Interesting (I hope) tangent:
I'm autistic, which means among other things that my native modes of signaling are 'nonstandard'. I don't easily understand what most other people are trying to signal, and most other people don't easily understand what I'm signaling. (This appears to be due to both different modes of signaling and different goals.) Unlike some auties, I do emit signals in the 'normal' mode - they're just usually not very accurate signals of what I actually think or value.
I don't like being misunderstood, so I made a conscientious effort for a long time to cut my 'normal-style' signaling behaviors down to near-zero, if they were happening incidentally to something else - wearing the most neutral clothing I could find, for example, and not discussing my own preferences about anything without a clear reason to do so. Most of the specific tricks I picked up, I integrated as habits, so that the whole process didn't take a disruptive amount of mental effort, with the side effect that it's hard for me to pick out specific examples, but I did eventually get quite good at not signaling much at all. (If anyone's interested in specific examples, I'm willing to take the time to pu...
Voted up, but as Adaptation-Executers (rather than Fitness-Maximizers) we can't trust whether an activity is about signalling just by whether or not it has any signalling value in our present environment.
What would a hunter-gatherer do that has no signalling value for their inclusive genetic fitness? What activities we do that come from adaptations of those hunter-gatherer activities?
Maybe to find something we need to dissect "we" into smaller parts. On average masturbation is not signaling; for some small subset of people it is. On average we don't advertise how much time we spend on entertainment; for some subset of the population it's a matter of intense group politics.
Thanks to the internet, I can think of all kinds of bizarre subgroups whose behavior wouldn't have been associated with signaling in the past, until they found others like themselves, at which point ordinary status instincts took over.
You're unlikely to find things this way, because you're thinking of named activities that you noticed happening. Both of those limitations select for things that are socially relevant - the 'named things' one especially, because the things that there are names for are things that are socially interesting, that people would want to talk about, and that's going to be almost entirely social-signaling things.
It seems like you'd do better to think about actions that don't have specific, short names, and that people don't usually pay attention to, either in themselves or in others. For example, where in a (communal) closet one hangs one's coat, or what direction one faces when in the shower.
"Least signaling" is a bit too vague to work with. Under your definition, the only criteria seems to be the degree to which we can talk about it. Anything at all that is socially acceptable to talk about can be construed as a signaling activity, so this definition is not very useful compared to say, basing it off of how many people would do it being observed vs. not observed, or which country they would choose to live in in the data you cited.
If it's pleasant, I can brag about it to show how much leisure time I have / how my life is better than yours. If it's unpleasant but useful, I can use it to show how good of a work ethic I have that I got it done. If it's expensive, it shows I'm richer than you. If it's cheap, it shows I'm thriftier than you. If it's beautiful, it shows I have better taste than you. If it's ugly, it shows that I'm enlightened enough to know that it's not really ugly, or I'm thrifty, or I'm above aesthetics. If it's a complete waste of time, well, it lends itself to a good story and lets me showcase my sense of humor. If it's really, really unpleasant and pointless (like a serious disease/injury), I can gain your sympathy, improve my image (who speak...
If the ancient (proto-human) mental construction of 'self' was a remodeled and turned inside-out version of the 'other people' mental construction, the distinction between signaling to nobody and signaling to yourself may not be on as sturdy grounds as it seems.
The idea seems to make sense: Evolution doesn't jump in huge strides, so the progress from not-having-a-self to having-a-self must have been a cumulative one. The only place for similar parts to be worked on an advanced is within social behavior with your group, so that at least seems reasonable at...
Signalling can be read into any activity communicated to anyone else. That leaves only things done on one's own that one does not customarily talk about.
Meditation.
Excretion.
Why are you interested in locating the least signalling activities?
A hypothesis that explains everything that could happen explains nothing. A hypothesis that only explains everything that does happen explains everything.
For every star in the universe, the theory of gravity explains why it is round. If the theory of gravity were also capable of explaining cubical and pear-shaped stars, only then would we need to worry.
