Comments
This reminds me of the observation that you shouldn't buy a car from a dealer who calls himself Honest Ed.
Because honest people just go around being honest, they don't go around broadcasting honesty.
Honest Achmed, on the other hand—I hear he issues only the most legitimate of certificates from his Used Cars and Certificates Emporium!
By MichaelZuo 2025-06-131:23 Yeah discussing honesty seems pointless in real life considering a much lower bar… avoiding writing provable factual lies on the record… is often not even satisfied by large swathes on the population. Who often get away without any noticeable punishment too.
In comparison even a deceiver that says a dozen half truths an hour, without any outright factual lies, seems like a paragon of virtue.
Or how countries with "democratic" in the name invariably are not.
And few countries are as split into two warring camps as the United States of America.
By riehwvfbk 2025-06-1320:47 It's kind of funny: the land of the free is seemingly too brainwashed to take a joke.
By theoreticalmal 2025-06-130:523 reply Where’s the war? I must not be in a conflict zone
Try going outside and attempt to honestly express your opinion of the current President or Israel or immigrants or ${current_political_thing}. Maybe you live in a political monoculture, but most places are not.
Mate, people yelling insults at you in public in regards to your political opinions is practically the definition of a functioning democracy.
By wredcoll 2025-06-1319:03 Are you technically correct? Yes.
Are the majority of people who make these types of complaints thin-skinned right-wingers? Also yes.
In my experience, people who actually experience intimidation for their views, like you know, the view that being gay is fine actually, don't go around making these types of complaints. They're out protesting and fighting.
By throwawaymaths 2025-06-134:341 reply 150 years ago the us decimated its population with a war.
Well, there's currently this little conflict going on that had the president call on the National Guard. And a certain governor apparently sided with the rioters and decided to... sue?
... and reading this probably just made steam come out of your ears and think I'm an enemy? Well, there's your war zone ;)
By theoreticalmal 2025-06-2318:20 I think you overestimate how much I care about you, or the news cycle
I think that's true of most marketing. The bigger the lie the more shouting has to be done. Peter Thiel mentions that monopoly companies often have the most 'sales' in order to seem competitive. And conversely small competitive companies want to seem large and stable. A bag of lettuce won't have 'healthy' all over the packaging because that's self evident but a bottle or can sugary drink will have all sorts of claims about vitamins there is even a brand called Vitamin Water.
Honey Nut Cheerios Heart Healthy Breakfast Cereal. Vitamin Water. Green Hydrogen. Clean Diesel. Patriot Act.
That reminds me of the Guarantee scene from the movie Tommy Boy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEB7WbTTlu4
To briefly summarize (and sanitize), just because someone puts a guarantee on the box doesn't mean they'll stand by it. The guarantee on the box makes you feel warm and toasty, and that's what you bought -- the warm feelings. But if you have a quality product, you don't need to advertise the guarantee... the product is good enough on it's own.
(or something like that...)
Similarly the -refund, no questions asked- even if its honored by merchants plays on a psychological effect where most people wont ask for a refund (even if they dont use the product) unless its really broken/whatever
marketing is the art of manipulation
My father has been a Leatherman guy for as long as I can remember. We were at a gun show or trade fair many years ago, and leatherman had a stall there. They had a guy manning a service station, and the idea was you bring you multitool and they'll oil it, sharpen the blades, tighten screws etc. All free of course.
So my dad sends me with his leatherman to stand in the queue at this stall, while he goes to enjoy the rest of the expo. Eventually my turn comes up, I hand over my dad's multitool and the gentleman gets to work servicing it. He beckons to the person behind me, to find out what he wants. This guy walks up and dumps a heap of parts on the bench. His multitool was in literal pieces. It fell off his belt while at speed on a motorcycle or something.
The Leatherman Man put down my dad's tool, scraped the heap of scrap off the bench into a bin, reached for a shelf behind him and pulled off a brand new multitool and gave it to this guy, and waved him off.
This to me was the most powerful expression of "we got u" I've ever seen from a company, and they don't even put "no questions asked" on the box!
