Problematizing Altruism

            I had a lovely conservation two days ago with an interlocutor who caused me to think more deeply about “what does it mean to be an altruist?” I’ve discussed altruism in a post where I showed the psychological literature indicates that most adult humans risk their lives to save a child who is drowning instinctively. I hypothesize these individuals don’t even think at all, but if they failed to act, and the child died, they’d be stuck with an incredibly guilty conscience. And ignoring someone who is in pain should strike those Catholic pangs of guilt, and I know every time I walk by a homeless person and am unable to give money or food. I do volunteer when I have time for the homeless, or I have in the past.

            But is altruism so straightforward? Take my career for example. Although neither one of my parents is a lawyer, my Dad was an enrolled actuary and ran his own company and made enough money that when I graduated from Dartmouth, I had no student debt. Based on this, and a slight scholarship, I went to UC Berkeley for law school after Harvard retracted its word to take me off the waitlist. (Harvard, I think SOL has passed, but it’s possible I might have had a promissory estoppel claim because I was led to believe I would be taken off the waitlist. . . this was years ago and it’s so counterfactual that it doesn’t matter. I’m grateful I went to Berkeley as my classmates were and are salt of the earth.) 

            As a result, after enrolling in the federal government’s loan forgiveness program, and after clerking and a brief stint at WilmerHale (go Wilmer, go!) it was a straightforward decision to go into public interest law/academia. I had no dependents except for two cats, and I knew I wanted to serve the world and make it a better place and dedicate my life to justice. But does that necessarily make my law school colleagues who went into Big Law less altruistic? One might think so if they splurged and bought Lamborghinis full of Russian ballerinas, like Bruce Wayne the billionaire playboy in Batman (who actually does it as a cover story for his altruism, sorry for the plot spoiler), then the answer would be “yes.” 

But I know many lovely people in Big Law, and a large portion of them are not splurging on Lamborghinis full of Russian ballerinas, but rather using their income to support their impoverished families or using it for other altruistic activities. When I was in law school, I had a friend whose anonymity I’ll preserve who used his student aid to send remittances back to his family in Guatemala. (He’s U.S. citizen, p.s., so he can’t be deported, not that that’s stopping Trump.) I also had a friend whose anonymity I’ll also preserve who came over to the United States on a boat from Cuba after Fidel Castro persecuted his family. How could I possibly judge this friend who left all his possessions behind for going into Big Law? The answer is I never, ever, did. Not for a nanosecond. (And both of you, I’d love to hear from you if you read me. I miss you and think you are fabulous.)  

            So does my game theory need to be problematized from this perspective, other than to return to Jack Balkin’s critique that game theory is reductionistic and I clearly need to learn complex math modeling? Altruism studies from psychology show that there are many ways humans are self-sacrificial to strangers, but they are also self-sacrificial to kin, and take care of their own (most of them, there are exceptions to every rule). I’d like to think if someone offered me $1 million dollars on a game show and I had the choice to defect, I wouldn’t. But I might, or at least I would be really tempted. Why? I have family and friends in poverty, and I’d take the money and not buy a pink Telsa (my dream car, even though Elon Musk is not someone I’m a fan of), but I might “defect” and help other people in need to buy things like food or put a roof over their head. Does this count as defecting? I think not, or at least I’d have to problematize it from the angle of evolutionary biology, which is not what I research, but I have a working knowledge of it because so much of game theory "evolved" from one of the greatest game theorists of all time who happened to be an evolutionary biologist: John Maynard Smith. 

            The kinship impulse is strongly present in biology while at the same time in healthy communities members feel a sense of obligation toward any community member. I mean, it’s just a basic human instinct. As for Nash (who I guess did not feel that instinct for the woman he knocked up and kicked to the curb), I’m not sure how to explain this. I invite evolutionary biologists and anthropologists with an interest in game theory to contact me and weigh in. Josh Plotkin, I'd really love to hear from you or Martin Nowak. You two are Gods in my book, or William Press, but none of you have my new theory on the Prisoner's Dilemma, which I've run by a hardcore statistical game theorist, and others. 

            I'm actively in talks with amazing physicists and would love to meet more. I value nice physicists who are humble, put up with zany people like Dr. Kary Mullis, who was a family connection, have childlike wonder, and are willing to learn. And who like time.


-Cortelyou C. Kenney, 6/28/25 at 7:34 am PT

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