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Yvain comments on On the Openness personality trait & 'rationality' - Less Wrong
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I disagree; I think this is an excellent use of the handicap principle (though it remains to be seen whether it's actually true). Any gazelle can go stotting, too, if by "can" you mean "it is physically possible for them to do so". But only a gazelle very confident in its speed actually will, because all the other gazelles are too worried about being eaten by lions to dare to try it.
Likewise, anyone can claim to like weird foreign films on MySpace, but only a person very confident in her popularity actually will, because all the other people are too worried about being shunned.
The number one objection I have to this idea isn't that it's not evolutionarily plausible, but that it doesn't fit observed data: it's not the high school quarterbacks and cheerleaders who are liking weird foreign films, it's kinda weird people who aren't popular anyway: anime is the most obvious example. Any further argument for this idea would have to explain why it goes so terribly wrong.
We seem to be in agreement that Miller's argument (such as it can be reconstructed from the quotes) is weak, but disagreeing about the reasons why?
The difference between the two cases is that the gazelle is wasting time that she could use to get a head start on the predator, as well as energetic resources which could prolong its flight. The behaviour is obviously paradoxical and demands explanation.
There is no similar loss of valuable resources on the part of someone expressing admiration for Lynch films: quoting lines from Mulholland Drive does not result immediately and systematically in being socially shunned. It is at most a way of expressing affiliation with one particular group rather than another, as PJ suggests, but any cultural behavior is going to do that anyway. There is nothing obviously paradoxical about expressing one's likes and dislikes, and furthermore it has no obvious direct impact on reproductive fitness.
IOW, if you hadn't invented costly signaling theory (or "handicap principle") and came across teenagers quoting obscure references on Myspace, you wouldn't feel compelled to invent that theory specifically.
I'm no expert on costly signaling theory, but I can't see any reason it shouldn't apply to opportunity costs as well as any other kind of cost. If I see twenty people using a social network to establish themselves as hip, popular kids who like all the cool trendy things to like, and one person using that network to quote obscure references instead, the fact that that kid is giving up the opportunity to cement their status as hip and popular seems noteworthy.
If everyone is using the same sorts of signals to establish themselves as hip and cool, then it diminishes the value of the signal. That's when countersignaling becomes useful.
Quarterbacks and cheerleaders are still treated as archetypes for popularity, but I don't think it's obvious that they tend to have larger circles of acquaintances with positive regard than, say, high profile theater members, who I'd guess would tend to exhibit higher openness.
Even anime nerds can have high status and popularity among other anime nerds. What you do to signal status depends on who you're trying to cultivate status with. I would pick out different favorites of mine to convince a creative writing professor that I have interesting and sophisticated tastes than if I were trying to convince an avid follower of anime (although I'd probably bring up Oyasumi Punpun either way.)
TvTropes warning: That link just swallowed over an hour. ;)