ETA: if the hypothesis explains everything that does happen, that might be evidence that it also explains things that don't happen, so in that sense you're right.
Not signalling is
plausibly a more honest mental mode
Why should it be more "honest" not to signal? We are a social species. I conceive it possible to make a close relationship closer by signalling to ones partner what is actually the case.
Things like exercise, studying, which increase fitness and status may be motivated by the desire to increase fitness and status, with signalling only a by-product of this.
In moments of threat where the amygdala takes over, and time seems to slow down, a person responds to the threat, probably without signalling. But it is meaningless to say that I am "honest" when in a fight or flight situation, and at no other time.
I take it that the point of this thread is to find activities which exemplify a low-signalling "mental mode".
Most of the commentators have pointed to activities, as topics, which feature more or less often in our signalling conversations. My attempt to point to the manner in which we do activities, in which signals least pollute our thinking, was voted into oblivion.
Again, however, I would like to suggest that activities characterized by ecstasy and intense engagement are good examples of what RH called "a more honest mental mode".
When...
Considered as heuristics, or even adaptations, specific signaling behaviors don't necessarily distinguish the situations where the behaviors can be observed by others and those where they can't be. Behaviors that take contextual efficacy into account are more complicated, and likely won't be developed unless the cost of idle signaling is high. The choice to contextually choose to implement a behavior should be considered a part of that behavior.
Thus, privacy of behavior isn't a very good criterion: given behavior may be just a context-insensitive side effe...
You might suggest sleep, but others are often jealous of how much sleep we get, or impressed by how little sleep we can get by on.
In that case, parallel reasoning eliminates anything taboo. We signal our acceptance of community norms by avoiding taboo subjects. We might tell stories to make it less obvious that conformity is an end in itself: "intelligent people resist the temptation to swear and find more effective ways to express themselves," cf. George Carlin and his seven words.
Fight of flight responses seem like a pretty clear case. U...
Anything habitually done alone and considered pointless, embarrassing, unwise, or revolting to discuss publicly is a candidate. Most things that go on in the bathroom count. Clipping one's toenails (if one does not wear open-toed shoes); little doodles, drawn with no one watching, to be thrown away after completion; doing laundry in a private washing machine; selecting a toaster setting when preparing breakfast alone.
It's possible that I'm underestimating the sorts of things people subconsciously expect others to pick up on, but I also doubt anyone is si...
Signaling is, generally speaking, a means of displaying social status and desirability as a mate, yes?
Ergo, anything that directly fulfills a basic physical imperative other than the reproductive drive is a likely candidate for non-signaling. Hunger, exhaustion, the fight or flight reaction, &c. Of course, all of these can be wrapped in contexts indicating social status, but the actions themselves are likely mostly neutral. e.g., people may brag about their sleep habits for status, but when they do go to bed it's probably because they're tired, not because they're thinking about how it will impress others. It's the talking about sleeping that is doing the signaling here.
As others have mentioned, there seems like there's an important distinction between doing things, talking about doing things, and doing things so we can talk about having done them. Whether or not they actually signal anything is a different issue. There are many things I think we do or do not do with no signaling intent. We sincerely might not care what our shoes say about us, and so our choice of shoes has very little signaling motivation, but we may nevertheless signal very strongly to certain people through our choice of shoes.
And many things that we ...
Dissect the signal: I am a non-androgynous heterosexual male, age 31, living in Canada. I carry a purse in which I keep my wallet and various useful items, in spite of the fact that men in my culture almost never do. To my conscious mind, I do so almost entirely because it's a ridonculously useful thing to do. What am I unconsciously signalling thereby, and to whom? (There is a non-null answer to this question, but it took me a few minutes today to sort it out.)
