OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, DECEMBER 2011
…One simple way of defining pathological altruism is to say that it involves well-meaning efforts that worsen the very situation they mean to help. This is explored by coeditors Guruprasad Madhavan and Barbara Oakley in their “Too Much of a Good Thing? Foreign Aid and Pathological Altruism” (Chapter 17). Such well-meaning behavior often involves self-righteousness, as explained by neurologist Robert Burton, in his personal story of one doctor’s abuse of power to “help” a mortally ill patient (Chapter 10). The dangers of “altruistic” self-righteousness in political partisanship (Chapter 5) are underscored by physicist and science fiction grand master David Brin, who also explores the dangers of modern Western notions of altruism as panacea in regard to the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project in Chapter ...
