tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post920093399619160018..comments2024-03-27T03:19:11.216-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: Virtue SignallingAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-73174596463099818412015-10-22T21:52:29.951-04:002015-10-22T21:52:29.951-04:00Donna B - yeah, my Facebook feed follows the same ...Donna B - yeah, my Facebook feed follows the same pattern as AVIs - the two worst are Republican, the next 8 worst are Democrats.<br /><br /><br /><br />bs kinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02871717971078952304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-65815021995602517842015-10-22T18:20:37.701-04:002015-10-22T18:20:37.701-04:00bs king -- now isn't it strange that the worst...bs king -- now isn't it strange that the worst ones on my Facebook feed are similar except that they end that with "at least I'm not a Republican!"<br /><br />As one of my older cousins put it "Papa always said any democrat no matter how sorry he was, was better than any republican."<br /><br /><br />Donna B.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16771075314473811594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-13067414679316382272015-10-22T16:46:19.290-04:002015-10-22T16:46:19.290-04:00the people I know who are the worst about this are...the people I know who are the worst about this are always the ones who I feel "earn" it least. The three worst on my Facebook feed are all smart but have had a lot of job instability and don't work often. There's a weird ego thing there....like "I may be unemployed and living with my parents at age 57, but at least I'm not a Democrat!" <br /><br />In pro wrestling there's a term "cheap pop" (the opposite of cheap heat, obviously), that describes what happens when a wrestler says something to the crowd that they can't not cheer. Think "hello Boston! Ready for a Red Sox win?" This signaling stuff feels like that. bs kinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02871717971078952304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-45167785928430415052015-10-22T11:35:54.773-04:002015-10-22T11:35:54.773-04:00Maybe what AVI is decribing could be called negati...Maybe what AVI is decribing could be called negative virtue signalling. Or dishonest. What Grim describes is still signalling but it's positive. It lets observers know who he is, rather than advertising that he's certainly not one of the "them", such as the one I saw this morning by some Facebook group called "Too Informed to Vote Republican". It was shared by a relative of mine. <br /><br />Donna B.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16771075314473811594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-43192285135140116832015-10-22T00:42:35.450-04:002015-10-22T00:42:35.450-04:00We are signalling all day - we signal how much edu...<i>We are signalling all day - we signal how much education we have and how smart we are...</i><br /><br />I do my honest best to do the opposite. I live in rural Georgia, and I don't want people to feel at a disadvantage. I want to meet them on grounds of equality, and so I signal almost in the otherwise: to mask my education, and whatever intelligence I might have. It's to my advantage, though. It turns out people who aren't as well educated and maybe not as intelligent know a lot more about things you don't know anything about than you do. The other week I had a guy teach me how to rewire a fuel pump so it would work with my machine -- for free. Just cause I asked him to help me figure it out, and he didn't have anything better to do for an hour. He was 75 years old, and just wanted somebody to talk to for a bit. He had no education to speak of, and was no philosopher, but so what? He was a man of accomplishment in his field. I was his student, at his grace, and I am grateful. He taught me a lot. <br /><br />People forget that. I couldn't have taught him anything about what he cared about, and he didn't care a fig for what I might teach. But he liked teaching me, and so that was in its way a service to him -- and he gave me a great service in turn. He's a good guy, who can do things with ease that I would need years of training to do. He doesn't care: he'll give that training away for free, if you'll just spend an hour talking to him. He just wants that respect and human attention, and surely he's due it.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-74638708353079820822015-10-21T19:43:38.430-04:002015-10-21T19:43:38.430-04:00Another take; I like the line about "increasi...<a href="http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2015/10/21/drinking-note/" rel="nofollow">Another take</a>; I like the line about "increasing age". I wonder if the aged worry less about being accepted, and if that plays a role in the stereotype of their extreme frankness.<br /><br />I see a lot of the sort of offhand viciousness you mention on Facebook, and much less in conversations--but still some. <br /><br />Living in Madison you'd find few to disagree with invidious remarks about the evil of Bush/Walker/Koch, so perhaps some of the talk is less tribal signalling than is just a conversational fill-in to tell that you're still listening. <br />... from Twain:<br />Slang was the language of Nevada. It was hard to preach a sermon without it, and be understood. Such phrases as "You bet!" "Oh, no, I reckon not!" "No Irish need apply," and a hundred others, became so common as to fall from the lips of a speaker unconsciously—and very often when they did not touch the subject under discussion and consequently failed to mean anything.jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01792036361407527304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-78902597863421171732015-10-21T18:23:38.776-04:002015-10-21T18:23:38.776-04:00You may know nicer people than I do. I am thinkin...You may know nicer people than I do. I am thinking of relatives, often quite intelligent ones, whose cultural insults directed at those they disagree with can only be explained by large doses of virtue signalling.<br /><br />There are those I know whose opinions are more firmly grounded, even if I disagree. I find they signal far less often. I see some correlation between the amount of political communication and my certainty that virtue-signalling is behind it. In some instances, the phrase "culture war" may come closer.<br /><br />However, I remain disquieted by the research of Haidt and others, which suggests that even the best of us aren't much better than the worst of us.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-44984172845736683182015-10-20T22:33:15.014-04:002015-10-20T22:33:15.014-04:00I don't follow you here. That there is a lot ...I don't follow you here. That there is a lot of signaling I can easily accept, but that people don't actually care about the effects of their policies in the real world--that doesn't ring true with me. Yes, of course, I know some people who are that shallow, but many more who are not. Often they share with me some broad goals about the benefit of humanity, but they disagree with me on the most likely means to our shared ends. Other times they simply disagree with me about what humanity's benefit looks like; we may put very different priorities on security and independence, for instance. They're not just signaling. They simply disagree, and naturally take the opportunity to say so. As I see it, what they're signaling most clearly is their disagreement.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-1238560444956935862015-10-20T21:09:31.629-04:002015-10-20T21:09:31.629-04:00It is certainly easier to spot it in others. An u...<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHmsqQe4ar0" rel="nofollow">It is certainly easier to spot it in others.</a> An updated version might be amusing--but it is hard to match the meter. (Our Savoyards try to put in an updated line or verse in the patter songs.)jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01792036361407527304noreply@blogger.com