Tyler Alterman: empathy and responsibility are corrosive fuel — generosity and love are cleaner
sebpaquet · x · 2026-10-22
Tyler Alterman argues that empathy and a sense of responsibility, though celebrated as noble motivations, are "corrosive fuel."
- Empathy — feeling others' pain as your own — is a recipe for burnout that eventually leaves you too disabled to help anyone.
- Responsibility — doing things because a good person should — turns your whole life into an unending chore, draining the inspiration needed for real impact.
He learned this the hard way: six years in the effective altruism movement followed by 2 years of crippling depression. Generosity and love, he says, feel cheesy but are clean fuel capable of driving equally ambitious projects.
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