Attention to (virtue) signaling can help you make sense of systems you’re not part of.
Attention to them in systems you are part of creates anti-helpful incentives.
It works way, way better, for both individuals and groups, to…
…completely ignore signaling…
…work to embody the traits you’d want to be perceived as having, and…
…strive to symmetrically create transparency and clarity about whatever is true, even if it’s damning.
This automatically produces hard-to-fake virtue signals without adding Goodhart drift. It also mostly eliminates signaling (vs. signal verification) arms races.
Let’s look at your vegan example.
If someone is vegan in order to send a social signal, then I have to sort out why they’re intent on sending that signal. Do they want to feel righteous? Do they want acclaim for their self-sacrifice for a greater cause? Opportunity to gloat about their moral superiority? Or is it purely as it seems, a sincere effort to do good in the world based on their best understanding? Because they’re doing it explicitly to manipulate how they come across to others, it’s not a natural extension of how they want to be in the world. Maybe it would be if they weren’t using all this signaling thinking to get in their way! But I sure can’t tell that. And frankly neither can they.
By way of contrast, if someone does the inner work to give zero fucks about what “signals” they’re sending people, and they practice honesty & transparency, and from that place decide (probably quietly) to become vegan, then the clarity of that decision is way way way more impactful. If someone challenges them with “Oh come on, what are you doing to help animals?” they can just matter-of-fact point out “Well, think what you want. I’m not worried about your opinion of me. But in case it actually helps elucidate what I’m saying, I have in fact been following a vegan lifestyle these last three years.”
It’s more impactful because it’s true. There’s no attempt to manipulate others’ perception. There’s just simple clarity. It’s unassailable precisely because it’s wedded to truth.
An anthropologist outside of EA could describe all this in terms of virtue signaling within EA. But someone within EA who attempts to use this “virtue signaling” thinking todecide what diet they should follow absolutely cannot embody this power. It’s a lie before it’s even uttered.
But is it really better when we stop offering others proof of positive qualities that are otherwise hard to directly assess? Is it better to give others no reason to trust us?
False dichotomy.
It’s not “Virtue signals or no info about trust.”
Another option is to just in fact strive to be trustworthy while also striving to let the truth of your trustworthiness be clearly visible, whatever that truth might be.
If I’m selling you a car, there’s all kinds of BS virtue signals I could give to help put you at ease. Precisely because they’re BS, you’d have to dig under them to detect possible maliciousness or dangerous neglectfulness on my part.
But if I instead just in fact mean you well, and mean the deal honestly, then it’s no trouble at all for me to say something like “Hey, I know you’re unsure how much to trust me or this car here. I mean you well here, and I know you don’t have an easy way of telling that. Just let me know what you need to make a decision here. I’ll help however I can.”
Clean. Simple.
No need for intentional virtue signaling… because the actual presence of virtues causes reality to reflect the costly signals for free.
So I guess this comes down to an adamant disagreement with your call to action here:
I urge you to do the prosocial thing and develop and adopt more legible and meaningful virtue signals— for others and especially for yourself.
I dearly wish the opposite.
The prosocial thing is to dig inside oneself for one’s dire need for others to see one in a particular way, and uproot that.
And also, to in fact truly cultivate virtues that you sincerely believe in.
And finally, to encourage clarity and transparency about what you are in fact like and capable of, with absolutely zero attachment to the outcome of what gets communicated in that clarity & transparency.
This is vastly more prosocial than is cultivating skill with making people think you’re virtuous.
I think you should consider the legibility of the signals you send, but that should flow from a desire to monitor yourself so you can improve and be consistent with your higher goals. I feel like you’re assuming virtue signal means manipulative signal, and I suppose that’s my fault for taking a word whose meaning seems to have been too tainted and not being explicit about trying to reclaim it more straightforwardly as “emissions of a state of real virtue”.
Maybe in your framework it would be more accurate to say to LWers: “Don’t fall into the bad virtue signal of not doing anything legibly virtuous or with the intent of being virtuous. Doing so can make it easy to deceive yourself and unnecessarily hard to cooperate with others.”
It seems like the unacknowledged virtue signals among rationalists are 1) painful honesty, including erring on the side of the personally painful course of action when it’s not clear which is most honest and dogpiling on any anyone who seems to use PR, and 2) unhesitant updating (goodharting “shut up and multiply”) that doesn’t indulge qualms of the intuition. If they could just stop doing these then I think they might be more inclined to use the legible virtue signals I’m advocating as a tool, or at the very least they would focus on developing other aspects of character.
I also think if thinking about signaling is too much of a mindfuck (and it has obviously been a serious mindfuck for the community) that not thinking about it and focusing on being good, as you’re suggesting, can be a great solution.
