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Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

You'll find that thinking like that will only lead to misery at worst and hypocrisy at best. For example, if you live in the United States (though this logic applies to any country, really), you'll be interested to know that the US holds the world record for the amount innocent civilians killed [1].

[1] https://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-holds-the-world-record-of-...

EDIT: I realize I sound far more judge-y than intended in these posts. My overall point is that people should just do whatever makes 'em happy while doing the best you can (w.r.t. everything else). Trying to emphasize the morality in your actions is just wrong, imo.

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Don’t let hypocrisy stop you from doing the right thing. Sometimes you need to climb one tree to cut down another.[1] That’s ok.

[1] tbh I don’t think you do, but I like the analogy so I’m keeping it.

I disagree. One needs to be consistent in their actions, otherwise, what's the point? Two wrongs don't make a right, after all.

EDIT: Er, I agree that hypocrisy shouldn't stop you from doing the right thing.

Consistency is absolutely impossible, as you already alluded to. It’s not a bad move to assess the current position, accept it for what it is, and improve it bit by bit. Pick your battles.

Two wrongs don’t make a right when you try to sum them, I.e. combine them. My point is: don’t compare them at all. Don’t change the subject. Uber is one, other things are another. Being a hypocrite doesn’t make you wrong, it just makes you a hypocrite. Don’t even pull in the other wrong to begin with.

Otherwise, how do you ever justify standing up for anything you believe in? I was born a hypocrite, surely a life of mute acquiescence can’t be my destiny?

My overall point is that people don't actually care. It's just virtue signaling. If people cared they'd have consistency in their actions. For example, you probably are very consistent in the fact that you probably will never cause physical harm to someone.

Consistency isn't impossible at all. People are already very consistent in doing what simply is convenient for them. In the case of Uber vs. Lyft, if you live in an area where they're priced similarly and are of similar service it's easy to switch to one or the other under the guise of trying to do the right thing, or whatever.

Not using Uber hardly requires any effort. What, ten seconds to uninstall an app and install the alternative one?

Today's SMBC comic is relevant to your argument: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/wait-a-sec

> My overall point is that people don't actually care. It's just virtue signaling.

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

I care up to certain thresholds. Last year my Uber use was probably 90%, Lyft 10%. Now that's flipped. I only use Uber if I'm outside the US and there's no comparable local alternative.

Uber is demonstrably making less money than it used to because I do this, and Lyft is making more. I'm personally happy with that arrangement, and honestly my feelings here are the only ones that matter. I don't particularly care if you think I'm just "virtue signaling" or if I'm "not doing enough" or whatever.

Hey, just wanted to let you know (not that you care), that you're 100% right. My original post, and subsequent responses were based on a false equivalency.

Dunno what I was thinking, I was totally in the wrong. Apologies if any offense was taken.

> people don't actually care. It's just virtue signaling.

"Virtue signaling" is an annoying, low-effort way of dismissing something. Try harder. You haven't even provided any evidence. Here's an alternative proposal: People like doing things that they believe will make the world a better place, within their money/time/inconvenience budget, in ways that are limited by their attention. They're human - they have limited attention, limited capacity for simultaneously optimizing hundreds of metrics, and many competing demands that they're trying to satisfy, so they're not going to be perfectly consistent.

No, one person uninstalling Uber is not a massive blow against evil. But many people uninstalling it has been enough to send a pretty powerful signal that -- in conjunction with a lot of concurrent social and legal factors -- is causing Uber to do a pretty solid about-face.

(And it's not seconds, because depending on where you are, Uber may have many more drivers than Lyft -- people travel, after all, so even if Lyft is equal in your home market, it's not equal everywhere. You're also losing the prospect of alternating apps when one or the other is in surge pricing. If you're a heavy user of ride-sharing services, uninstalling Uber imposes both a time and monetary cost.)

Kudos to the GP and others for uninstalling Uber. And for every other step they've taken to try to improve the world by their own actions.

Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien Dit que le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

(In his writings, a wise Italian says that the better is the enemy of good.)

    -- Voltaire

Don't let the pursuit of perfection stop you from doing anything that matters.

Though I appreciate your post, it only further emphasizes my original point. You, apparently a professor at CMU, praise folks for merely uninstalling an app. Something you only knew because they bothered to post it on an internet board. This further reinforces that people should post that they're doing such virtuous things to begin with. Why, because they want to increase social standing among people in a given area, that is computer science, to which you already have a high standing in, given that you're a CS professor at CMU.

So yes, it is virtue signalling, pretty much by definition -- "the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue." That being said, I don't think virtue signalling is bad. In fact, it's virtue signalling that has led to the pressure on Uber that brought about this very discussion.

---

As an aside, I didn't realize "virtue signalling" was such a bad word, as well as "hypocrisy." I guess I'll have to stop using those words.

Let me quote from your original comment:

> people don't actually care. It's just virtue signaling.

You're making claims about their underlying motivation, and dismissing their actions as just virtue signaling.

"They're not doing A, they're only doing B"

Showing the presence of B is not sufficient to demonstrate the absence of A.

