Comment by GJim
1 day ago
> 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.
1 day ago
> 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.
Cost of a signal is not necessarily just the resources required to emit it, but also what that signal represents to others. Throwing slurs around doesn't take any money but can be very costly.
That signal certainly sounds pretty costly to me, it would not be effective at signaling intelligence though.
If you judge intelligence by appearance, then you are rather foolish; somewhat to your detriment.
If someone has modified their appearance in a way that appears foolish and their intent was to signal intelligence then I my prior would be that they are extra foolish.
Instead if they know Latin then my prior assumption would be that they are intelligent.
Acquiring information is costly (multi armed bandit) which is why signaling is important. Perhaps in the future with AI and attestations we can replace expensive signals with cheaper ones that are more difficult to fake and thus more honest.
With the improvements in machine intelligence I have become much less concerned with human intelligence and only persist with disagreeing with netizens out of a quickly fading residual sentimentality.