California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

While I may have sympathy for your more substantive points, anytime I hear someone mention virtue signalling, it makes it sound like they're virtue signalling. Better to just not bring up that dog whistle.

it's a perfectly good phrase to describe what it says. if that bothers you, maybe you need to ask yourself why.

I have to agree. It's distracting because it's a low signal quip that asserts that your opponents have no substance behind their views beyond looking good. Just make your argument.

Even if this were the rare valid application of it, it's so overused as a low effort attack that the comment is no better off for using it.

Finally, we have to contend with the fact that people earnestly believe in the things they say and do. If it were just for optics and they didn't actually hold their positions, these issues would be far easier to deal with.

In my experience, people who use the term "virtue signalling" don't understand the problems that the supposed virtue signalers are trying to solve and simply use the term as a cheap dismissal of their policies. If the policies are bad, explain why they're bad. Don't just say that people putting the 10 Commandments in schools are virtue signalling.

> if that bothers you, maybe you need to ask yourself why.

That's even vaguer and less compelling rhetoric than "virtue signaling".

> If it were just for optics and they didn't actually hold their positions, these issues would be far easier to deal with.

No, then it would have been easier. Virtue signaling is so hard to deal with since people don't want to lose their virtue, they have to stay the course and continue to upheld that what they did was virtuous or they lose all their hard work.

A good sign is if you call your opponents names rather than try to win them over, then you are just virtue signaling instead of trying to fix anything, insults doesn't improve anything except act as signaling. This is how most politicians acts, it tend to make you very popular and make your tribe view you as very virtuous, virtue signaling works.

Or indeed, it's possible that neither you nor the virtue signallers understand why they're doing it.

> It's distracting because it's a low signal quip that asserts that your opponents have no substance behind their views beyond looking good. Just make your argument.

That is the argument.

> Finally, we have to contend with the fact that people earnestly believe in the things they say and do. If it were just for optics and they didn't actually hold their positions, these issues would be far easier to deal with.

The point of the argument isn't that people don't genuinely believe these issues. Its that they participate in these views in earnest because of social conformity as opposed to a genuine understanding of, and commonly without any intention of helping resolve them. The symptom then is blindly electing leaders with no real plan (or worse) and the result is predictably poor outcomes. Its used as a battering ram in discussions; I thought it was a dog whistle too before moving out to the West coast by my god it really is everywhere here, and it really does stifle discussion. Its a real issue.

Regardless of whether or not either interlocutor understands the term, using the term virtue signaling itself is self-defeating for both parties for different reasons.

For the one hearing it, it’s a red herring, and for the one saying it, it’s a dog whistle. For the third party person reading the interaction without or with lesser context, it’s a thought-terminating cliche.

As you have just described, accusations of virtue signalling are really accusations of people acting in bad faith by another name - and doing that without evidence of bad faith is corrosive and fallacious. Hacker News even has rules against it because it is not accepted as a valid form of argument. Just because the accusations aren't being levied against someone you're directly replying to here doesn't make it any better.

If you have reason to believe these people are bad faith actors, present the evidence directly rather than trying to sneak it in with weasel words.

I understand that they're trying to fix a perceived problem. In the case of the people pushing the 10 Commandments in schools, they earnestly believe they're going to solve teen pregnancy, drug usage, etc. Saying that they're virtue signalling ignores the problem and strawmans the reason for their proposal. Saying why their policy won't work and another will addresses the problem.

> For the third party person reading the interaction without or with lesser context, it’s a thought-terminating cliche.

if one's thought is so easily terminated, maybe there wasn't as much thought as one might think to begin with.

If good faith weren't a prerequisite for reasoned debate, perhaps.

remember, we're talking about somebody getting triggered by the words "virtue-signalling", so I think good faith left the conversation a few stops back.

This is part of why it’s a bad term - its meaning is almost impossible to understand even in context because it means different things to different people and people read a lot into it. It’s kind of overloaded and seems like flamebait to me, I guess.

Some interesting bits here as well (italics added for emphasis):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling

> However, some argue that these expressions of outrage or moral alignment may reflect genuine concern, and that accusing others of virtue signalling can itself be a form of signalling. This has led to the coining of a related concept, vice signalling, which refers to the public promotion of negative or controversial views to appear tough, pragmatic, or rebellious, often for political or social capital.

I would add on and argue that using the term virtue signaling is itself an example of virtue signaling.