Here's another possibility: addictive behaviors. Addiction is, generally speaking, a compulsion to partake of some behavior with disregard for costs associated with the behavior. This can be extended to include a disregard for potential signals sent by the behavior, in much the same way that someone who is sufficiently hungry will desire to eat with no regard for signaling.
Given what AdeleneDawner reports about experiences with non-signaling, I wonder if part of the reason for the (sometimes apparently disproportionate) social stigma of addiction stems fro...
The more signaling matters, the less I can trust such reasoning, as it usually does not acknowledge the signaling influences.
I like this motivation, but I think you're going down a dead end looking for non-signaling-but-reasoned-and-interesting choices. I don't think there's such a thing, as signaling is part of our motivational makeup, and factors into even things that other people cannot know.
I expect much more success attacking the second half of the sentence. Knowing that signaling is a core component of preferences, train your decision apparatus to ...
Are you looking for things that cannot be used for signaling, or things that have primary motivations other than signaling, or something else? A theory of partial motivations seems doomed, unless you've first solved the problem of scalar (as opposed to ordinal) choices.
I don't think there's ANYTHING which qualifies as action and has no signaling component. Any biological function carries a bit of data about health, and any mental function says something about motivation or ability.
Even things normally done in private (shitting, inner dialog) are signals....
You might suggest watching TV, but people often go out of their way to mention what TV shows they watch.
There's an interesting trend in TV-related signaling here in Russia: watching TV -- or even merely having it at home -- is considered mauvais ton (sorry, don't know how to express this in English) among smarter and progressive young people.
(Which is not surprising at all given the horrendous state of the Russian TV nowadays.)
If there is a distinctive mental mode we enter when reasoning about how exactly to defecate, nose-pick, sleep, masturbate, and so on, this is plausibly a more honest mental mode.
This is worth doing empirical studies on. Do people think more rationally, especially on socially-charged issues, when they're on the toilet and thoughts of their image/dignity recede to the background?
There is a strong signaling component to masturbation because masturbation and sex are substitutes. So, for example, to signal to a lover that one is extremely interested in sex with them one might masturbate less than one would normally want to.
Also, buy not masturbating you cause your brain to "automatically" put in more effort seeking out sex partners. This will likely mean you would have more success finding sex partners and so influence your signaling.
While a few very people brag about how much they masturbate social taboos prevent most from doing so. Thus, a way for many to signal a strong libido is to not masturbate.
Dont understand the "activity" part, the post implied sleeping was fine, so does breathing count?
Wouldn't it be easier if we just admitted to ourselves that much of what we do is to get attention, when we were actually doing them? Of course I want attention from people, I wouldn't talk to them otherwise.
It's also easier to avoid rationalization if you don't even attempt to provide normative justification (I believe normative justification is essentially circular reasoning).
The best candidate I can think of so far is masturbation, though some folks seem to brag about it as a sign of their inexhaustible libido.
I doubt anyone brags about how well their porn collection is organized.
On first glance, the answer that came to mind was accidental death or serious injury due to sheer incompetence, like walking off a cliff. Something that has a massive survival cost and only communicates failure seems like it couldn't be signaling. Mistakes are revealing, after all. But this kind of signaling happens all the time, mostly as a flawed means of signaling courage or simply drawing attention.
It struck me then that the question of what is "least signaling" may not be useful for determining states of mind, that every behavior can be a...
How about:
How about while drunk? One cares a bit less what people think, the urge to signal is weaker. But I wouldn't take this as a trustworthy mode of thought.
Also it seems that a sociopath would be more goal oriented, and only signal when it is beneficial in their own limited sense of the meaning of beneficial.
In situations where a lot is at stake I'd expect (my mental machinery anyway) to put ultimate success over signaling.
Maybe compare the personal finances of money managers to their portfolio? (Only in the case where that which they manage has similar goals, i.e. retirement funds.)
I agree with the some voices here that 'signaling' as it is used here is too broad to be meaningful. Instead of reading this post and thinking, "Ooh, almost everything I do is signaling in some way", I think, "why would I want to call almost everything I do signaling "?
