A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “signaling”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Scott Alexander argues that altruism and vitalism mostly align in practice, and that focusing on their theoretical divergences often stems from signaling rather than genuine pursuit of societal improvement.
Scott Alexander explores the concept of hyperstitious slurs, showing how words and actions become offensive through belief, and discusses when to adopt new language norms.
Scott defines signaling and explains how it works through examples ranging from college degrees to diamond necklaces, emphasizing both its necessity for conveying credible information and its potential for wasteful resource destruction.
Scott introduces a 10-post sequence on game theory fundamentals, drawing from 'The Art of Strategy' by Dixit and Nalebuff, with links to all planned posts.
Scott introduces the concept of "meta-contrarianism" - where highly intelligent people signal their status by rejecting contrarian positions and returning to simpler views, similar to how hipsters adopt uncool styles to seem cooler.
Scott expands on Wei Dai's master-slave model of the mind to explain akrasia and self-deception, proposing that the unconscious (U) uses the conscious mind (C) as a PR agency to signal socially admirable values while pursuing selfish goals, requiring just enough genuine support of C's principles to maintain credibility both to others and to C itself.
Scott argues that debates about whether conditions like obesity are "real diseases" are ultimately questions about sympathy, blame, and treatment that should be addressed directly rather than through the misleading disease framework.
Scott analyzes when assertions should be trusted, showing that their evidentiary value depends on whether you already know the belief's distribution, the asserter's credentials, and how you encountered them, while claims of having 'evidence' mostly serve as signals of rationality rather than factual proof.
Scott analyzes why some proposed political solutions feel wrong or useless by examining them as counterfactuals, arguing that valid solutions must involve modifying nodes you can actually influence rather than wishfully changing things you have no power over.
Scott argues that the 'Cynic's Theory of Akrasia' (which says people's actions reveal their true preferences, contradicting their stated preferences) is functionally equivalent to the naive theory, just valuing unconscious over conscious preferences, and defends prioritizing conscious preferences because they're rational and morally informed.