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Hmm this assumes sufficient intelligence to question superficial claims of efficacy. Ie virtue signaling may be indistinguishable from virtue in the stupid. An intelligence independence test may be how you react when credibly informed that a signal activity is in fact useless
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Finally there’s value in installing a lower-cost cognitive norm even when it’s not locally meaningful. Is stopping at a 4-way when there are no other cars anywhere near the intersection a) virtue signaling b) internalized traffic cop superego c) “simpler rule” cognition hack?
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Edit: not just intelligence, but energetic skepticism of everything. Just not worth questioning 90% of the time whether a low-cost ritual in particular is efficacious or not. If it is, you gain a lot. If not, you lose a little.
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Basically I think this line of thought conflates intent to virtue signal from deep laziness social harmony compliance. There’s a behavioral regime you could call conventionalism that lies between conscious virtue signaling and empirically refined efficacious action.
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Re your q, traffic behavior may in fact be the example you’re looking for (low epistemic-effort for good). Most traffic rules are decent. Limited “no signage has lower accidents” experiments should be taken with huge grain of salt since they’re untested against long-term laziness
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