> A critical part of human development—in fact, the most human part of human development—is to acquire a purpose.

This is actually a fairly recent concept.

For a long time, humans across the globe have believed that life had a purpose, but until the 18th and 19th centuries, the belief was more or less that the purpose was dictated by God, the universe, etc. That there was a purpose that applied to everyone, not that everyone had to find his or her own purpose.

> That means refining your sense of right and wrong and figuring out how you, personally, can increase the right and decrease the wrong.

The problem with this is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well-meaning people who believe strongly that they are increasing the right and decreasing the wrong are capable of creating many problems. And sometimes, you get really sick people who think they're well-meaning and their "right" is everyone else's "wrong".

> But over the years, as I had the opportunity to meet some of these captains of industry, these Grand Pooh-Bahs and Distinguished Scholars, I’ve realized how wrong I was. They only seemed enviable because I was looking at them from a distance, so all I could see was what they had. Up close, when you can see what they are, it becomes clear that only a few of these ladder-toppers are indeed wise and cool. More often, they’re sniveling little twerps. They’re spiritually chinless. They have no convictions, no passions, no purpose other than ladder-climbing. It’s sad to watch them, these people who have everything except the one thing that actually matters.

I'm personally not a fan of the Elons and Zucks of the world, but going around categorizing people into groups like "spiritually chinless, passionless, purpose-lacking sniveling little twerps who only care about getting ahead" probably isn't healthy.

Has the author considered that many of these people simply have beliefs, passions, purposes that don't align with his and that, if asked, they might speak poorly of his beliefs, passions, purposes?

We can debate whether or not these people are, in the final analysis, ethical, but I don't think reducing them to this helps the author's argument.

> Why spend your days wondering about right and wrong, good and evil, sacred and profane, etc. when you don’t have to?

Most people in this world don't have the luxury of sitting around and figuring out all of the world's mysteries and solving all of the world's problem.

> I saw my fish in 2020 in San Fransisco, during the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.5 Inside the conference hotel were dozens of talks about stereotyping, prejudice, inequality, and so on. That had never struck me as strange until that year, when outside of the hotel, which was in the middle of SF’s Tenderloin district, people were sprawled out on the sidewalk, dying of overdoses. Scholars were scurrying past homeless people to give talks on social justice, which is ironic because “scholars will scurry past homeless people to give talks on social justice” is literally the main finding from one of the most famous psychology studies of all time.

The author paints his experience as some sort of Siddhartha-like epiphany. The reality is that lots of people have seen what the author saw, and worse. Any many were affected by it. But just because they didn't stop and play Jesus (which the author apparently didn't do either) doesn't mean that they didn't notice and weren't affected.

The author seems to be assuming that he's one of the few people who isn't oblivious.

> When I meet someone of uncommon integrity, someone willing to defy the incentives at any cost, I find they almost always have seen the fish—big, hulking fish, far larger than any I’ve ever encountered. They have undergone some kind of moral reckoning that undid their illusion of philosophical depth and gave them the chance to forge their own values.

Like what? The article is really lacking in specifics and it seems like it's a reflection of the author's experience and views, which he projects onto the other 8 billion people on the planet.

In my own experience, which includes having emigrated from the US to another part of the world, most people are just trying to get through the day, pay their bills, provide for their families, find peace and contentment, etc. They're not morally-corrupt zombies who, at best, are oblivious to the suffering in the world or, at worst, bad apes chasing free bananas. They're just people who don't have any illusions that their lives and powers are bigger than they really are.

Incentives are for losers