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findis comments on You can't signal to rubes - Less Wrong
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You've basically come up with four criteria that describe the use of the word "signal" in a highly specific context - traits that exist for pure signalling purposes in evolution or game theory - and then decided, arbitrarily, that this is the one true meaning of "signal." I do not think you have provided adequate evidence or argument to back this claim up.
If everyone around me is a Republican and I am not, it might make sense that I would do things that would signal that I am a Republican, even if these are very cheap and have obvious positive returns. Your definition would not allow this - if it is cheap and has obvious positive returns, it is not "signaling" to you. What you're saying is that if I send a birthday card to a coworker I hate, then I am not "signaling" that I like that person because it's too cheap to send the card.
It may make sense to speak of weak or strong signals, or reliable or unreliable or misleading signals. But you've arbitrarily said that the word applies only when a certain arbitrary threshold is crossed (your 2 and 4).
Incidentally, your theory might actually work if 4 were eliminated and 2 read "the behaviour is more likely to occur if you possess a certain characteristic than if you do not." This would cover my birthday card example - it's cheap, but I'm more likely to do it if I like the person, so it does signal liking the person. But this change would also fix the counter-productive manager. She's doing things that she is more likely to do if she is decisive and in charge. Since she's being evaluated on those criteria, and not "good manager-ness" - which is not generally observable - it would make sense that she would choose to give those signals rather than not. But revising the theory appropriately seems to nullify most or all of your objections.
I think it is worth preserving a distinction between the specific kind of signaling Patrick describes and a weaker definition, because "true signaling" explains a specific phenomenon: in equilibrium, there seems to be too much effort expended on something, but everyone is acting in their own best interest. "High-quality" people do something to prove they are high quality, and "low-quality" people imitate this behavior. If education is a signal, people seem to get "too much" education for what their jobs require.
As in an exam problem I recently heard about: Female bullfrogs prefer large male bullfrogs. Large bullfrogs croak louder. In the dark, small bullfrogs croak loudly to appear large. To signal that they are the true large frogs, large ones croak even louder. When everyone is croaking as loudly as they can, croaking quietly makes a frog look incapable of croaking loudly and therefore small. Result: swamps are really noisy at night.
Or, according to this paper, people "expect a high-quality firm to undertake ambitious investments". Investment is a signal of quality: low-quality firms invest more ambitiously to look high-quality. Then high-quality firms invest more to prove they are the true high-quality firms. Result: firms over-invest.
In this sense, you can also signal that you are serious about a friendship, job, or significant other, but only where your resources are limited. An expensive engagement ring is a good signal of your seriousness -- hence, expensive diamond engagement rings instead cubic zirconium. Or, applying to college and sending a video of yourself singing the college's fight song is a good signal that you will attend if admitted, and writing a gushing essay is a cheap imitation signal of that devotion. Hence, high school seniors look like they spend way too much effort telling colleges how devoted they are.
So you might use signaling to explain why "too many" people get "useless" degrees studying classics, or why swamps are "too loud", or engagement rings are "too expensive". I don't think it's true that too many people pretend to be Republicans, or too many birthday cards or sent.
What Patrick refers to is called costly signaling in evolutionary psychology, and I believe in general.