Needless to say I'm now also a Leatherman guy.
By tough 2025-06-1318:49 there was a time when apple wasnt a big shot where going to a genius bar felt like this, like your mac could be out of warranty technically but some guy could go above and beyond to try and fix it.
great customer service is a great hack for retention
Sounds like people that claim to be religious or mention they are Christian to gain trust, I lived in the Bible Belt and saw that a lot
By jjtheblunt 2025-06-1314:561 reply that's everywhere
By yencabulator 2025-06-143:281 reply Actually, no. It's incredibly rare in the Nordics, which are way more secular. Claiming to be religious there gains you practically nothing, and might lose you some.
By jjtheblunt 2025-06-165:121 reply that is also true in wide, but unpredictably located, swaths of America, i can attest.
I grew up in a very famously religious suburb of Chicago, and the proudly super church-y family nearby ended up with the father convicted of embezzling from the church.
consistent with your nordic point, it seemed to surprise no one (perhaps because most of the area was northwest european recently derived families).
I'm trying to think of a famously religious suburb of Chicago besides Skokie, which I would not describe as "church-y". Wheaton? I had to look that up.
By jjtheblunt 2025-06-1715:571 reply wheaton it is. evanston before that as a toddler. you're in oak park? (hi!)
By jjtheblunt 2025-06-1721:011 reply we're basically neighbors in some higher dimensional space.
By jjtheblunt 2025-06-1814:18 true (and a great higher dimensional euclidean joke)
In general, one's own words are the cheapest, and thus least reliable, form of signaling. If you call yourself "Honest Ed", it's pretty suspicious; if others unironically give you a moniker "Honest Ed", it's high praise.
Understatement is something only the renowned can afford; those who suck (or swindle) have to resort to overstatement and seek gullible audience.
By dylan604 2025-06-130:52 Sometimes people give the names ironically like calling the NFL lineman Tiny
By kirubakaran 2025-06-130:33 "Open" AI
> I’m suspicious whenever someone says, “I’m an (adjective) (noun).” Why did you need to say, “I’m a great tennis player,” “I’m a deep thinker,” or “I’m a generous person”? Instead, why not simply play tennis, regardless of how great you are? Or think as deeply as you want? Or be generous?
Which is why the whole "identification" fad is bullshit. Why bother identifying as a singer if you cannot sing?
Just a continuation of this postmodern delusion that puts the cart before the horse and elevates language and symbols about reality over reality itself.
By dylan604 2025-06-130:55 Most of the time, you don't have to walk the walk though. With the sports example, you can drop being great at it while talking to people at a bar or dinner party or online as you can't be asked to prove it right then and there. If you claim to be a good singer, you can pretty much do that at any time so that's a bit harder.
When people talk about their own identity, they very rarely mean something like "great at singing".
I admire your confidence that reality is so easily measured and categorized though.
Personally, as I grow older, I find more and more exceptions to things I once thought of as immutable truth.
No, my point is that the concept of identity is nonsense.
Show me a proof of the existence of an "identity" and I will furnish you proof of the soul and god.
Sure, just as soon as you show me the proof of existence of "thoughts" and that you exist as something other than an illusion in my mind.
How about the existence of numbers? The proof of 1+1=2? We humans have words for lots of things that only exist as abstract concepts without a physical embodiment.
Identity is one more of those and it's trivial to understand its application to real people.
> semantic drift and inaccurate (or even lacking) definitions for the word "god," which is probably better understood in modern English as "mind" or "mental construct" or "the abstract" (as contrasted with the "concrete" or physical body a la Descartes, in a similar fashion to the distinction between the rarefied air of mathematical models, and the hard reality of physical law). [0]
Right. We have that thoughts exist only if identities exist; identities exist only if gods exist; and that gods are made out of the same mind-stuff as mathematics, thought, and abstraction.
In fact it sounds like your position is tantamount to saying that gods exist if and only if identities exist, which was to be demonstrated.
One wonders why one regards such viewpoints as "secular" (or even, scientific!) when they still bear the hallmarks of what was once regarded as "spiritual" or metaphysical thought.
