Is every action secretly selfish?

Photo by William Fortunato from Pexels
I often hear people claim that everything we do is "selfish" or ultimately aimed at our own pleasure (and avoidance of pain). The way the argument usually goes is that we wouldn't do something unless we "wanted" to do it - and that even for altruistic actions, we do them because they feel good. This view is sometimes called "psychological egoism:" the claim that every human action is motivated by self-interest. I think this claim is either seriously mistaken (if interpreted one way) or true but...
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Careful Analysis vs. Automatic Processing

Thinking very carefully about problems can be an extremely powerful way to answer questions or make predictions. But there are some problems for which our non-conscious processing systems produce superior results. Our non-conscious systems primarily work using pattern recognition. Through a combination of genetic pre-programming and repeated exposure, your brain learns to label instances of things in the world as "dangerous" or "not dangerous", "food" or "not food", "person" or "not person", ...
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