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the link to the "series" is broken - or Twitter doesn't like me for clicking it.I used this one that works: https://twitter.com/robinha...

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Still, it is 50x higher than than the next on the list and the polls do not look *that* much different.

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My problem with collectivist framing is this: Why is it me who owes the world, rather than the world owing me? There are plenty of people who could add marginal value to my life, but who omit doing so. Should they be punished for this omission? The collectivist framing doesn't give any account where this obligation comes from, and why it goes only in one direction (the one emotionally preferred by the collectivists).

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> To check on all this, I did a series of Twitter polls asking what fraction of their resources different kinds of people are obligated to spend trying to help the world.

By "resources," you specified "time/income/energy/reputation/career."

It's not disrespectful at all, but rather pragmatic, that little should be expected of the very young and the poor. They have few resources to spare, often have trouble making ends meet, and are usually the recipients of charity rather than the givers of it. Even if we restrict our view to the US, the average minimum wage worker's income/reputation/career values should be set arbitrarily close to zero.

Besides, and this may be disrespectful but seems intuitively true, all of those resources are downstream of intellectual ability, and here the very young and the poor are, on average if not in every particular case, much less capable. "From each according to his ability," "to whom much is given, much will be required," etc. This is arguably a core tenet of natural law.

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Successful politicians must heed their constituents wishes; those who thwart these wishes do not stay in power for long. This makes politicians largely epiphenomenal: the fault for their bad policies lies with the people's wishes. (Politicians have most freedom to operate on matters where their constituents have no strong opinions--usually, these are less important matters.)

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Interesting that there might be a direction of status reward: high status -> expectations of morality. Why not the other way 'round, where those with high moral character & influence are rewarded with status? That's *allegedly* the pitch of priests and (electioneering) politicians...

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Perhaps the tension between selfishness and divergent selflessness that you bring up might have resulted through evolution in our posited Dunbar number ~ 150.

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They claim to do so, but aren't granted a similar sort of public trust (I can scoff at them and ignore them, unlike a judge who might rule on my case). On the other hand, there is an unfortunate trend now where many journalists see themselves as being on the side of activists and will just uncritically amplify what they say, somewhat like how they have long been accused of acting as "stenographers" for government.

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Possibly relevant: Some people are now talking about "scalar" ethics wherein we don't have "obligations", which is a sort of binary or discrete concept in some ways; instead some actions are just better than others or we have stronger reasons to do them. I'm undecided on whether this makes sense or is useful. Alastair Norcross and Larry Alexander are two thinkers in this area with different perspectives from each other.

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Intellectuals and artists also claim to serve the wider good, yet they are held to much lower standards of altruism.

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That isn't a typo; it is the fit of poll data to a lognormal model that doesn't know one can't devote more than 100% of resources to anything.

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The last row of the table appears to say priests must give 1100% of their resources; I assume this is a typo.

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> To check on all this, I did a series of Twitter polls asking what fraction of their resources different kinds of people are obligated to spend trying to help the world.

By "resources," you specified "time/income/energy/reputation/career."

It's not disrespectful at all, but rather pragmatic, that little should be expected of the very young and the poor. They have few resources to spare, often have trouble making ends meet, and are usually the recipients of charity rather than the givers of it. Even if we restrict our view to the US, the average minimum wage worker's income/reputation/career values should be set arbitrarily close to zero.

Besides, and this may be disrespectful but seems intuitively true, all of those resources are downstream of intellectual ability, and here the very young and the poor are, on average if not in every particular case, less capable. "From each according to his ability," etc.

So that's not the puzzling thing. The puzzling thing is that two of the three top spots are occupied by judges and military/police officers, with politicians in the middle of the pack. This is confused and backwards, for judges, military men, and police officers are mere agents of a political system that is run by politicians and various unelected officials -- and these politicians and officials can, quite literally, give them their marching orders. Politicians act, for better or worse, and it's a common trope that judges and officials find themselves unable to "make a difference" on their own, i.e. operating inside existing political frameworks.

"Big city cop, tired of official corruption, takes a job with a rural police department because he wants to make a difference," is one of the oldest stories in the book. What usually happens is that our cop finds that rural areas have political problems of their own.

For the record, that the average federal judge or infantry colonel can do more than the average person to better the world, let alone that they're obligated to, is far from certain. They are, after all, mere functionaries.

And here's something to sharpen the point: If you take a global perspective -- which I believe is implied in the question, for "93-percentile rich" at $700/year is a global rather than a local view -- and consider the 20th and 21st centuries, you will be hard pressed to escape the conclusion that judges and military officers have done far less to help their fellow man than almost any other type of person. At the direction of politicians and other government officials, they have routinely sanctioned and carried out the most egregious injustices.

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Some jobs are to serve the public. The public has placed its trust in such people, and so they are expected to be more public-spirited than otherwise. Perhaps the numbers in this poll are extreme, but it's not so odd to demand that a judge be more impartial than a salesman. We have official ethical guidelines for certain professions and corruption laws for that reason.

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