Robin, I think I've made a pretty good case (by word and deed) that I don't care much about variance in my perceived maturity so long as it stays within certain upper and lower bounds, below Infallible Guru and above 12-Year-Old On 4chan. This reflects a certain increase in maturity on my part; I used to care less.

I'd think that signals can easily come completely unbound from what they're supposed to signal. All this requires is that public image either lag the reality, or that public image be not completely based on reality, or that people are mistaken about what most other people think. Is "signal" by convention used only to indicate cases where someone is manipulating an indicator that retains actual current correlation even after the manipulability is taken into account? If so I'll need another term to indicate what people do when they display a characteristic X that they believe others will associate to Y. I understand that there are cases where you can solve for signaling equilibria assuming full information, but I did not realize this was part of the definition of "signaling" as such.