If you want to define "god" as a definition for abstract concepts, I can't stop you, although I doubt many would agree.
The difference is that things like mathematics and identities are useful.
By ryandv 2025-06-153:07 > If you want to define "god" as a definition for abstract concepts, I can't stop you, although I doubt many would agree.
This is extremely ignorant. God has been likened to an intellect since the days of the Neoplatonists and Aristotle himself as a "nous" or universal mind. Cosmological arguments necessitating the existence of this god as a "first cause" to avoid fallacies of infinite regress ended up rooting much of medieval theology and mainstream religious scholarship.
> The difference is that things like mathematics and identities are useful.
Civilizations have centered around the mental and social construct of gods since the era of Mesopotamian god-kings that built and organized society.
By ldjkfkdsjnv 2025-06-1223:441 reply Yup. Anytime someone keeps advertising some trait, its probably a cover up. They might not even be aware of it.
By GianFabien 2025-06-1223:471 reply Perhaps they are subconsciously aware of it. That is why they have to go around muttering affirmations to the contrary.
By ldjkfkdsjnv 2025-06-1223:541 reply Some of the worst behavior ive seen in my life has been done by devout catholics. who themselves cant see the consequences of their actions. and im not knocking religion, i just had to live alot of life to start being alarmed by outspoken moralists.
> Some of the worst behavior ive seen in my life has been done by devout catholics.
Those same "devout Catholics" can also be found identifying as secular "progressives" or whatever other word is trendy and evokes implications of moral superiority and righteousness. The religions and pantheons may differ but the core psychological mechanisms are the same.
The devout Catholic knows all the canned responses and hymns by rote, but only when the priest is there to prompt him; he forgets his moral code the second he has stood up from the pews.
Analogously the secular progressive will eagerly output all the tokens expected of a "good person" when adequately prompted with contemporary inclusive language; yet they don't appear to be able to keep to their principles in other environments when they aren't being supplied with the exact same context and tokens.
What a wildly random series of sentences that never bother making an actual point.
Personally, while I'd rather people be good, I'll settle for them pretending really hard.
> What a wildly random series of sentences that never bother making an actual point.
What a dismissive and lazy thought terminating cliche with literally zero informational content whatsoever.
> Personally, while I'd rather people be good, I'll settle for them pretending really hard.
The point is people don't even pretend. They receive a prompt then parrot the response by rote which is never understood and then immediately forgotten; by the time all the lip service has been paid and all the tokens emitted they don't even know what it is they're supposed to pretend to do.
You'll noticed I already addressed that. There are a number of virtuous actions you can perform. One of those is "emitting the right tokens" in the right context. Can we argue that other things are more virtuous? Easily. Does the existence of more virtuous actions make these actions nonvirtuous? Of course not.
Saying the right thing is a good start.
> Does the existence of more virtuous actions make these actions nonvirtuous? Of course not.⁵And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. [...] ⁷But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. [0]It's less to do with there being more virtuous actions than "vain repetitions" and the parroting of empty words, more to do with the fact that such signaling in the "corners of the streets" is already completely devoid of any virtue other than the immediate (and only) "reward" of merely being seen as virtuous.
> Saying the right thing is a good start.
So this is an argument in favor of calling one's self a "deep thinker" or "a good person" or "authentic" as mentioned in TFA? I mean, these are probably among the "right things" one can say about themselves, so why not start there?
[0] Matthew 6:5,7 KJV
No, calling yourself a "deep thinker" obviously has no virtue. Expressing sympathy, empathy or respect often is. The point is that words are actions just as much as bodily movements and there are good ones and bad ones.
Beyond that however, how we act is, to some degree, dependent on how we think we should behave, and consistently using certain types of self definition will affect that. Someone who consistently identifies themself in a certain way is, at least ever so slightly, more likely to behave that way.
By ryandv 2025-06-152:40 > Someone who consistently identifies themself in a certain way is, at least ever so slightly, more likely to behave that way.
