← Back to context

Comment by cjbgkagh

1 day ago

Signals must to be costly in order to be effective

Also also hard to fake and easy to slip in. You throw in a Latin quote in your conversation and either the other person gets it and you both know you're the proper class, or they don't and you both know you're higher up the ladder than they are.

Yup. It’s the shibboleth. Cuius regio, eius religio, and all that.

Spent my childhood at boarding school having my head stuffed full of Latin and Greek. Forgotten all of it.

> Signals must to be costly in order to be effective

Utter bollocks.

A safety pin though ones nose and a pair of ripped tights costs nothing, and signals who one is (or wishes to be) very loudly and clearly.

  • That signal certainly sounds pretty costly to me, it would not be effective at signaling intelligence though.