Motivation

What motivates someone to want to change/improve the world for everyone’s benefit rather than just their own self-interest?

[ 17/December/22 ]

If someone has a reasonable expectation of living a very long time (thousands of years), and if one has digital memory that doesn’t forget; then it is in ones own self interests to take all reasonable steps to ensure that everyone has reasonable degrees of freedom and reasonable access to resources; such that they are able to do whatever they reasonably and responsibly choose.

When someone spends a few years looking deeply into the mathematics and logic of the evolution of complex systems, it becomes clear that all levels of complexity are made possible by new levels of cooperation. Any competition that does not have a cooperative base is necessarily destructive of that level of complexity.

So in a very deep sense, it is self interest that motivates many (including myself) to improve things for the benefit of all – self included.