I did explain a link between the definition of status and the reliability of selfishness as evidence, but I agree that a reader could justifiably remain skeptical that "selfishness signals status" after reading the post.

However, selfishness does signal status. An experiment that will settle this is to come up with your own examples and take a poll of people's perceptions (preferably with IQs in the bottom three quartiles, because the top quartile is capable of having one thought after another in a chain of sequitors, and who knows how that could skew their perceptions).