Posted: May 25, 2019 4:55 pm
tuco wrote:Cito di Pense wrote:tuco wrote:Honestly, I dunno how this shit works. I suspect most people want to be good people and are willing to delude themselves in the process. However, I do believe peer pressure works and, I guess, most people are emotionally liable. The goal of those who signal is to gain some advantage. Be it with regards to own delusions or peer recognition. If this works for most people, I think the emotionally not liable are of no real concern. They will end up on the fringe.
These work as bona fides:
"I believe most people want to be good people"
"I believe peer pressure works"
"Most people are emotionally labile"
Now that you've told me what you believe, what then? Does it mean that anecdotes are not (precisely) anecdotes? Virtue signalling is not subject to criticism because it only (or even ever) consists of anecdotes. It's only reliable if you believe in certain stuff.
To keep the conversation going, to give you a reply, what choice do I have? If I knew for fact how it works I would tell you, but do not. I said in the first sentence that I do not know how it works. Either you can relate to what I said or you don't, either it makes sense to you or it does not, either you want to continue the conversation or you don't. What do you want me to say? Shall I invest I dunno several hours to present you with an argument on peer pressure only to get your recognition? I am not that emotionally liable
Yeah, I can relate to what you said. Most people don't know how it works. Actually, you're getting right at the heart of a lot of what passes for argument, here at RatSkep. Are we arguing about whether or not peer pressure is effective? That's going to depend on where we want to go. At its worst, peer pressure leads to conformity to all sorts of idiotic stuff, just as it leads at its best to adventurous and liberating reforms. The thing about virtue signalling that discourages me is that it smells a lot more like conformity with poorly thought out ideals, and eventually, conformity just for its own sake. You can have it. I've already had the experience of being a twenty-something and conforming to some set of poorly-articulated ideals that were in the air at the time. The world was overwhelmed by what seemed like threats that could end it all.
Nothing so acute now, but now there are twice as many people to worry about it and lots of twenty-somethings to rally around a threat that could end the world. It's a grand activity for twenty-somethings, who still have a lot to live for.
I really wanted things to work out better than they have, and I've lived as if that way was important. But fuck it, you know?