I think you’re talking about is a slightly narrower concept: altruistic seriousness about things that are important AND urgent. Everybody is serious about at least a few non-urgent selfish concerns. In the case of children/elderly possibly “unimportant” as well.
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Replying to @vgr @s_r_constantin
This comic strip kinda gets at this. It’s a serious cartoon, don’t worry. http://www.viruscomix.com/page471.html
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Replying to @vgr @s_r_constantin
It was posted in a comment to my post “in the real world” which I think is also germane here. The idea of “serious” I think overlaps strongly with “in the real world” in some ways.https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/05/27/in-the-real-world/ …
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Replying to @vgr @s_r_constantin
Also: Non-seriousness is serious. It is central to creating the value which makes seriousness in other things worthwhile. Liberal societies are worth defending with cops in part because they make good jokes, music. Dictatorships are less worth defending in part because they don’t
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
Yes. This is one of the clear conclusions from Sarah Perry’s book on suicide and stuff she’s written since. Life isn’t intrinsically worthwhile and valuable enough to defend at arbitrary cost. It has to be made worth defending at any given level.
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Replying to @vgr @s_r_constantin
A lot of “irrational” non-serious behaviors are actually rational signals of low life preference in a world where the cost of suicide is maintained at artificially high levels to benefit the high life-preference subset.
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Replying to @vgr
This is true, I think. Surprisingly few people believe it!
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Someday I’ll write a post titled “A tale of 2 Sarahs” It’s weird that the 2 people I take most seriously (heh) on longevity and suicide are both named Sarah and are super serious and unserious respectively.
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