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This study seems like it was designed to reach the specific conclusion that it did, based on the way that it defined "moral grandstanding." Here are some questi

This study seems like it was designed to reach the specific conclusion that it did, based on the way that it defined "moral grandstanding." Here are some questions they asked to measure it: 13. When I share my moral/political beliefs, I do so to show people who disagree with me that I am better than them. 14. I share my moral/political beliefs to make people who disagree with me feel bad 28. Even if expressing my moral/political views does not help anyone, it is important that I share them. …and lo and behold, they found that people who answered "yes" to those questions were also more narcissistic and more concerned with appearance than substance. Ok. Well, that's not really surprising. But it tells us nothing about how prevelent these motivations are compared to genuine concern for the issues at hand. I'm quite sure Hacker News would have ripped into this sort of study if it weren't promoting the "politics is sports" narrative that this community is so fond of, which is sort of ironic given how the study specifically talks about "echo chambers."

brailsafe 7y ago
> But it tells us nothing about how prevelent these motivations are compared to genuine concern for the issues at hand. I found that to be a curious statement, because—and I didn't read the study, just here for the commentary—it seems like we're talking about how certain types of behaviour are differentiated from a whole for some reason. In this case, the effort seems to be toward finding disingenuous grandstanding, but how do we define genuine concern? When does a political belief that someone has become genuine and how do others outside this apparent narcissistic group reflect more noble intention? My impression for some time has been that genuine concern for any given political topic is a function of the cost in having, revealing, or defending it. For example, if you are Brandon Eich, there is a tremendous cost in upholding his homophobic values; to himself and others. The racist who has never met whoever they hate, the gay man with anti-abortion values, nor the 17 year old who screams on reddit about Hong Kong and Blizzard but still buys their games and isn't in the crossfire quite a lot less. -- Tried to use contemporary references. Brandon recently did an AMA and refused to answer any question about that controversy, not building too much confidence in his product called "Brave"
- pgcj_poster 7y ago
  > I found that to be a curious statement, […] it seems like we're talking about how certain types of behaviour are differentiated from a whole for some reason. This study is being used to attack the character of people who make bold statements about politics online (See: this thread), on the basis that they do it out of narcissism and power-seeking. I think this study does a very poor job demonstrating that, because they clearly selected for people who are narcissistic and power-seeking, which for all we know is small proportion of people who post about politics online. This is sort of like if I published a study saying "people who post on tech forums are greedy, immoral capitalists," but I selected my group of tech forum-posters by asking "Agree or disagree: I lie to drive interest in my products." > When does a political belief that someone has become genuine and how do others outside this apparent narcissistic group reflect more noble intention? You seem to be operating from the very strange assumption that by default, all political statements are made out of narcissism, and that we need some special reason to think that they're genuine. This contradicts how we tend to think in pretty much every other area of life. For instance, if I wrote "Java is the worst language in the world." you would probably assume that I was disliked Java for some reason. You would probably not assume that I was secretly trying to make java programmers feel bad, or that I was trying to suck up to C# programmers, or whatever. Likewise, if someone says "$POLITICIAN is a criminal who should be in jail," my assumption is that they really believe it. There doesn't have to be anything noble about it: it's just normal. People say what they believe. > My impression for some time has been that genuine concern for any given political topic is a function of the cost in having, revealing, or defending it. That suggests that only minority opinions are genuine, and moreover that broad, genuine agreement throughout the population is impossible. I think almost the entire United States was genuinely concerned about terrorism the day after 9/11, even though you would probably not lose anything by speaking out against terrorism.
  - brailsafe 7y ago
    I tend to agree with how you've reframed my points, in fact all of them, though I could have been a little more careful with my words. Regarding the last point, I'd say that cost wouldn't designate a belief genuine or not, and now that I think of it, narcissistic intention doesn't negate that either. Rather, it's an assessment of how bold a statement is, or the degree to which it's likely to be shallow or indicative of attention grabbing for personal gain. More concisely, putting your money where your mouth is. After 911, if you were afraid of terrorism, it might come up in conversation and you'd talk about it, but going to random places on the internet and discussing it unprompted—especially if you used it as a vehicle for middle eastern bigotry, which was also common—would signal something else, especially if you have a figurative grand stand available. Those that have a minority opinion would be less likely to be doing it for claps—although they might get them—because their audience is more ambiguous. More about the degree being the measure. I'm concerned about climate change, but have only personally given up a bit in the name of it. If I were to be extremely vocal on reddit about that, it would be for imaginary personal gain. That said, a third case of both being true definitely exists. Having high cost and an opinion doesn't negate the possibility that you're moral grandstanding. I suppose what I was thinking about was more to do with how much you'd need to have considered a given stance, based on potential conflict with your personal beliefs or those of most people around you.

