= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Vladimir_Nesov comments on Is Molecular Nanotechnology "Scientific"? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (51)
Signaling is not the problem here. Communication of inability to think clearly was quite reliable.
There's an interesting point to be had here, actually: there's an awful lot of signaling where the cost isn't correlated with the truth of the signal. It takes just as much effort to dress up true ideas is scientific-sounding language as false ones, for example. Maybe it's just me, but it seems that the distinction is usually drawn between cheap vs. costly signaling, rather than empty vs. demonstrative signaling.
The salient question is, signaling of what, not signaling in what sense.
Cheap signaling of undesirable qualities is indistinguishable from failure to expensively signal desirable qualities. (Edit: not really, but it's close enough for rock'n'roll.)