Let's not get nihilistic.

Definition:
Being nihilistic is also closely related to the political philosophy of anarchism, a belief that all social structures need to be destroyed before a new, better society can be developed.

https://www.vocabulary.com/dic...can%20be%20developed.

I much prefer this:

https://www.bing.com/search?q=...QBRE&sp=1&ghc=1&lq=0

Aristotle was an empirical political philosopher who aimed at a harmonious city under the rule of law2. His work, Politics, investigates what makes for good government and what makes for bad government and identifies the factors favourable or unfavourable to the preservation of a constitution3. His remarks on the nature of justice, the goal of political association, and the relationship between individual and state have as much relevance now as they were in his time.

Pop quiz - name three genuinely altruistic politicians.

Well, o.k., I’ll take Jimmy Carter as a strong ‘maybe’, but give me two more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...Raskin#Personal_life

excerpt:

On January 4, 2021, Raskin and his wife posted a tribute to their son online that stated that, after a prolonged battle with depression, he had died by suicide.[75][76] In a farewell note, Tommy said, "Please forgive me. My illness won today. Look after each other, the animals and the global poor. All my love, Tommy."[77] Tommy was buried on January 5, 2021. The next day, Raskin was in the Capitol with his daughter and son-in-law during the January 6 Capitol attack.[78][79] Hours later, he began drafting an article of impeachment against President Trump, and six days later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi named Raskin the lead manager of Trump's second impeachment.[80][81] His 2022 book Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy focuses on his son's life and his preparation for the impeachment trial.[82] He was also the subject of a MSNBC documentary film titled "Love & The Constitution", which covered his first three years in Congress and his fight to uphold the constitution during Trump's presidency. The film also captured the loss of his son and Raskin’s appointment as lead impeachment manager in Trump's second impeachment trial.[83]

Raskin has been vegetarian since 2009.[84]

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Oh wait - you said altruistic, not vegetarian.

quote:

genuinely altruistic

That's a difficult assignment.

I didn't even bother considering conservatives.

How about Obama? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...e_Prize#Barack_Obama

He said this:

Barack Obama
Obama said he was "surprised" and "deeply humbled" by the award.[14] In remarks given at the White House Rose Garden on the day of the announcement, Obama stated, "I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments but rather an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations."[15]

"Throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes," Obama said. "And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action—a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century." He said those common challenges included the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons (which he said might not occur in his lifetime), nuclear proliferation , climate change, tolerance "among people of different faiths and races and religions", peace between and security for Israelis and Palestinians, better social conditions for the world's poor, including "the ability to get an education and make a decent living; the security that you won't have to live in fear of disease or violence without hope for the future." The United States, he said, is "a country that's responsible for ending a war and working in another theater to confront a ruthless adversary that directly threatens the American people and our allies."[15]

The award, he said, "must be shared with everyone who strives for justice and dignity—for the young woman who marches silently in the streets on behalf of her right to be heard even in the face of beatings and bullets; for the leader imprisoned in her own home because she refuses to abandon her commitment to democracy [referring to Aung San Suu Kyi]; for the soldier who sacrificed through tour after tour of duty on behalf of someone half a world away; and for all those men and women across the world who sacrifice their safety and their freedom and sometime their lives for the cause of peace."[15] He did not take questions from reporters after giving his statement.

Obama announced early that he would donate the full 10 million Swedish kronor (about US$1.4 million) monetary award to charity.[16] The largest donations were given to the housing charity Fisher House Foundation who received $250,000, and the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund which received $200,000. Eight organizations which support education also received a donation. $125,000 was donated to the College Summit, the Posse Foundation, the United Negro College Fund, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, the Appalachian Leadership and Education Foundation, and the American Indian College Fund. $100,000 was donated to Africare, and the Central Asia Institute.[17][18]

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Obama also had a pandemic plan which Bush had a part in. Trump dismantled it.

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To give context, for whatever it's worth:

https://www.vox.com/future-per...thropy-crytocurrency

This is a long article, so scroll down to the section titled "The shift to longtermism".

I'll copy part of it:

The shift to longtermism

Which raises an obvious question: What the fuck is longtermism?

The basic idea is simple: We could be at the very, very start of human history. Homo sapiens emerged some 200,000-300,000 years ago. If we destroy ourselves now, through nuclear war or climate change or a mass pandemic or out-of-control AI, or fail to prevent a natural existential catastrophe, those 300,000 years could be it.

But if we don’t destroy ourselves, they could just be the beginning. Typical mammal species last 1 million years — and some last much longer. Economist Max Roser at Our World in Data has estimated that if (as the UN expects) the world population stabilizes at 11 billion, greater wealth and nutrition lead average life expectancy to rise to 88, and humanity lasts another 800,000 years (in line with other mammals), there could be 100 trillion potential people in humanity’s future.

