I’d actually argue that social signaling is probably more important to “common folk” than a lot of the people here. Specifically, the old post about “Why nerds are unpopular” (http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html) comes to mind here. I’m entirely willing to say “I’m willing to kill”, because I value truth above social signaling
It also occurs to me that a big factor in my answer is that my social circle is full of people that I trust not to distort or misapply my answer. Put me in a sufficiently different social circle and eventually my “survival instincts” will get me to opt out of the problem as an excuse to avoid negative signaling.
If I just really didn’t want to kill the fat guy, it’d be much easier to say “oh, goodness, I could never kill someone like that!” rather than opting out of answering by playing to the absurdity of the scenario.
I’d actually argue that social signaling is probably more important to “common folk” than a lot of the people here. Specifically, the old post about “Why nerds are unpopular” (http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html) comes to mind here. I’m entirely willing to say “I’m willing to kill”, because I value truth above social signaling
It also occurs to me that a big factor in my answer is that my social circle is full of people that I trust not to distort or misapply my answer. Put me in a sufficiently different social circle and eventually my “survival instincts” will get me to opt out of the problem as an excuse to avoid negative signaling.
If I just really didn’t want to kill the fat guy, it’d be much easier to say “oh, goodness, I could never kill someone like that!” rather than opting out of answering by playing to the absurdity of the scenario.
Are you sure you can’t have both?