h-H comments on Things You Can't Countersignal - Less Wrong

51 Post author: Alicorn 19 February 2010 12:18AM

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Comment author: h-H 19 February 2010 04:34:34AM *  2 points [-]

What about being in a group-say a conference, party etc where people have heard of you-assume you've a quality or other that's desirable or attractive- so they never met you but know of you and your exploits/wisdom/whatever?

IMO in that situation even though you don't actually know the people they know of you, and signaling might not be just unproductive but Counter-productive, you'll simply seem arrogant and too full of yourself. for eg. you meet someone, you tell a story about your exploits or share useful knowledge-signal-, they get impressed, you repeat the process every time you see them and they actually get irritated and treat you negatively.. as silly as it sounds, I observed this happening once, and it really puzzled me until I read more on signaling and status games. would you say this was a valid conclusion?

linking this to the main article, couldn't not being able to countersignal certain things-to certain people?- work to your advantage as well? though if mismanaged it could quickly make for potentially awkward social situations.