I’m German, and I would not want that. German grammar works differently in a way that makes programming a lot more awkward for some reason. Things like, “.forEach” would technically need three different spellings depending on the grammatical gender of the type of element that’s in the collection it’s called on. Of course you could just go with neuter and say it refers to the “items” in the collection, but that’s just one of lots of small pieces of awkwardness that get stacked on top of each other when you try to translate languages and APIs. I really appreciate how much more straightforward that works with English.

the argument that “being selfless is selfish” is not useful

Yes, that’s my entire point.

and provably false

Depends on how you define “selfish”. Again, that’s exactly what I’m trying to demonstrate here. Reducing the definition of selfish to mean “getting something out of it” makes it meaningless because every decision is made in the hopes of getting something out of it in some way, even if it’s obscure. To make it useful, you need to look at what someone is getting out of it in order to get to a useful definition.

That would be an extremely reductive definition that doesn’t really tell us much about how caring for others is actually experienced and how it manifests in the world.

Exactly, that’s my point.

How would this for example explain sacrificing yourself to save another person, if the very core of caring is to create positive emotions in yourself?

In this case it would be about reducing negative emotions, choosing the lesser of two evils. Losing a loved one and/or having to live with the knowledge that you could have saved them but chose not to can inflict massive emotional pain, potentially for the rest of your life. Dying yourself instead might seem outright attractive in comparison.

this idea that caring is in its essence transactional

That’s not actually how I’m seeing it, and I also don’t think it’s a super profound insight or something. It’s just a super technical way of viewing the topic of motivation, and while it’s an interesting thought experiment, it’s mostly useless.

Well, but what does “caring” mean? It means that their well-being affects your emotions. At its very core, you wanting to help people you care about comes from wanting to create positive emotions in yourself or avoiding negative ones (possibly in the future, it doesn’t have to be an immediate effect). If those emotions weren’t there, you wouldn’t actually care and thus not do it.

Edit to clarify: I’m not being cynical or pessimistic here, or implying that this means that everyone is egotistical because of this. The point I was trying to make is that defining egotism vs. Altruism is a little bit more complex than just looking at whether there’s something in it for the acting person. We actually need to look at what’s in it for the acting person.

I mean, you’re not wrong, but your point is also kinda meaningless. Of course, you only ever do things because there’s something in it for you, even if that something is just feeling good about yourself. If there was truly nothing in it for you, then why would you do it?

But that misses the point of the “people are inherently selfish” vs “people are inherently generous” discussion, because it’s not actually about whether people do things only for themselves at the most literal level, instead it’s about whether people inherently get something out of doing things for others without external motivation. So your point works the same on both sides of the argument.

The meme only says “if … then …”. It does not imply the reverse relationship of “if not … then not …”.

Eh, that’s a bit of a stretch. There’s more awareness by default here because of GDPR and such, but I wouldn’t say people really care that much more here

Congrats, you completely missed the point. Maybe read the actual article, before going on a rant that’s only tangentially related?