Do you ever extend such benefit of the doubt to bible thumping creationists? Because the typical progressive characterization of such types is that they play up just how much they walk in Christ's footsteps while simultaneously being utterly bereft of virtue; yet based on what you've said I would think identification with Christ should have imbued them with a moral compass.
That is, in fact, essentially the assertion made by the comment that started this entire thread [0]:
> Some of the worst behavior ive seen in my life has been done by devout catholics. who themselves cant see the consequences of their actions. and im not knocking religion, i just had to live alot of life to start being alarmed by outspoken moralists.
By const_cast 2025-06-134:01 I find often with progressives not that those people are constantly trying to "signal" they support or stand with some people, but rather that they themselves are of some minority and therefore want to surround themselves in places where they're actively accepted.
Like, gay people aren't going to gay bars and drag shows to signal how woke and cool they are. They're going there because that's where they can be them, and that's where they're gonna have fun.
Or, when it comes to identity groups that they're not a part of, there's usually some overlap. Like a lot of the sort of underground gay scene and the black communities go hand and hand, and you'll see the adoption and flow of things like language and culture between them.
By bloomingeek 2025-06-131:413 reply I think most people get taken advantage of at a car dealership because they don't understand that they must do their homework on what the value is of the vehicle they're interested in, understand the financing, knowing what the extended warranty is worth and always walk away from pressure salesmanship.
If something is confusing, have them print out an offer on the vehicle and take it to someone for help. If they don't want to do that, walk! If the buyer remembers the dealership wants to make as much money as they can, then it's you against them. Since this is a given, what's on paper counts.
By majormajor 2025-06-132:27 The more expensive a transaction, the more crap. Houses are worse than cars!
But then if you spend enough more you get into super fancy squads of lawyers territory and a lot more due diligence and contracts.
The sweet spot for scams it:
* rare enough for the average person that they won't do too many in their life, and so it would be high effort to become an expert
* not quite expensive enough that all your potential buyers can lawyer up
Kinda funny that we put up with it. It's not adding value to the economy.
By yencabulator 2025-06-143:33 I'm very much ok with having a used car, and in case that's true for you too, here's my thinking:
A private seller may be scamming you, but a professional car salesman is guaranteed to be.
By tough 2025-06-131:45 or just call every dealership on the country looking for the ones that randomly need to fill their sales quota that month
By garbanz0 2025-06-130:42 I just say "To be honest" when I want to signal I'm about to say something that someone doesn't want to hear or that is slightly inappropriate
The tennis example is weird though. I don't think people who are bad at tennis go around claiming they're great at tennis, do they?
They do, seriously it is very common with male interactions. I have seen it first hand with tennis, golf, chess, and bowling. With golf easily being the most common
By weitendorf 2025-06-133:29 I find it helpful to tell people who I know only dabble in eg chess that I am "pretty good at chess" when they do not have enough context on things like Elo and FIDE ratings to be able to understand comparisons like that. Of course, if someone knows what Elo is or is an active chess player then I will more humbly just tell them I am only like 1600 on lichess.
I don't think this is necessarily bad. Compared to people who only dabble in things, someone who spends a decent amount of time on something actually is "pretty good" at it even though they might not be top tier to people within that same culture.
I think there is some popular (dan luu?) blog about this. You can actually pretty easily be in the top 1% of skill or knowledge on something, and while that doesn't make you a world expert by any means, it does kinda make you an expert to an average person. My 1600 rating is very good within the pool of people who know what chess is and can play it, even though it's not impressive at all for people who actively play chess.
By kriro 2025-06-131:52 Chess? Can't you just ask for their ELO? Or some proxy like chess.com rating? If you're good you must have played a lot of games. If you did, you got some number to back it up.
By readthenotes1 2025-06-1223:442 reply Dunning Kruger would have us think so.
Also, most people who are good at something let their actions speak.
Tennis is competitive though and unlike golf there’s no form of handicap. When it comes to pick up tennis, it’s not fun playing against someone way below or way above your level. I refer to myself as mediocre at tennis so I can play against people who are around my level. People who are good refer to themselves as being good so that everyone enjoys themselves (and improves) on a court.
