I have a boring hypothesis. It’s similar to the social media hypothesis. One signals virtue or IQ based on how much other people confer status for either of those things. In the early days of the internet, when there were barriers to entry preventing people from participating online, the internet was populated with people who disproportionately valued IQ over virtue. As a result, in order to gain status in old school online communities, you need to signal IQ. However, as the barriers to entry were lowered, a more representative sample of the population began to emerge online. The general population does not confer status based on signals of IQ, if anything, it’s it’s the opposite. Nerds have always been low status in the general population. Thus, the parts of the internet conferred status for IQ have become insignificant compared to those that confer status for virtue. So people respond to the new incentives and signal virtue. Since our online views are connected to our real personas, this virtue signalling leaks out into reality, with observable phenomena such as people being fired from their jobs due to internet flash-mobs.
If this hypothesis is correct, then there isn’t much we can do about it. Maybe we can make people aware of the dangers of conferring status for fake virtue in places with barriers to entry that are strong enough to keep out the people who would displace you for speaking about those dangers.
So people respond to the new incentives and signal virtue
If this were the case we would observe that people who previously signaled IQ would switch by and large to signaling virtue. This does not seem to be the case. Rather, the IQ signalers still exist and still signal IQ but have been marginalized/drowned-out by the superior number of virtue signalers.
This is apparent when looking at old reddit accounts. On reddit it used to be that most popular comments signaled IQ and most popular commenters would serially signal IQ. Look at historical posts, find an account that historically signaled IQ, and more often than not that account is either currently abandoned or used less often. Rarely will you find that the commenter has done a 180 and now consistently virtue signals.
I think this is a case where the one step removed hypothesis (new internet commenters value virtue over IQ so internet commenters switched to virtue signaling over IQ signaling) is less accurate than the direct hypothesis (new internet commenters virtual signal more and there’s more of them). The eternal september is caused by the old guard being unable to enforce their norms on the uncultured new users. It’s not caused by the new users changing the value system of the old guard.
I don’t think this casts much doubt on your hypothesis that the shift of internet values towards virtue signaling over IQ signaling leaked out into the real world. Virtue signaling leaked from the real world into the internet and then leaked back out strengthened and renewed. It’s a positive feedback loop.
Maybe the solution is focusing on reverting the internet values back towards IQ signaling or away from virtue signaling. This may then stop the positive feedback loop. This could be done by making the internet barrier to entry higher again. Canceling the internet as a whole would also achieve the ultimate goal.
I have a boring hypothesis. It’s similar to the social media hypothesis. One signals virtue or IQ based on how much other people confer status for either of those things. In the early days of the internet, when there were barriers to entry preventing people from participating online, the internet was populated with people who disproportionately valued IQ over virtue. As a result, in order to gain status in old school online communities, you need to signal IQ. However, as the barriers to entry were lowered, a more representative sample of the population began to emerge online. The general population does not confer status based on signals of IQ, if anything, it’s it’s the opposite. Nerds have always been low status in the general population. Thus, the parts of the internet conferred status for IQ have become insignificant compared to those that confer status for virtue. So people respond to the new incentives and signal virtue. Since our online views are connected to our real personas, this virtue signalling leaks out into reality, with observable phenomena such as people being fired from their jobs due to internet flash-mobs.
If this hypothesis is correct, then there isn’t much we can do about it. Maybe we can make people aware of the dangers of conferring status for fake virtue in places with barriers to entry that are strong enough to keep out the people who would displace you for speaking about those dangers.
In short, we’re all becoming part of the global village, and the village is chock full of people who “manipulate the social world, the world of popularity and offense and status, with the same ease that you manipulate the world of nature. But not to the same end. There is no goal for them, nothing to be maintained, just the endless twittering of I’m-better-than-you and how-dare-you-say-that.”
If this were the case we would observe that people who previously signaled IQ would switch by and large to signaling virtue. This does not seem to be the case. Rather, the IQ signalers still exist and still signal IQ but have been marginalized/drowned-out by the superior number of virtue signalers.
This is apparent when looking at old reddit accounts. On reddit it used to be that most popular comments signaled IQ and most popular commenters would serially signal IQ. Look at historical posts, find an account that historically signaled IQ, and more often than not that account is either currently abandoned or used less often. Rarely will you find that the commenter has done a 180 and now consistently virtue signals.
I think this is a case where the one step removed hypothesis (new internet commenters value virtue over IQ so internet commenters switched to virtue signaling over IQ signaling) is less accurate than the direct hypothesis (new internet commenters virtual signal more and there’s more of them). The eternal september is caused by the old guard being unable to enforce their norms on the uncultured new users. It’s not caused by the new users changing the value system of the old guard.
I don’t think this casts much doubt on your hypothesis that the shift of internet values towards virtue signaling over IQ signaling leaked out into the real world. Virtue signaling leaked from the real world into the internet and then leaked back out strengthened and renewed. It’s a positive feedback loop.
Maybe the solution is focusing on reverting the internet values back towards IQ signaling or away from virtue signaling. This may then stop the positive feedback loop. This could be done by making the internet barrier to entry higher again. Canceling the internet as a whole would also achieve the ultimate goal.