Title Virtue Signaling

Author Geoffrey Miller

Year Published 2019

Kind of Book Politics/Evolutionary Psychology

How strongly I recommend it 7/10 

My Impressions Certainly thought provoking collection of essays. I always appreciate Geoffrey Miller's angle at looking at moral/political issues.

Date Read August 2020

What question is the author trying to answer?

"I hope that this little book elevates the conversation about virtue signaling as one of the best and worst things about our species." pg.12

 

Big Ideas

  • Authors sometimes no longer agree with everything they have written in the past

 

  • Students go to rallies and social justice events for the socially/dating aspects to it

 

  • People virtue signal during protests/social justice events as a courtship display

 

  • (Human) Men's sexual signaling is largely virtue based, whereas women's is largely anatomy based

 

  • Music and Art are ways males signal to females, not just surplus energy that comes out as self-expression.

 

  • Most of the time when someone is expressing a political opinion their goal is to signal for social or sexual reasons, not because they are trying to make political progress

 

  • The reason men tend to get more politically conservative as they age is because political conservatism is correlated with social dominance and earning-power, qualities women find attractive

 

  • The reason men tend to lean more politically liberal at a young age is because liberalism is seen as desirable to younger women

 

  • Most signals animals send to each others are messages about the signaler

 

  • Language may have evolved as was to signal traits to mates

 

  • Physical attractiveness is more important for short-term mates. Attractive moral traits are more attractive for long-term mates

 

  • Our moral virtues evolved as ways to attract sexual partners (not as an antithesis to sex)

 

  • "Ought" implies "can" ie. If we say "they should…" or "they ought to…", we are implying that they are capable of doing it

 

  • Father's reduce their parental investment after divorce. What we think of as Father parental investment in his children may be more about sexual access to his wife

 

  • SJWs don't care how their speech affect people with Aspergers and other neurodivergent conditions

 

  • Censorship kills creativity, truth, and progress

 

  • Exchanging risky ideas leads to creativity

 

  • Testing ideas and arguments against other people's logic leads to higher levels of truth

 

  • Censorship discriminates against people with neurodiversity and low social EQ

Because

  • It takes a great amount of social EQ to be able to predict what other people will find offensive/sexist/racist

 

  • America's Speech norms were imposes by 'normal' brains for 'normal' brains to obey

 

  • Speech codes are intentionally vague so that anyone who is upset can argue that a person was in violation

 

  • 'Inclusive' Speech codes are American norms and discriminate against other cultures that don't share these American norms for "inclusivity"

 

Surprising Facts

  • It was until the 1980s with mathematical models (game theory), computer simulations, and experiments in animal and human mate choice that Darwin's sexual selection theory was re-established as a major part of evolutionary biology.

  • Human's brain size has tripled over the last 2million years

  • Most animals keep their knowledge of the world selfishly to themselves, though a few of them like bees and mammals signal to others about food and warn them about predators

  • The leading causes of divorce across cultures are infidelity, abuse, addiction, and unemployment

  • Individuals who score low on agreeableness tend to have more personality disorders

  • Most people with psychopathy are male, most people with Borderline personality disorder are female

  • Higher IQ predicts higher EQ, conscientiousness, saying physically healthy, and more success in relationships

  • 17% of American college students are Hispanic

  • 14% of American college students are Black

  • 7%  of American college students are LGBTQ+

  • Men score lower on EQ scores than women

  • Men are 11xs more likely to have Aspergers syndrome than women

 

Unknown Terms

Cheap Talk: signals that people give that are cheap, quick, and easy to fake. They might not be accurate cues of underlying traits and values. (eg. Saying you're great in bed)

Honest Signals: signals that are hard to fake, and serve as a very reliable indicator of underlying traits and values. (eg. Having a group of surround you when you walk into a room)

The men-display-more hypothesis: The idea that males of a species will send more signals to their mates than the females, because it the females who are the choosers when it comes to mating. //sim. Bateman's Principal

Ideological: a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially as held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." 2) Of or concerned with ideas.

Spin doctors: An individual charged with getting others to interpret a statement or event from a particular viewpoint. 2) a campaign official or public relations (PR) expert who attempts to use spin to influence public opinion by placing a favorable bias on information presented to the public, usually via the media.

The Handicap Principle: The theory in evolutionary psychology that posits that some traits may be adaptive because they are useful for signaling health and good genes to the opposite sex, but are actually handicaps when it comes to the individual's survival. (eg. A peacock's feathers are attractive to females, but are a lability for his survival.) (eg. A man sparing meat for others after a hunt shows that he is so healthy/competent that he is able to do something that puts his own survival at more of a risk and still thrive)

Antisocial Personality Disorder (Sociopathy):  a mental disorder in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to antagonize, manipulate or treat others harshly or with callous indifference.

Theory of Mind: the popular term from the field of psychology as an assessment of an individual human's degree of capacity for empathy and understanding of others

Black mirror:

The title literally translates to the "black mirror" you see on your electronics' screens when they're powered down, but its meaning runs deeper. 

The premise of the series is that technology can mirror and even magnify the ugliest (blackest) aspects of human nature, evidenced by social-media witch hunts and a desperation for constant "likes" and public approval. 

Social (pragmatic) Communication Disorder: a newly recognized disorder that impairs abilities to use language 'appropriately' to match communication styles to different contexts and listeners, and to read between the lines given subtle or ambiguous language.

Neurodiversity: he variety of configurations of the brain, especially with regard to autism. 2)a scientific concept arising from brain imaging. A number of brain studies have shown that people with learning or thinking differences are "wired" differently than their peers. In other words, some children are born with brains that think, learn and process information differently than others. 3) a neologism used to refer to variation in the human brain regarding sociability, learning, attention, mood and other mental functions in a non-pathological sense. It was coined in 1998 by sociologist Judy Singer, who helped popularize the concept along with journalist Harvey Blume.

Aspie: a name for a person with Aspergers syndrome