The difference between good and mediocre is significant. To the point that I cannot return a good tennis player’s serves. The difference between mediocre and post beginner is just as significant.
Having played both tennis and golf, I agree. It's a lot harder to play social tennis than social golf.
Two nice things about golf - the handicap system let's two players of different level engage in fun competition. (Yes, handicaps can be manipulated, but for the most part aren't. )
Second a very good player can play with a bad player, and both can have fun. The social factor is more important to the fun, and I've enjoyed tight games with people with hugely disparate handicaps.
With tennis I always want to play either someone just a little bit better than me. Someone who can help me get a bit better all the time. My enjoyment of the game depends a lot on their performance.
Both are enjoyable in their own right.
How do you overcome a wrong observation of a local maximum though (e.g. in your club maybe)?
I only experienced something like this once, late 90s. We thought of ourselves as pretty ok StarCraft players until we got some visitor to a lan party who basically demolished everyone. This was pre-ladder iirc so you only played a handful of games online.
By bruce511 2025-06-1312:12 In golf the handicap system is "global". Each player has a handicap index, which then translates into a course handicap. It's not perfect (different players have different strengths and weaknesses, which means some courses "suit" a game more than others) but generally the system is at least reasonably accurate.
Tennis of course is harder. You can only be as good as the people you are playing with.
By evidencetamper 2025-06-130:291 reply Dunning Kruger is a cognitive bias in overconfident individuals, not a general characteristic found in every person.
By shermantanktop 2025-06-135:51 There’s a little Dunning-Krueger in all of us. Well, everyone else, but not me, or you, dear reader.
That’s the appeal of Dunning-Krueger. It’s become a blanket label for every moment of ignorance or confident stupidity someone sees in others.
By infamousclyde 2025-06-131:49 Similarly, there’s a special military unit whose motto is “Facta Non Verba”— deeds, not words. Talk is cheap!
By Terr_ 2025-06-137:03 That's a weird juxtaposition of rare events and extraordinarily frequent ones. :p
Then they gossip about that, then they gossip about the gossip. Its a feedback loop.
By marcosdumay 2025-06-132:38 Well, it's a social network.
I've noticed this with movies. If a movie is being advertised a lot, it's usually a bad movie. Why else are they trying so hard?
The opposite happened with the Matrix. I think I saw 1 bus stop poster for it, and didn't know what it was until multiple people at work said, "you have to see it!" Too bad they never made a sequel.
By joegibbs 2025-06-133:10 You might just not like big-budget movies - there's definitely a correlation between the size of the budget and a lack of novelty. Take a look at Wikipedia's list of most expensive films, almost every single one on there is a big franchise film - often late in the franchise too. I think the first one on there that isn't based on previous material is Avatar at #41 and I think the only other is Tenet at #62.
This makes sense - if you're funding a movie you want a return on your investment. You could make 20 risky $10m movies or one that's $200m which has to succeed or else. When you put your money into the $200m movie you want to make sure it's as inoffensive as possible and appeals to as wide an audience as possible, so you want a franchise that's proven to pump out hits in the past (or a director who does the same, like Cameron for Avatar and Nolan for Tenet).
By paulryanrogers 2025-06-130:261 reply > Too bad they never made a sequel.
Sarcasm?
By cpfohl 2025-06-130:30 Language warning if you have kids around or don’t like that.
By GianFabien 2025-06-130:292 reply from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_(franchise) sequels:
The Matrix Reloaded The Matrix Revolutions The Matrix ResurrectionsBy Terr_ 2025-06-130:32 I'm sure the parent-poster is making a joke about the other movies being bad, as opposed to being bizarrely unaware of them.
By phoronixrly 2025-06-130:321 reply It's an xkcd reference
No, this is older than the xkcd. I think it goes back to 1999-2003, when we had hoped we'd ever get a fourth Star Wars movie.
By phoronixrly 2025-06-1310:32 It's an older meme, but it checks out? :)
