> Actually, it is rational to save others' lives if it improves the
> chances that you will be saved in a dangerous situation. There is a
> very interesting article in Nature June 11 about how cooperation
> emerges if individuals have an image dependent on their behavior. It
> turns out that it is rational to save even complete strangers you will
> never meet again if you will become known as a nice guy:
Of course, how silly of me to have left this off.
An important point which I should have made earlier is how often and to
what degree egoism/libertarianism/utilitarianism agree: they agree quite a
lot in my experience, more than 80% of the time.
It is usually in one's best interests to save lives if you do not greatly
jeopardize your own; the point where it becomes unprofitable to do is
difficult to identify. Nonetheless, even if we restrict the egoist to
only hurting people for profit if/when he could get away with it without
being discovered, we would still generally be worse off, IMO.