Peterdjones comments on You can't signal to rubes - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Patrick 01 January 2013 06:40AM

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Comment author: Academian 01 January 2013 07:16:29PM *  29 points [-]

You're describing costly signaling. Contrary to your opening statement,

The word 'signalling' is often used in Less Wrong, and often used wrongly.

people on LessWrong are usually using the term "signalling" consistently with its standard meaning in economics and evolutionary biology. From Wikipedia,

In economics, more precisely in contract theory, signalling is the idea that one party credibly conveys some information about itself to another party

Within evolutionary biology, signalling theory is a body of theoretical work examining communication between individuals. The central question is when organisms with conflicting interests should be expected to communicate "honestly".

In particular, the ev bio article even includes a section on dishonest signalling, which seems to be what you're complaining about here:

Seriously though, "signalling" is being used to mean "tricking people in to thinking that you are".

This post is still interesting as a highlight reel of different examples of signalling, and shows that the term is, in its standard usage, rather non-specific. It's just not an illustration that people here are using it wrongly.

Comment author: Patrick 02 January 2013 05:29:54AM *  2 points [-]

Well I'm happy to use "costly signalling". I was under the impression that costly signalling was signalling. If it isn't costly, at least for potential fakes, then I'm not sure how it can serve as an explanation for behavior. Why should I signal when the fakes can signal just as easily? What is there to gain? I think at the very least, there has to be some mechanism for keeping out cheats, even if it's rarity. From the wikipedia article on signalling theory:

" If many animals in a group send too many dishonest signals, then their entire signalling system will collapse, leading to much poorer fitness of the group as a whole. Every dishonest signal weakens the integrity of the signalling system, and thus weakens the fitness of the group."

But what am I? Some kind of prescriptivist? Evidently my understanding of the term is a minority, and people far cleverer than I don't use it my way. I'll stick to "costly signal" in future.

“No! I must resolve the muddle” he shouted

The radio said “No, Patrick. You are the muddled one”

And then Patrick was a zombie.

Comment author: Peterdjones 02 January 2013 05:33:17AM 0 points [-]

" If many animals in a group send too many dishonest signals, then their entire signalling system will collapse, leading to much poorer fitness of the group as a whole. Every dishonest signal weakens the integrity of the signalling system, and thus weakens the fitness of the group."

Do you conclude from that tha lying is extremely rare in human society?

Comment author: Patrick 02 January 2013 05:43:10AM 1 point [-]

No. I think that because lying is common in human society, a credible signal must be costly to liars.

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