[Link] How Signaling Ossifies Behavior

Jayson_Virissimo

Here is a new post at EconLog in which Bryan Caplan discusses how signalling contributes to the status quo bias.

The lesson: In the real world, signaling naturally tends to ossify behavior - to lock in whatever the status quo happens to be. If you're an optimist, you can protest, "It's only a tendency." But even an optimist should admit that this tendency leads to atypically slow and unreliable progress.

Here is a new post at EconLog in which Bryan Caplan discusses how signalling contributes to the status quo bias.

The lesson: In the real world, signaling naturally tends to ossify behavior - to lock in whatever the status quo happens to be. If you're an optimist, you can protest, "It's only a tendency." But even an optimist should admit that this tendency leads to atypically slow and unreliable progress.

In recent decades there has been a heavy emphasis in our popular culture that being close-minded, conformist, or supporting the status quo are bad things, and that open mindedness and difference and originality and thinking for yourself and finding your own way and understanding are admirable (or at least, you often have moralizing stories about that in children's media).

The Moldbuggian interpretation of the outward valorisation of nonconformity would be that the supposed nonconformity is but conformity to a different ideology, the actual status quo that he calls the Cathedral, actual nonconformity with which is severely punished by the self-styled nonconformists. "Open mindedness and difference and originality and thinking for yourself and finding your own way and understanding" are (on this view) code for loyalty and obedience to the Cathedral. Thinking for yourself is allowed precisely so long as you arrive at approved answers.

Well, it's fun running a Moldbug simulation in my head.

The Moldbuggian interpretation of the outward valorisation of nonconformity would be that the supposed nonconformity is but conformity to a different ideology

"College is where nonconformists go to conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity."

Pretty sure I once saw that in a Unix fortune file, likely dating to the '80s.

8Emile13y

I don't deny that there are some kinds of nonconformisms that will make people look down upon you (no need to get into politics for that, bestiality is a fine example), but it would be quite surprising if all this drum-beating around the values of originality and open-mindedness didn't actually result in more respect for open-mindedness and originality, even as a side effect. Do you think all nonconformity is actually punished, or just some specific types of nonconformity?

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[Link] How Signaling Ossifies Behavior

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[Link] How Signaling Ossifies Behavior

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