The whole point of view here, as I understand, is that we don't define things a priori because we want to use observation to create our definitions. Thus, I'd expect a lot of definition-creation going on, but instead, in this post, you guys are just running with the under...
Martial Arts training might be a candidate, not the choice of doing it, but where and when to punch / kick exactly. You signal via success of your strategy, but I think you do not signal about which way you achieved your success. This might obviously be different for different styles of MA, I only have experience with Ju-Jutzu. Also, I think this example might be interesting, because the mental effort is high compared to some of the other examples.
Regarding Nose-picking, I think it is a quite signal-high activities if done in public. I'm not sure what Nose...
There is a strong signaling component to masturbation because masturbation and sex are substitutes. So, for example, to signal to a lover that one is extremely interested in sex with them one might masturbate less than one would normally want to.
Also, buy not masturbating you cause your brain to "automatically" put in more effort seeking out sex partners. This will likely mean you would have more success finding sex partners and so influence your signaling.
While a few very people brag about how much they masturbate social taboos prevent most from doing so. Thus, the best way for most to signal a strong libido is to not masturbate.
There is a strong signaling component to masturbation because masturbation and sex are substitutes. So, for example, to signal to a lover that one is extremely interested in sex with them one might masturbate less than one would normally want to.
Also, by not masturbating you cause your brain to "automatically" put in more effort seeking out sex partners. This will likely mean you would have more success finding sex partners and so influence your signaling.
While a few very people brag about how much they masturbate, social taboos prevent most from doing so. Thus, a way for most to signal a strong libido is to not masturbate.
Why not collect statistics?
Not perfect but a start would be get people (preferably with a larger demographic than less wrong) to list their day to day activities and estimate how much other people know about those activities.
I think you'll get a large range on the amount of signaling, from the twittering youth the the staunchly off line middle aged.
My best candidates:
To a lesser degree:
I think that any thing you like to do that might not be socially acceptable to publicly admit will fall under the category. But, with everything one can do, there is a hypothetical culture (with a certain value system) that one can signal to.
Instead of reading this post and thinking, "Ooh, almost everything I do is signaling in some way", I think, "why would I want to call almost everything I do signaling"?
I resuggest the outside-Less-Wrong definition for signaling: signaling is something that you consciously do; in particular, something you do to deliberately project a message about yourself. Importantly, it might be a sincere message or it could be insincere. Any messages that you send subconsciously, instead, is a sincere message. I prefer this definition because it jive...
I take it as obvious that signaling is an important function in many human behaviors. That is, the details of many of our behaviors make sense as a package designed to persuade others to think well of us. While we may not be conscious of this design, it seems important nonetheless. In fact, in many areas we seem to be designed to not be conscious of this influence on our behavior.
But if signaling is not equally important to all behaviors, we can sensibly ask the question: for which behaviors does signaling least influence our detailed behavior patterns? That is, for what behaviors need we be the least concerned that our detailed behaviors are designed to achieve signaling functions? For what actions can we most reasonably believe that we do them for the non-signaling reasons we usually give?
You might suggest sleep, but others are often jealous of how much sleep we get, or impressed by how little sleep we can get by on. You might suggest watching TV, but people often go out of their way to mention what TV shows they watch. The best candidate I can think of so far is masturbation, though some folks seem to brag about it as a sign of their inexhaustible libido.
So I thought to ask the many thoughtful commentors at Less Wrong: what are good candidates for our least signaling activities?
Added: My interest in this question is to look for signs of when we can more trust our conscious reasoning about what to do when how. The more signaling matters, the less I can trust such reasoning, as it usually does not acknowledge the signaling influences. If there is a distinctive mental mode we enter when reasoning about how exactly to defecate, nose-pick, sleep, masturbate, and so on, this is plausibly a more honest mental mode. It would be useful to know what our most honest mental modes look like.