Armchair philosophy and email sigs

I’m not a big fan of email signatures, although I used to be. I recall one day deciding that ‘real’ mail didn’t generally have such things, and so I wouldn’t put one in my email.

That’s not a very good reason, but on reflection it seems odd to add a ‘standard’ thought to every message, no matter what its tone and content are.

I am, however a fan of the simple philosophy to be found in them. One of the last I had, that I recall, is:

You are unique. Just like everyone else.

Reading ‘Beautiful Evidence‘ just now, I have come across something I’d put in my next sig, if I ever have one again. Purporting to be the conclusion of an omnibus/meta survey of all social science papers, the quoted paper summarises our knowledge of human behaviour:

(1) Some do, some don’t. (2) The differences aren’t very great. (3) It’s more complicated than that.

Of course, it breaks the etiquette of keeping an email sig to two lines or less. Good job I don’t have one :-)