Will_Newsome comments on Not all signalling/status behaviors are bad - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Stabilizer 25 March 2012 10:06AM

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Comment author: Will_Newsome 27 March 2012 12:07:16AM 7 points [-]

(Obligatory caveat: If everyone is already engaged in "dishonest" signaling and the market knows this and adjusts for it, then not engaging in "dishonest" signaling yourself is itself dishonest—it misleads the market into underestimating you. So perhaps the immoral ones are those who refuse to adapt to the market and instead take a "moral" stand against negative-sum signaling games.)

Comment author: [deleted] 28 October 2012 11:45:00PM 2 points [-]

Yes. If everyone who says "I'm X" is actually Y and everybody knows that and people still say that, then essentially X has come to actually mean Y, whatever its literal meaning was.

Comment author: TimS 27 March 2012 12:19:02AM 0 points [-]

Child: But everyone's doing it.

Parent: If everyone was jumping off a bridge, you'd want to as well?

Comment author: Will_Newsome 27 March 2012 12:29:06AM *  8 points [-]

Or, "If everyone was not jumping off a bridge, you'd want to not jump off a bridge as well?"