brailsafe 7y ago

> But it tells us nothing about how prevelent these motivations are compared to genuine concern for the issues at hand. I found that to be a curious statement, because—and I didn't read the study, just here for the commentary—it seems like we're talking about how certain types of behaviour are differentiated from a whole for some reason. In this case, the effort seems to be toward finding disingenuous grandstanding, but how do we define genuine concern? When does a political belief that someone has become genuine and how do others outside this apparent narcissistic group reflect more noble intention? My impression for some time has been that genuine concern for any given political topic is a function of the cost in having, revealing, or defending it. For example, if you are Brandon Eich, there is a tremendous cost in upholding his homophobic values; to himself and others. The racist who has never met whoever they hate, the gay man with anti-abortion values, nor the 17 year old who screams on reddit about Hong Kong and Blizzard but still buys their games and isn't in the crossfire quite a lot less. -- Tried to use contemporary references. Brandon recently did an AMA and refused to answer any question about that controversy, not building too much confidence in his product called "Brave"

pgcj_poster 7y ago
> I found that to be a curious statement, […] it seems like we're talking about how certain types of behaviour are differentiated from a whole for some reason. This study is being used to attack the character of people who make bold statements about politics online (See: this thread), on the basis that they do it out of narcissism and power-seeking. I think this study does a very poor job demonstrating that, because they clearly selected for people who are narcissistic and power-seeking, which for all we know is small proportion of people who post about politics online. This is sort of like if I published a study saying "people who post on tech forums are greedy, immoral capitalists," but I selected my group of tech forum-posters by asking "Agree or disagree: I lie to drive interest in my products." > When does a political belief that someone has become genuine and how do others outside this apparent narcissistic group reflect more noble intention? You seem to be operating from the very strange assumption that by default, all political statements are made out of narcissism, and that we need some special reason to think that they're genuine. This contradicts how we tend to think in pretty much every other area of life. For instance, if I wrote "Java is the worst language in the world." you would probably assume that I was disliked Java for some reason. You would probably not assume that I was secretly trying to make java programmers feel bad, or that I was trying to suck up to C# programmers, or whatever. Likewise, if someone says "$POLITICIAN is a criminal who should be in jail," my assumption is that they really believe it. There doesn't have to be anything noble about it: it's just normal. People say what they believe. > My impression for some time has been that genuine concern for any given political topic is a function of the cost in having, revealing, or defending it. That suggests that only minority opinions are genuine, and moreover that broad, genuine agreement throughout the population is impossible. I think almost the entire United States was genuinely concerned about terrorism the day after 9/11, even though you would probably not lose anything by speaking out against terrorism.
- brailsafe 7y ago
  I tend to agree with how you've reframed my points, in fact all of them, though I could have been a little more careful with my words. Regarding the last point, I'd say that cost wouldn't designate a belief genuine or not, and now that I think of it, narcissistic intention doesn't negate that either. Rather, it's an assessment of how bold a statement is, or the degree to which it's likely to be shallow or indicative of attention grabbing for personal gain. More concisely, putting your money where your mouth is. After 911, if you were afraid of terrorism, it might come up in conversation and you'd talk about it, but going to random places on the internet and discussing it unprompted—especially if you used it as a vehicle for middle eastern bigotry, which was also common—would signal something else, especially if you have a figurative grand stand available. Those that have a minority opinion would be less likely to be doing it for claps—although they might get them—because their audience is more ambiguous. More about the degree being the measure. I'm concerned about climate change, but have only personally given up a bit in the name of it. If I were to be extremely vocal on reddit about that, it would be for imaginary personal gain. That said, a third case of both being true definitely exists. Having high cost and an opinion doesn't negate the possibility that you're moral grandstanding. I suppose what I was thinking about was more to do with how much you'd need to have considered a given stance, based on potential conflict with your personal beliefs or those of most people around you.