...which means that describing an act as "signalling" is basically meaningless, insofar as it fails to ascribe to that act a property that distinguishes it from other acts. It's like describing my lunch as "material". True, yes, but uninteresting except as a launching point to distinguish among expensive and cheap signals, forgeable and unforgeable signals, purely external signals and self-signalling, etc.
That said, in most contexts when a behavior is described as "signalling" without further qualification I generally understand the speaker to be referring more specifically to cheap signalling which is reliably treated as though it were a more expensive signal. Hanging out with mathematicians and adopting their jargon without really understanding it usually falls in this category; completing a PhD program in mathematics usually doesn't (though I could construct contrived exceptions in both cases).
...which means that describing an act as "signalling" is basically meaningless, insofar as it fails to ascribe to that act a property that distinguishes it from other acts.
That a proposition has the form "every X is a Y" does not make it uninteresting. For example: All matter is made of atoms. All humans are descended from apes. God made everything. Every prime number is a sum of three squares. Everyone requires oxygen to live. True or false, these are all meaningful, interesting statements. "All acts are acts of signalling"...
Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are: