This hasn't been my observation. Instead, I see a society where people regularly help and serve one other, frequently for free. Consider parents, social workers, most academics, food banks, charity in general, most workers in most businesses, et cetera. I wonder: who do you know and work with? A minority of people profit wonderfully off this. Incidentally, they seem to also preach principals that can only lead to the end of their gravy train.
You can counter by insisting that these "altruistic" behaviors are simply less directly but still in the altruist's interest. I would entirely agree.
I don't disagree with your point that, in life, not everybody is in it for themselves. But the examples you chose to demonstrate altruism are a bit ridiculous:
- parents: they wanted a child and now they have to take care of it, it's not a selfless act at all
- social workers: are paid to pretend to care. Often they genuinely do care, but this isn't altruism, it's a job
- most academics: I see you haven't met many academics. Altruistic (and selfless) are not terms I would use to describe them. The majority is very much in it for themselves...
- food banks, charity in general: very true, some charity do strive on unpaid volunteers, that is altruism
- most workers in most businesses: okay now you're getting ridiculous...
Many children are unwanted. Consider adoption and neglect. Parents know not to admit these things broadly.
Social work is a very low paid existence and most of the social workers I know could easily have earned more elsewhere which they are pained to know but persist through regardless because they care more for living in a world with less total suffering even at the cost of their own.
I earned my MSc from the University of Edinburgh and interacted thoroughly with academics there and in the process of getting there. I know many people with their PhDs and have had personal friendships with professors, postdocs, and other researchers. I would agree that academic incentive structure have been made deeply dysfunctional and delusion abounds. Also that defection is common. I have known some of those evil actors (e.g. Sharon Oviatt) so I don't deny their existence.
The very premise of business is that it takes a profit from the excess efforts of labor. I'm not the ridiculous sort that fails to recognize that often workers productivity is both made possible and enhanced by the accumulated coordination and structure of firms and owners should capture some of that value. However, increasingly research is showing that the advantages of our society are being captured by firms. Meanwhile, too many owners are failing to responsibly reinvest in the population and have made religions out of not fostering true growth.
My claim is that multiple cultural norms live side-by-side and I'm trying to help you and others realize that different options are plausible and more advantageous. The cooperators learn self preservation and hiding while they are also harvested while and beyond doing so. My speculation is that the expanded belief holding of perspectives like yours decreases the size of that population which will be a downward spiral of inefficiency and impoverishment. I expect the bottom will fall out viciously if it gets to that.
My spending time on this conversation is altruism, what is it for you?
Yep, you even see it on HN with artists and devs complaining about AI, especially when things like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion were first announced. People who were pretty lax about copyright when it didn't affect them personally suddenly became copyright maximalists, talking about "stealing, theft, etc" Since then, people have calmed down and realized that AI is simply a tool like any other.
It's incredibly rare to find people who hold ideals that are detrimental to their own life.