MetaJess

Nobody has any “values.” This is a complete myth; one that does more than anything to drive the destructive culture war. (Anyone know of a good write-up of this? If not, I guess I ought to do it; the confusion seems near-universal.)

what are "values" and how are those distinct from values?

Oh, I was unclear. Those were just sneer quotes. There’s no difference.

is the sneer caused by the culture-war loaded use of the word values? e.g. "values voters" etc. or are you dipping a toe into some post-nihilism here?

Well, the culture war usage (on both sides) is a particularly harmful manifestation. But “values” is a folk-psychological notion that doesn’t correspond to anything in reality, and is actively misleading in understanding motivations.

This depends partly on pre-replication-crisis results (especially situationism), but see http://humancond.org/analysis/social/attitude_behavior_gap … My take is that "attitudes" or values are adopted for social signalling rather than as basis for behavior.

But behavior patterns such as pro-natalist early reproduction vs. college/delayed reproduction are as @Meaningness has noted have something to do with "family values". Generally values are trotted out to support political positions, and are often quite vague. "Fairness", "family"

Yes, my take is that “values” are used (1) to signal personal characteristics, particularly tribe; (2) to retrospectively justify action that did not meaningfully involve them at the time; (3) to construct a coherent (but mostly factually empty) self-narrative. cc @edelwax