I propose that everyone who claims to believe in the Cynic’s Theory self-modify to lack any conscious signalling system, or to stop caring what signals others receive from them in any deep way.
Why would they want to do that? This kind of signaling can be socially advantageous. It’s not hard to imagine that someone would prefer people’s opinion of them to be “Poor guy, he can’t help himself” than “He’s so evil he likes alcohol more than his family”.
The point is not whether it’s advantageous to do so. The point is that you would never want to do so. The Cynic’s Theory of human irrationality says, “We’re all horrible people but we mask it with social signalling”, but none of the Theory’s believers, given the choice, would fully embrace their own supposed horribleness.
“We’re all horrible people but we mask it with social signaling” is not an accurate statement of the Cynic’s Theory. From what I’ve seen, Cynic’s Theory can be stated as “When people claim weakness of will, their actions are what they really prefer, and their claim of akrasia is signaling”, which is orthogonal to being horrible. For example, one can imagine an inefficient SS guard at a concentration camp who wants to kill as few Jews as possible (without getting himself in trouble, or he knows that he’d be replaced with someone worse), so he says something like, “I know I should kill Jews, but my will is weak and it’s easy to get distracted”. This is a more virtuous case of falsely claiming akrasia.
“I am socially expected to do X, but I prefer to do Y, so I will do Y and claim weakness of will” says nothing about whether X is morally better or worse than Y, so “Cynic’s Theory” is a misnomer. “Skeptic’s Theory” is a more accurate name.
As for stopping caring about what signals others receive—that would be a harmful self-modification, because the signals people receive affect how they treat you, and it’s hard not to care about at least some of that.
Why would they want to do that? This kind of signaling can be socially advantageous. It’s not hard to imagine that someone would prefer people’s opinion of them to be “Poor guy, he can’t help himself” than “He’s so evil he likes alcohol more than his family”.
The point is not whether it’s advantageous to do so. The point is that you would never want to do so. The Cynic’s Theory of human irrationality says, “We’re all horrible people but we mask it with social signalling”, but none of the Theory’s believers, given the choice, would fully embrace their own supposed horribleness.
“We’re all horrible people but we mask it with social signaling” is not an accurate statement of the Cynic’s Theory. From what I’ve seen, Cynic’s Theory can be stated as “When people claim weakness of will, their actions are what they really prefer, and their claim of akrasia is signaling”, which is orthogonal to being horrible. For example, one can imagine an inefficient SS guard at a concentration camp who wants to kill as few Jews as possible (without getting himself in trouble, or he knows that he’d be replaced with someone worse), so he says something like, “I know I should kill Jews, but my will is weak and it’s easy to get distracted”. This is a more virtuous case of falsely claiming akrasia.
“I am socially expected to do X, but I prefer to do Y, so I will do Y and claim weakness of will” says nothing about whether X is morally better or worse than Y, so “Cynic’s Theory” is a misnomer. “Skeptic’s Theory” is a more accurate name.
As for stopping caring about what signals others receive—that would be a harmful self-modification, because the signals people receive affect how they treat you, and it’s hard not to care about at least some of that.