comment: >
  
  Well the issue there with being accused of doing altruistic things for selfish reasons is because a lot of these people are fed bullshit and easily eat up the garbage from Fox News about how people are trying to take advantage of politics to push green energy and renewable and climate change because there is incentive for some industries. It's such a politicized topic that no matter what genuine reason you do it for, you will almost always be accused of being selfish by some pundit. I wouldn't pay attention to that even more than redditors. People have been calling each other nincompoop over politics for over a century. The more things change, the more things stay the same.
context: This kinda begs the question...   
  What does it mean for an act to be selfish? >
  
  Oh dang I'm not sure... maybe done without morality? Or done for the benefit of oneself? Both occurring simultaneously? >
  
  Most people would say that selfishness/selflessness is defined by the intended beneficiary. That means that the same action can be either selfish or selfless depending on the intent.  
  For example, giving to charity can either be selfless (because you aren't considering your self in the decision - you're primarily thinking about the wellbeing of others) or selfish (because you're doing it so you can boast to your friend about how much of a good person you are).  
  This is a non-consequentialist (not based on outcomes) form of morality.  
  The way that Immanuel Kant explains this problem is by defining what he calls "good will", which is the test for whether an action was moral. He says that an action taken with good will means that your only consideration when taking the action was the intent to abide by moral law. What that means in simple terms is that whether or not it's selfish is defined by what you were thinking about at the time you took the action. If you were thinking exclusively about your moral obligation to help others, then it's a moral action, but if you paid any attention at all to your own happiness then it was not purely "good will" motivating you. In this way, Kant would agree with you that just because an action made you happy, it's not necessarily selfish.  
  Non-consequentialism isn't the only type of ethical evaluation though.  
  For instance, a naturalist is someone who believes that our moral sense was invented by evolution to help us co-operate with others. From a naturalist point of view, all actions made with the intent to abide by moral law are actually selfish actions, because they invoke the biological desire to take actions which increase your likelihood to reproduce. A utilitarian (someone who thinks we should maximize the total amount of happiness in the world) would reject the entire classification of selfish and selfless because all that matters is the change in the total amount of happiness.   
  The question I would float is whether you had awareness that taking the action would improve your happiness before you did so. If you were aware it would make you happy, it is therefore impossible to possess purely good will as defined by Kant. If you didn't know, it's not possible for an action to be selfish because you didn't have access to the information required to act selfishly. It's not necessary that an action that makes you happier was selfish because it's possible to be unaware of that occurring, but in the vast majority of cases humans are good at predicting their future emotions and reactions to things in simple ways. >
  
  Did Kant ever expand on your question?
  It seems rather obvious to me that doing good things feel good. The question you float can only work once. After you feel good for doing good the first time, have you spoiled your good will? You will never be able to perform truly selfless acts because you have a memory of feeling good that first time?
  That seems rather silly and not well reasoned to me >
  
  I don't think Kant would argue that, sort of for the reason that you outline.
  More than acting from Good Will he postulated that you should treat people as ends and not as means. If you acted purely towards the ends of others in disregard for your own happiness then you would be treating yourself as a means and not an end.
  By acting in contradiction between the actions of yourself and others you would be violating your ethical imperatives. >
  
  Ah, the categorical imperatives. I always had trouble figuring those out. As words they make sense but you could apply another level of reasoning to them again to infinity (I know that you know that I know style) and eventually I decided that Kant didn’t have a workable model >
  
  I think it's because people mistake "helping to set off my dopamine release" as "having ulterior motives completely unrelated to your needs for help but for my greed."
  A good example of helping and feeling good is nurse aide work. It's not easy, it's dirty, it's thankless, irs underpaid, its a lot of work, you're almost always understaffed. But there are many CNAs who feel a sense of relief or dopamine release after fully cleaning a patient and getting them cleanly bundled and tucked in bed. 
  Sort of like vacuuming or cleaning your house and feeling good after. Or finishing a task and feeling a sense of accomplishment.
  Reddit has a lot of people who sit behind a monitor and never make moves. I'd hardly listen to them about whether doing something helpful for others make you feel good is selfish >
  
  Agreed. The whole "but altruism is selfish" line always felt a way of cheaply invalidating doing good to feel less guilty for not doing good.
  I mean, literally any act humans do is motivated by brain chemicals. Eating, drinking, sleeping, walking etc. Any complex task is going to involve neurological motivators. To meet this imaginary standard for "pure" altruism unmotivated by any brain chemicals, you'd essentially need to have neurological dysfunction. Imagine if I just walked around saying "Actually, you didnt accomplish anything your entire life, it was your dopamine." Technically true, but also insufferably irrelevant.
  IMO, a much more relevant criteria is "prosociality" i.e. behaviour which aims to benefit others.
  Occam's Razor says that people just parrot this line as a defense mechanism. Because the idea that someone else is altruistically motivated makes others feel defensive. I used to organise climate protests and fundraise for poverty alleviation, and people would come up with all kinds of ulterior motives to "explain" my behaviour. I got accused of being brainwashed by foreigners a lot/being attention seeking, both of which were untrue if given any thought.
  Edit: I think this Tweet summarises it well:
  My biggest problem in these ACA debates? I don't know how to explain to you why you should care about other people.
  If someone starts from a position of "Well there has to be an ulterior motive because caring about others is impossible", I genuinely just can't explain my way through. So many people just can't conceive of themselves being motivated to help others that they deny the possibility that anyone else could be..