Geoffrey MillerVerified account

There's a difference between winning races, where the point is to demonstrate superiority, and virtue, the value of which is usually considered to be spoiled by self promotion.

It kinda depends if you mean people demonstrating their virtue in such a way as to ensure others see it or that people are falsely aping virtue for status.

“Virtue” or in this case “majority opinion” if aped consciously, purely to gain favour, is the opposite of virtue. I had this the other day after a friend had just read Sinek’s “Leaders Eat Last”. He offered me food at a work social event first. Empty gesture.

Definitely not a simple issue. However, no one would 'signal' winning a race, they just would (and a magnanimous victor is far greater than a braggart). But, if one has 'virtue', it would surely not go unnoticed, no matter how hard one tried to conceal it (as should be the case).

Problem is that humility is seen as a virtue. So it's more like saying "It's not really athleticism if you have to cheat to win races."

If we include rational selfishness as a virtue (& I do), then, yes, I would agree that virtual signalling can be virtuous. But most people consider selfishness of any sort a vice, so by conventional definition of virtue, to signal one's own virtue for selfish purposes is a vice