generally "selfless", the rewards are greater even though you risk losing a lot. Some may think that this is pure brilliance; others will think that this is pure stupidity. It all truly depends on the individual.

[infinity.]

kant says no
mill and benthem say yes

i say yes. even though most kantian saint, which is a concept so devoid from our reality, does any selfless or charitable deed through some veil of rationality, be it for self-actualization, the happiness gained from seeing others happy, or for simple joy of doing good. these reasons are surely admirable foundations for action, but are undoubtedly influenced by the outcome. i say working, doing, acting for the end result is an important tenet of our society.. it helps propagate a culture of people doing good for others for the sake of self-benefit, which means that people base their 'self-level conceptions of the good' on how they help one another, which i would claim is an incredibly virtuous pursuit

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by Pseudo Enigma

I think there is a difference between

Person A does something nice for Person B, gets something nice back
and
Person A does something nice for Person B, but only because they get something nice back.

It's probably different between each person how they respect this. Personally I think it's nice to let people feel like they are doing something nice, and if they get something out of it, that can be nice too. Even if the person only was thinking of what they were going to be getting out of it.

The problem here is that the semantics do matter in the end. Is "doing something nice for someone because it makes you feel good" in the category of "doing something nice only because you get something back"?

The mere act of "feeling good" for doing a good deed can be considered a form of utility/self-gain/"profit"/reward/something you get out of it/whatever. Whether it matters to us on a moral/ethical level is a separate question.

[Cavernio]

The only time anyone does something nice for anyone else without getting something back is when their expectations of reward were way off the mark.
We do nice things for people because we expect something in return. If it's a warm fuzzy that we get then it's a very obvious reward and is highly unlikely that one wouldn't get it because just the thought of doing the nice thing probably gives one a warm fuzzy. But there could theoretically be a total mismatch of reward vs expectation.

Alternatively, sometimes we do nice things for people despite very little reward because we've been trained that way. Like a computer that would be programmed to say 'You look good today' when someone goes on it, the computer wouldn't feel good saying it, but it's still doing something nice. People can and are basically trained just like animals, and will automatically do so many things without actually pausing to think about them. While reward may have been necessary to develop the behaviour in the first place, reward isn't necessarily necessary once a behaviour is learned.
Basically, if we do something nice but didn't think about it, I think we've done something nice with no reward for ourselves. I am finding it hard to give an example, but perhaps something like holding the door for someone. Sometimes we think about it, but more often than not it's simply a trained habit. I don't think these actions are particularly altruistic though.

Back to the OP tough. Most megacorps, in my mind which is probably highly inaccurate, would be better off showing altruism through better employment, better pay, better plans, etc. Like if a company is known for creating and using sweatshops or uses tax havens or has pitiful employee benefits or won't let employees unionize, etc, then them throwing money at some cause seems pretty manipulative to me.
Of course it depends on what the cause is as to how manipulative it feels. Donating money for cancer cures isn't ideologically against paying employees small wages, and so at least they'd be doing something good. It'd be quite different, if, say, they supported habitat for humanity or something, while not paying their own workers enough to support themselves.

[SCWolf]

Originally Posted by Mollocephalus

When you're doing something without any apparent personal gains you're actually still satisfying an inner impulse. No matter what the return is, there has to be one, or you wouldn't do that action at all. Just a heads up.

Exactly.

[Svaz]

The question posed in the OP evokes a concept of Judaism in my mind: Tzedakah. The link above details how it pertains to Judaism and whatnot, but what was brought to me particularly was the idea of a tier system when it comes to charity/kindness/giving things, etc. It argues that even being able to witness/experience/know of how it impacts the receiver isn't quite just. To truly achieve charity, you need to, well, "teach a man to fish," as the expression goes.

Following that stream of thought is a hell of a lot of criticism (warning: this link is especially broad) that acts such as charity and benefit donations only address symptoms and not the core issue; akin to maybe giving someone a tissue for mucus they're coughing up due to a bacterial infection, I guess.

[stargroup100]

Rubix probably hit the nail on the nose. There's no such thing as true altruism.

When people do something "selfless" or "altruistic", it's not because they are truly being nice for the sake of being nice. What it means is that they are doing something that has an overall direct benefit to society, but the direct personal gain is small, maybe even negative. (I use "direct" because these gains need to be something that can be seen/measured) Ultimately, they still make that decision because it benefits or satisfies them to some degree, which would not be true altruism.

All humans should strive to make decisions that benefit mankind. In the end, that's what is most important. If you make a decision that does just that, but also with high direct personal gains, whether or not that person is selfish is an entirely different manner. The person in question here still made a good decision.

[Vendetta21]

I think this semantic argument of altruisn being self-interested often gets abused like Pascal's wager in an attempt to level out the self-interest of things like feeling good from donating to charity and feeling good from stealing an item from the store, and when you render those actions as similarly motivated you can sort of paint things with a moral nihilism.

There is a hard to articulate but naive understanding of the word altruism where you are only getting back feelings of self-worth or esteem for your actions. If we define altruism as doing an act that helps others solely for your feeling of self-worth or adherence to your core values, then I am happy with that definition and would encourage others to be more altruistic.