alt Hacker News> Humans tend toward doing things that are best for them.
I don't think that assumption holds. People routinely vote for candidates that will worsen their lives, gamble, smoke, don't exercise, some people even don't brush their teeth.
On the other hand, there's as many examples of people being selfless as of people being selfish.
Human behavior is much more complex.
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Spoken like someone who has done zero canvassing or organizing of any kind. You ask two voters on both sides of the spectrum and they'll make the same argument you are.
Calling voters selfish because they didn't vote for your candidate is just pure idiocy. Politics is a game of convincing and some strategies are more successful than others, one of the worse things you can do in politics is simply advocate (talking to others); which is why the majority of online discussions around politics revolves around advocacy, it's the cheapest and lowest impact thing an individual can do.
Not all humans act in their long-term self interest, but those that do will be disproportionately represented in positions that allow themselves to enrich their long-term self interest. The gamblers, smokers, layabouts, drunks, druggies, are fodder for former group to enrich themselves.
"Stupid people are the most dangerous people" -- Carlos Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
https://gandalf.fee.urv.cat/professors/AntonioQuesada/Curs19...
I'd like to think humans perform more selfless than selfish acts, but their impact is not evenly balanced. Per act, it is far easier to harm than to help. In a day, if ten people do you a kindness like holding a door open for you and an eleventh spits in your face, you'll be thinking about and telling your acquaintances about the eleventh.
> People routinely vote for candidates that will worsen their lives
This is a line I see often by people (not you, just to be clear) puzzled because somebody didn't "vote for their own self interest" or at least that is the perception of the person making the statement. I've seen variations of it for at least 30 years. You'd often see it around pressure campaigns to unionize especially.
The shock about the perception is always funny to me, because it reads as shock that someone refused a bribe or was not easily manipulated.
Humans are terrible at doing what's best for them. They are pretty good at following local gradients, though. Smoking might kill you in 30 years, but right now it lets you fit in with the cool kids, or feels good once you're hooked. Not brushing your teeth might be terrible for them and your gums, eventually, but right now it saves you from having to do something.
At any given decision point, people are more likely to pick the option that provides some benefit to them. That looks very different from consistently picking the choice that is eventually best for them.
People are driven by dopamine. Promotions lead to dopamine. So does gambling. Cigarettes. Sex with hookers. Locking down your series A. Hearing the engine go vrooom. Voting for the guy that loudly says "fuck you" to the other guy. All this is perfectly congruent.
> People routinely vote for candidates that will worsen their lives
To the extent this is true, that is only because they believe those candidates will make their lives better. People often declare how their outgroup "votes against their own interests", and use it as some kind of indictment of those people's intelligence. But that is nothing more than a failure to understand people. Essentially nobody is out there voting for someone whom they believe will make their lives worse m
For sake of not derailing the discussion, I think the more appropriate reading would be "people act in what they believe to be self-interest", however flawed the notion of the benefit