It turns out people are complicated. Huh! And representative democracy (where voting is for people, not policies) plays into this BOTH by triggering social-judgmement modules of like and trust the presentation of the person, without regard to policy behaviors, AND by combining policy choices in weird workshopped compromise bundles.
I’m kind of sad Robin Hanson has moved away from “signaling explains everything”. It’s not literally true, but it’s far more true than analyzing any behavior without considering the association and cultural signaling aspects. This isn’t necessarily literally trying to show others something, but very often self-signaling—showing yourself what you’d like others to see.
It turns out people are complicated. Huh! And representative democracy (where voting is for people, not policies) plays into this BOTH by triggering social-judgmement modules of like and trust the presentation of the person, without regard to policy behaviors, AND by combining policy choices in weird workshopped compromise bundles.
I’m kind of sad Robin Hanson has moved away from “signaling explains everything”. It’s not literally true, but it’s far more true than analyzing any behavior without considering the association and cultural signaling aspects. This isn’t necessarily literally trying to show others something, but very often self-signaling—showing yourself what you’d like others to see.