mattnewport comments on Open Thread, September, 2010-- part 2 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: NancyLebovitz 17 September 2010 01:44AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (858)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: erratio 25 September 2010 12:59:36AM 1 point [-]

One of my best friends, who is far more intelligent than I, sometimes says 'could of' instead of 'could have'. My point being, having language pet peeves is fine and normal, but whether people make those errors or not is a really poor indicator of status (even though hearing 'could of' and 'for all intensive purposes' drives me up the wall)

Comment author: komponisto 25 September 2010 01:11:54AM *  3 points [-]

Some very intelligent people also wear T-shirts instead of suits. Nevertheless, it would be preposterous to deny that wearing a suit is a meaningful status signal, or to claim that clothing is a "really poor indicator of status".

Signaling mechanisms aren't perfect, and yet they're still signaling mechanisms anyway.

Comment author: mattnewport 25 September 2010 01:14:31AM 5 points [-]

In engineering / software circles, wearing a T-shirt rather than a suit is a kind of countersignaling.

Comment author: komponisto 25 September 2010 01:25:57AM 2 points [-]

Indeed; and no doubt linguistic countersignaling also occurs in some communities. (Example: politicians.)