I don’t actually read Overcoming Bias regularly so I don’t think I’m great at interpreting Robin Hanson/discerning what level of trolling he means any particular thing at …
but is the “everything is about signaling” guy really arguing that good writing should be free of signals and just state facts/make logical arguments? I’m confused
I also am not a dedicated reader of Robin Hanson, but my basic understanding is that he thinks everything is about signalling, and that this is bad and that everything should instead be about actually important, non-signalling things.
So him arguing that good writing should be free of signals and just state facts + make logical arguments is exactly what I would expect.
Isn’t it just the difference between descriptive and prescriptive claims? Hanson thinks that everything is full of signalling, but it (or at least good writing) *shouldn’t* be.
Makes sense. I guess “everything is about signaling, therefore try to be really good at it” just seemed like the obvious conclusion to me.
(I guess the blog is called Overcoming Bias, not Pointing Out Bias and Throwing Up Our Hands)
But okay, if this is a sincere argument, then
- you can’t just avoid signaling by refusing to pad your statements with explicit value affirmations and presenting logical arguments! everything you say is signaling something!
- to conclude from “people say in a twitter poll that they don’t need a writer to affirm their shared values in order to engage with them” anything besides “people [who read Robin Hanson’s twitter] want to signal that they are rational” seems like giving a bit too much credit to people’s honesty and self-awareness here
- engagement is a limited resource. developing memetic immune reactions to things is not inherently bad. developing signaling mechanisms to subvert these reactions is the rational response.
occasionally mentioning that you think rape is bad is really not that costly