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Zaine comments on How to signal curiosity? - Less Wrong
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Comments (52)
To signal something to a person or people is to evince that something on either a conscious or subconscious level. A signal can be understood by a party without them being cognisant of their understanding; contrarily one indicates in order to make another consciously aware of the indicated.
Simply, 'signaling' has more meaning than 'indicate', and in this context, broadens the scope of potential answers.
Although the phrases "indicate interest" and "signal interest" seem to contradict the above. They have equivalent meaning, though 'indicate' may nuance being more obvious in conveying one's interest.
That seems to contradict the Wikipedia articles that Douglas_Knight linked (or, at least, say something totally unrelated to what they say). Where do you get that information?
That's how I've seen them used. I learned signalling and indicating's meaning in this regard through seeing them used in many contexts, so you may want to assign a low value to my statements.
I didn't notice anything in the Wikipedia articles that was contradictory of the above. To what do you specifically refer?
Neither the game theory article nor the economics article mentions consciousness or subconscious-ness, and the biology article, although it links to the article "unconscious communication", also gives a definition that is irrelevant here:
On the other hand, all of the articles imply that, by definition, a party who possesses a trait is more likely to signal than a party who does not possess the trait; thus, signaling is credible (to some degree).
So it would appear that the usage you have seen is at odds with the actual definition of the word.
I admit that my understanding of the word's definition is heavily colored by its use here and on Overcoming Bias.
However, I will note the Wikipedia article does hint at the possible duplicity of signalling that I have implied.
Thus the receiver determines the probability that the signal has a credible basis. A sender sufficiently skilled at manipulation could fool the receiver into believing a false signal. More relevantly, an insufficiently skilled signaller of curiosity would be unsuccessful in overcoming a receiver's probability distribution weighted heavily against the signaller having genuine curiosity.
I'm tempted to propose that the definition on that Less Wrong wiki page be removed from it, on the grounds that it doesn't match the Wikipedia definitions. Unless most people on Less Wrong know exactly what the word means (or most articles that use the word give a correct definition of it), I suspect that it would be better us to stop using it.