I wrote a messy post back in January spelling out why I disagree with this.
In short:
Attention to (virtue) signaling can help you make sense of systems you’re not part of.
Attention to them in systems you are part of creates anti-helpful incentives.
It works way, way better, for both individuals and groups, to…
…completely ignore signaling…
…work to embody the traits you’d want to be perceived as having, and…
…strive to symmetrically create transparency and clarity about whatever is true, even if it’s damning.
This automatically produces hard-to-fake virtue signals without adding Goodhart drift. It also mostly eliminates signaling (vs. signal verification) arms races.
Let’s look at your vegan example.
If someone is vegan in order to send a social signal, then I have to sort out why they’re intent on sending that signal. Do they want to feel righteous? Do they want acclaim for their self-sacrifice for a greater cause? Opportunity to gloat about their moral superiority? Or is it purely as it seems, a sincere effort to do good in the world based on their best understanding? Because they’re doing it explicitly to manipulate how they come across to others, it’s not a natural extension of how they want to be in the world. Maybe it would be if they weren’t using all this signaling thinking to get in their way! But I sure can’t tell that. And frankly neither can they.
By way of contrast, if someone does the inner work to give zero fucks about what “signals” they’re sending people, and they practice honesty & transparency, and from that place decide (probably quietly) to become vegan, then the clarity of that decision is way way way more impactful. If someone challenges them with “Oh come on, what are you doing to help animals?” they can just matter-of-fact point out “Well, think what you want. I’m not worried about your opinion of me. But in case it actually helps elucidate what I’m saying, I have in fact been following a vegan lifestyle these last three years.”
It’s more impactful because it’s true. There’s no attempt to manipulate others’ perception. There’s just simple clarity. It’s unassailable precisely because it’s wedded to truth.
An anthropologist outside of EA could describe all this in terms of virtue signaling within EA. But someone within EA who attempts to use this “virtue signaling” thinking to decide what diet they should follow absolutely cannot embody this power. It’s a lie before it’s even uttered.
False dichotomy.
It’s not “Virtue signals or no info about trust.”
Another option is to just in fact strive to be trustworthy while also striving to let the truth of your trustworthiness be clearly visible, whatever that truth might be.
If I’m selling you a car, there’s all kinds of BS virtue signals I could give to help put you at ease. Precisely because they’re BS, you’d have to dig under them to detect possible maliciousness or dangerous neglectfulness on my part.
But if I instead just in fact mean you well, and mean the deal honestly, then it’s no trouble at all for me to say something like “Hey, I know you’re unsure how much to trust me or this car here. I mean you well here, and I know you don’t have an easy way of telling that. Just let me know what you need to make a decision here. I’ll help however I can.”
Clean. Simple.
No need for intentional virtue signaling… because the actual presence of virtues causes reality to reflect the costly signals for free.
So I guess this comes down to an adamant disagreement with your call to action here:
I dearly wish the opposite.
The prosocial thing is to dig inside oneself for one’s dire need for others to see one in a particular way, and uproot that.
And also, to in fact truly cultivate virtues that you sincerely believe in.
And finally, to encourage clarity and transparency about what you are in fact like and capable of, with absolutely zero attachment to the outcome of what gets communicated in that clarity & transparency.
This is vastly more prosocial than is cultivating skill with making people think you’re virtuous.
It’s also a hell of a lot easier in the long run.
I think you should consider the legibility of the signals you send, but that should flow from a desire to monitor yourself so you can improve and be consistent with your higher goals. I feel like you’re assuming virtue signal means manipulative signal, and I suppose that’s my fault for taking a word whose meaning seems to have been too tainted and not being explicit about trying to reclaim it more straightforwardly as “emissions of a state of real virtue”.
Maybe in your framework it would be more accurate to say to LWers: “Don’t fall into the bad virtue signal of not doing anything legibly virtuous or with the intent of being virtuous. Doing so can make it easy to deceive yourself and unnecessarily hard to cooperate with others.”
It seems like the unacknowledged virtue signals among rationalists are 1) painful honesty, including erring on the side of the personally painful course of action when it’s not clear which is most honest and dogpiling on any anyone who seems to use PR, and 2) unhesitant updating (goodharting “shut up and multiply”) that doesn’t indulge qualms of the intuition. If they could just stop doing these then I think they might be more inclined to use the legible virtue signals I’m advocating as a tool, or at the very least they would focus on developing other aspects of character.
I also think if thinking about signaling is too much of a mindfuck (and it has obviously been a serious mindfuck for the community) that not thinking about it and focusing on being good, as you’re suggesting, can be a great solution.