I just mean the latter. I think explanations involving pandering can work. The trouble I have with models that postulate stupidity, is that they need people to be stupid in a convenient direction. Stupidity is a much larger target than intelligence after all. I think explanation involving pandering work if you can explain (like you did with the affect hueristic) why these tricks will work on people.
Out of curiosity, what are the connotations of the word “rube” that make you suspicious?
The trouble I have with models that postulate stupidity,
But I am not convinced that your examples actualy do that.
Here the rube is the managers bosses, why are they so stupid as to think that mismanagement is evidence of superior management qualities? Why haven’t these idiots been sacked?
The idiots are where they are because they have Won—they have been playing the games of Climb The Coroporate Ladder and Look After Number One But Don’t Make It Obvious quite succesfuly. It/s a lesswrongian prejjudice that the only game anyone would want to play is Highly Competent But Criminally Underappreciated Backroom Boffin. They don;t get sacked because their superiors are playing the same game according to the same rules.
You could object that companies where dick-swinging is appreciated more than achieving goals and targets won’t have a long term future. Well, if there is someone in the chain who is playing Build A Company with a Lasting Future, then they’re being stupid. But rationality is achiveing your goals. They’ve achieved theirs.
It/s a lesswrongian prejjudice that the only game anyone would want to play is Highly Competent But Criminally Underappreciated Backroom Boffin.
Yes. The general case of this prejudice is probably something like ‘behavior morally should be evaluated according to its stated far-mode purpose; other purposes are possible and important, but dirty’. Of course, this has the large upside of making us seriously evaluate things according to their stated purpose at all....
Out of curiosity, what are the connotations of the word “rube” that make you suspicious?
Low status, contemptibility, etc. I expect making status hierarchies salient to make people less rational (hence fully generic suspicion), and I had the specific hypothesis that you might see people using ‘signaling’ models as judging others as contemptible and be offended by this.
Relatedly, I dislike calling the behavior in question “pandering”, since I expect using condemnatory terms for phenomena to make them aversive to look at closely, and to lead to bias in attribution (against seeing them in oneself/‘good’ people and towards seeing them in ‘bad’ people, as well as towards seeing people who unambiguously exhibit them as ‘bad’).
Now that you mention it, I think this does occur, although I think most of the judgement is directed at the ‘signaller’ (or in my language ‘panderer’) for being vain or duplicitous, although I don’t like saying I’m offended by it (“Offense is a sign of a weak and bourgeois mind” says my inner Dali.)
I think that ‘pandering’ does carry the connotations of how ‘signalling’ is used, but I’m happy to accept alternatives. One I can think of right away is “appealing to”, and I’d be happy to switch from ‘pandering’ to ‘appealing’ if you like.
I just mean the latter. I think explanations involving pandering can work. The trouble I have with models that postulate stupidity, is that they need people to be stupid in a convenient direction. Stupidity is a much larger target than intelligence after all. I think explanation involving pandering work if you can explain (like you did with the affect hueristic) why these tricks will work on people.
Out of curiosity, what are the connotations of the word “rube” that make you suspicious?
But I am not convinced that your examples actualy do that.
The idiots are where they are because they have Won—they have been playing the games of Climb The Coroporate Ladder and Look After Number One But Don’t Make It Obvious quite succesfuly. It/s a lesswrongian prejjudice that the only game anyone would want to play is Highly Competent But Criminally Underappreciated Backroom Boffin. They don;t get sacked because their superiors are playing the same game according to the same rules.
You could object that companies where dick-swinging is appreciated more than achieving goals and targets won’t have a long term future. Well, if there is someone in the chain who is playing Build A Company with a Lasting Future, then they’re being stupid. But rationality is achiveing your goals. They’ve achieved theirs.
Yes. The general case of this prejudice is probably something like ‘behavior morally should be evaluated according to its stated far-mode purpose; other purposes are possible and important, but dirty’. Of course, this has the large upside of making us seriously evaluate things according to their stated purpose at all....
Low status, contemptibility, etc. I expect making status hierarchies salient to make people less rational (hence fully generic suspicion), and I had the specific hypothesis that you might see people using ‘signaling’ models as judging others as contemptible and be offended by this.
Relatedly, I dislike calling the behavior in question “pandering”, since I expect using condemnatory terms for phenomena to make them aversive to look at closely, and to lead to bias in attribution (against seeing them in oneself/‘good’ people and towards seeing them in ‘bad’ people, as well as towards seeing people who unambiguously exhibit them as ‘bad’).
Now that you mention it, I think this does occur, although I think most of the judgement is directed at the ‘signaller’ (or in my language ‘panderer’) for being vain or duplicitous, although I don’t like saying I’m offended by it (“Offense is a sign of a weak and bourgeois mind” says my inner Dali.)
I think that ‘pandering’ does carry the connotations of how ‘signalling’ is used, but I’m happy to accept alternatives. One I can think of right away is “appealing to”, and I’d be happy to switch from ‘pandering’ to ‘appealing’ if you like.
“Influencing” is pretty neutral, if not very specific. “Exploiting the halo effect” is too long, but precise.