ChrisHallquist comments on Self-Congratulatory Rationalism - Less Wrong

51 Post author: ChrisHallquist 01 March 2014 08:52AM

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Comment author: ChrisHallquist 03 March 2014 04:21:33AM 0 points [-]

You're right, being bad at signaling games can be crippling. The point, though, is to watch out for them and steer away from harmful ones. Actually, I wish I'd emphasized this in the OP: trying to suppress overt signaling games runs the risk of driving them underground, forcing them to be disguised as something else, rather than doing them in a self-aware and fun way.

Comment author: ialdabaoth 03 March 2014 04:25:18AM 2 points [-]

[T]rying to suppress overt signaling games runs the risk of driving them underground, forcing them to be disguised as something else, rather than doing them in a self-aware and fun way.

Borrowing from the "Guess vs. Tell (vs. Ask)" meta-discussion, then, perhaps it would be useful for the community to have an explicit discussion about what kinds of signals we want to converge on? It seems that people with a reasonable understanding of game theory and evolutionary psychology would stand a better chance deliberately engineering our group's social signals than simply trusting our subconsciouses to evolve the most accurate and honest possible set.

Comment author: ChrisHallquist 03 March 2014 04:34:36AM 0 points [-]

The right rule is probably something like, "don't mix signaling games and truth seeking." If it's the kind of thing you'd expect in a subculture that doesn't take itself too seriously or imagine its quirks are evidence of its superiority to other groups, it's probably fine.