With various group letters going around denouncing some of the evils of the Trump administration, and sure to be more letter requests to come, I thought I would try to sketch out some thoughts about how to understand them.

Let’s start here: I reject two common and simple views: one is the literal theory, where signing the letter simply communicates whatever the letter says, and you should sign it if you feel like you agree with it; another is the bluster theory, which holds that signing the letter is pointless or empty virtue-signaling that all serious people should reject.

The reason I don’t accept the literal theory is that signing a group letter does something more than just communicate the contents of the letter. As Albert Einstein may or may not have said when he was denounced by 100 physicists, if they were clearly right it would just take one, making a compelling proof. A group letter’s very point is to signal some meta-claims beyond the literal contents of the letter.

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