Second, you haven't actually shown that they're virtue signaling. Note that your definition specifically includes intent: "publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character" -- the OP could be expressing their sentiments publicly in order to induce others to follow suit, for example. The same post admits many possible explanations, and you are in no position to read the mind of the posters in order to divine their intent. You're making assumptions, but you again haven't presented any evidence to suggest that your hypothesis is better than any others.

Hmmm, lots of good points here.

> You're making claims about their underlying motivation, and dismissing their actions as just virtue signaling.

This is true.

> Showing the presence of B is not sufficient to demonstrate the absence of A.

This is also true.

> Second, you haven't actually shown that they're virtue signaling. Note that your definition specifically includes intent: "publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character" -- the OP could be expressing their sentiments publicly in order to induce others to follow suit, for example. The same post admits many possible explanations, and you are in no position to read the mind of the posters in order to divine their intent. You're making assumptions, but you again haven't presented any evidence to suggest that your hypothesis is better than any others.

Indeed, though, with respect to this there's no evidence -- save the person themselves stating that's what they intended -- that I could present that would be sufficient.

Overall I regret my original post and the ensuing posts, since ironically, my original intent was far less aggressive than is implied by the responses.

Oh well, live and learn.

You have my respect.

Your profile says "Contact me" but there's no contact info.

(It also says: “if you're going to claim something, please cite!” :) )

Thanks for engaging in good faith. The internet could use more of that.

It’s just not possible to be perfectly consistent in all your actions, we’re all hypocrites somewhere if you consider all down to the root. We probably all hate forced child labor, yet we all own smartphones, all of them most likely built with resources mined by children under grueling conditions. (This text Is typed on one) Still, don’t let that stop from doing the right thing once in a while. If we all did the right thing most of the time, we’d still be hypocrites, but the world would probably be a better place.

> We probably all hate forced child labor

A false premise. If that were true, just like you stated, we wouldn't support it. Actions speak louder than words, and all that.

It’s not a false premise. It’s just not humanly possible to change everything you don’t support. We can’t move all back to self-dug caves and till the land with our bare hands. You need to pick your battles.

It's not about changing things you support, it's just about consistency in your actions.

Taking the child labor thing into account, never being brand new electronics again would pretty much take care of that. One could make an argument that buying used goods is still supporting child labor, but I'd argue it's a sunk cost.

> brand new electronics

Why choose this example? Child labour is rife in many sectors, particularly textiles.

It's also rampant in electronics recycling[0]. So even if you never buy any new electronics, you're complicit when you dispose of your old electronics.

The point is you shouldn't allow an impossible quest for perfect ideological consistency and moral purity to prevent you from doing good on a imperfect, inconsistent scale.

[0] http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/india-rising-tide-e-wast...

Oh I completely agree.

> Two wrongs don't make a right, after all.

That saying... doesn't even apply here.

Being consistent in all you do is hard. Doing 5 "bad" things instead of 10 "bad" things is certainly better.

the two wrongs in this case are the supposed wrong you did originally, and then the "wrong" of hypocrisy.

I agree with your overall point, though.

> tbh I don’t think you do

I've actually had to climb one tree to cut down another.

We can vote for people who don't want the US to kill civilians while not using Uber. I don't see the conflict here.

The point is that if you know that the US kills civilians yet you stay in the US, giving them money through tax, the majority of which is used to fund the very same military that kills civilians, yet claim to do the right thing, that's hypocritical, no?

In any case, you're right. There is no conflict. Just hypocrisy.

So one should absolve themselves of any way they could stop it in a peaceful and legal manner?

No no. My point probably just wasn't properly conveyed. In the original post I replied to the person the person encouraged their friends to use Lyft after hearing about the terrible things over at Uber.

Presumably they want friends to switch over as to not support an organization they disagree with, but my point was that doing so is pretty much impossible to begin with. If the goal is to not support organizations that do things you disagree with it's futile.

Therefore, one should just decide arbitrarily. It really doesn't matter.

Taking money away from a bad company helps stop that company from doing bad. Similarly, voting for a politician who will try not to kill civilians helps prevent civilians from being killed. Both of these are correct actions to take. Moving out of the country is comparatively less effective, and continuing to give money to the bad company is not effective at all.

I agree with you in general, but unfortunately things are never that simple. Most companies do good too, otherwise they wouldn't exist.

"things are never that simple" says the guy who is implying that you shouldn't think about whether a company is moral/not if you live in a country that does horrible things?

Heh, yeah I'll admit the original post and the subsequent responses were pretty dumb. Can't change the past (no really, I couldn't edit it even if I wanted).

>giving them money through tax

This number doesn't account for countless millions, if not the majority of Americans who drain more from the government in the form of services, subsidies, and assistance than they pay in taxes (and I'm not suggesting this is necessarily a bad thing).

Why should I tidy my room when we don't have world peace?

It's a ridiculous comparison. Leaving the country is a lot more difficult than changing ride share apps. It's not hypocritical to take the low-hanging ethical fruit, even if you don't do the harder stuff. In any case, living in a country doesn't imply that you support everything its government does. If anything, the ethical course of action is to stay and try to change things.

If you're not willing to restructure your entire life to the point of renouncing citizenship of the country you were born into then you shouldn't ever make any choices based on moral principles whatsoever? uh.. what??

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white

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