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Notes -
I recently read The Elephant in the Brain and a review of it (https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/12/31/book-review-the-elephant-in-the-brain/)
One of the main ideas is that humans have competitive tendencies that helps them gain access to limited resources and mates. Humans need to signal that they are a good ally and mate in order to get some of the things that they desire. Instead of directly signaling (such as trying to impress people with our bank statement) people send indirect signals (such as wearing expensive clothes). Signaling indirectly gives us plausible deniability and even allows us to deceive ourselves (example: I wasn’t wearing expense clothes to show off my wealth, I just wore them because I like the way they look).
The book goes through Body Language, Laughter, Conversation, Consumption, Art, Charity, Education, Medicine, Religion and Politics to explain hidden motives. Examples:
Conversation isn’t just about exchanging information it is also about signaling intelligence and social skills.
Politics isn’t just about policy, it is also about alliances.
What are some hidden motives that you’ve noticed?
Some I’ve noticed is dancing is about signaling social confidence to potential mates. Brightly colored hair usually signals loyalty to left-leaning politics, the signal is costly because non-leftists may detect the signal and be biased against the signaler.
Robin Hanson’s importance to the early LessWrongers means that he shows up in a ton of related work. Scott essays and so on. Try reading this one about countersignaling.
Have you encountered the signaling theory of education? I want to say it’s Caplan’s work. The argument goes that almost all of the value in education is signaling compliance to employers. It doesn’t matter if one didn’t actually learn a technical skill; the point is looking like a good corporate drone. For obvious reasons, this is really appealing to people who were really bored in school and hated its structure.
Therein lies the problem, because the signaling lens is just too applicable. Take your hair-color example. It’s definitely used as a signal of blue-tribe allegiance. But so is “left-leaning politics.” So is valuing nonconformity. How far down do you have to go before you hit a real belief, rather than something intended as a signal?
The Hanson answer, as I understand it, is “all the way.” Signaling all the way down. This is tempting, because it preempts anyone trying to signal that they’re one layer deeper than you. It’s also prone to half-assed psychoanalysis! Sooner or later you end up like Freud, constructing a whole mythos to justify why someone might think blue hair is hot.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Easy. Until you hit the point where the person stating the belief will actually pay a significant personal cost for their stated belief turning out to be false.
This is one form of 'revealed preference.' If you say you believe something but you suffer no consequence for being incorrect, then you have no incentive to be truthful, and thus the signal is cheap and likely unreliable. Your REAL beliefs, on the other hand, will be reflected in how you behave when actual consequences, rewards, or punishment are on the line based on whether you get things right or not.
This is incidentally why Hanson strongly endorses prediction markets as a method of finding consensuses on 'truth' and why Caplan places bets on many of his own predictions.
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