Quote Originally Posted by Singu View Post
I think it comes across as distasteful if you apply "cost-and-benefit" analysis to human relationships.
It's not politically correct nowadays, I will give you that : p

But everyone does apply it sometimes, bc it's inevitable. You can't forever do things that just do not *work*, like, you can't be purely altruistic. As soon as you are not purely altruistic all the time, cost and benefit does get taken into account. E.g... you will gladly help someone with a favour that's easy for you to do: it really helps the person, so the benefit is good, but the cost is decently small to you.


So the argument goes that these things are happening under the veneer of emotions anyway, and people are just hiding these things with "nice" languages. But that's just pure hypocrisy, and everybody only has their own rational self-interest at heart. This seems like the doctrine of neoliberal economics applied to human relationships.
I don't really use pure neoliberal economics, maybe Adam does (tho' doubt it lol), I don't, my approach includes ideas on fairness a lot more than that.

To clarify again. I don't think that people only have the rational self-interest, no. That's there too though, bc it's also necessary to have that. Some put this as "take care of yourself then you will be able to take care of others too"


But if that were the case, then why would we even need feelings? It seems unlikely that feelings are just there to "grease the wheel" of human relations in a society.
I never intended to say they don't play an integral role too.


Perhaps the reason for the distaste is because you need to understand each different individuals in their own right, in order to have human relationships. It's not like as if you can abstract away some kind of a "universal law" that can be applied to all relationships, as in "cost-and-benefit analysis". But the premise of cost-and-benefit analysis is the premise of only having your own rational self-interest at heart. Which makes one extremely self-centered.

It's doubtful that you apply cost-and-benefit analysis if you're say, raising children. Perhaps the reason why you care for children is not because you care about some benefit, but rather merely think that you should raise children (mainly because you understand the needs and wants of children, and understand how they're vulnerable and how they need adults). I mean of course, you may feel some emotional contentment in raising children. But people also sacrifice a great deal.

So perhaps the premise of raising children is not only because there is some benefit, but because you understand their needs, and you also understand that you can fulfill their needs.
The universal laws are pretty general, the specifics beyond that will be individual sure.

And hm no, I never tried to see "cost-and-benefit analysis" in a vacuum like that

The thing is... I do include fairness in all this, idk about Adam, but for me it's like, I have self-interest but the other person is also respected so the "calculations" are made with that in mind. So no, using a sober rational approach doesn't have to just include cost and benefit analysis for oneself, it can and should include the other person too. This is how I see this.

Raising children... supposedly the benefit is giving your genes on :shrug There can also be social ones.