By contrast, only about 117 billion humans have ever lived, according to calculations by demographers Toshiko Kaneda and Carl Haub. In other words, if we stay alive for the duration of a typical mammalian species’ tenure on Earth, that means 99.9 percent of the humans who will ever live have yet to live.

And those people, obviously, have virtually no voice in our current society, no vote for Congress or president, no union and no lobbyist. Effective altruists love finding causes that are important and neglected: What could be more important, and more neglected, than the trillions of intelligent beings in humanity’s future?

In 1984, Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit published his classic book on ethics, Reasons and Persons, which ended with a meditation on nuclear war. He asked readers to consider three scenarios:

Peace.
A nuclear war that kills 99 percent of the world’s existing population.
A nuclear war that kills 100 percent.

Obviously 2 and 3 are worse than 1. But Parfit argued that the difference between 1 and 2 paled in comparison to the difference between 2 and 3. “Civilization began only a few thousand years ago,” he noted, “If we do not destroy mankind, these few thousand years may be only a tiny fraction of the whole of civilized human history.” Scenario 3 isn’t just worse than 2, it’s dramatically worse, because by killing off the final 1 percent of humanity, scenario 3 destroys humanity’s whole future.

This line of thinking has led EAs to foreground existential threats as an especially consequential cause area. Even before Covid-19, EAs were early in being deeply concerned about the risk of a global pandemic, especially a human-made one coming about due to ever-cheaper biotech tools like CRISPR, which could be far worse than anything nature can cook up. Open Philanthropy spent over $65 million on the issue, including seven- and eight-figure grants to the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s biodefense team, before 2020. It’s added another $70 million since. More recently, Bankman-Fried has funded a group led by his brother, Gabe, called Guarding Against Pandemics, which lobbies Congress to fund future pandemic prevention more aggressively.

Nuclear war has gotten some attention too: Longview Philanthropy, an EA-aligned grant-maker supported by both Open Philanthropy and FTX, recently hired Carl Robichaud, a longtime nuclear policy grant-maker, partly in reaction to more traditional donors like the MacArthur Foundation pulling back from trying to prevent nuclear war.

But it is AI that has been a dominant focus in EA over the last decade. In part this reflects the very real belief among many AI researchers that human-level AI could be coming soon — and could be a threat to humanity.

This is in no way a universal belief, but it’s a common enough one to be worrisome. A poll this year found that leading AI researchers put around 50-50 odds on AI surpassing humans “in all tasks” by 2059 — and that was before some of the biggest strides in recent AI research over the last five years. I will be 71 years old in 2061. It’s not even the long-term future; it’s within my expected lifetime. If you really believe superintelligent, perhaps impossible-to-control machines are coming in your lifetime, it makes sense to panic and spend big.

(There's more)

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OTOH, we are afflicted with the fundamental tenet of Christianity, and the constant belief through history that we are in the End-Times and all the baggage that carries. It's a dogma wall. There is zero altruism to be found there.

quote:

Originally posted by Tumbleweed:
Pop quiz - name three genuinely altruistic politicians.

Well, o.k., I’ll take Jimmy Carter as a strong ‘maybe’, but give me two more.

I think quite possibly "W".

Now before you go bananas, let me say I don't believe "W" pursued the Presidency or used his tenure for selfish or self serving reasons. I think it might be possible he intended to shore up his father's legacy, he led America in the way he thought or was brought to believe was best,.....


I've said it before and I'll say it here, I think "W" was one of the worst presidents in mine and possibly my parents lifetime. "W"'s failure in the M.E. changed the course of our nation and culture, (for the worse,) for decades.

I'm under the impression that Vice President Pence is altruistic.

Id tend to agree with you Scott.

also, it begs the question given the examples. Is altruism necessarily desirable given the choice of that or competence?

Name an altruistic competent president/

quote:

Originally posted by shankspony:
Id tend to agree with you Scott.

also, it begs the question given the examples. Is altruism necessarily desirable given the choice of that or competence?

Name an altruistic competent president/

Washington and Lincoln, possibly Eisenhower. Certainly John Quincy Adams.
I believe Reagan was competent and although I suspect he pursued the Presidency for status and power I don't believe he sought power to the detriment of his nation.
I think Nixon was a patriot and a good president but he put his pursuit of power before the nation. I think Teddy Roosevelt was truly great as was FDR, but in both cases they really believed that they and they alone could lead the nation, sort of like Churchill.

They were all good presidents, and presidents of their time.
Nixon crossed a line for sure which rules him out.

Not really sure any of them were altruistic. What they had was vision and leadership to take the country in a direction they felt was best.

quote:

Originally posted by Scott King:
I don't believe "W" pursued the Presidency or used his tenure for selfish or self serving reasons.

I voted for Bush twice. I actually think he did a decent job. On par with his dad, Obama, and Clinton.

That being said, Iraq was a failure that will haunt our grandchildren long after we are gone.

"WMDs", "this man tried to kill my father!"..... Altruistic? That's a hard sell, at least for me.

But I still like "W" and believe that he was a good person, as men in power go anyway.