{"id":88,"date":"2025-09-12T19:25:34","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T19:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/think-twice.me\/?p=88"},"modified":"2025-09-13T01:55:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T01:55:36","slug":"paradox-of-signaling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/think-twice.me\/?p=88","title":{"rendered":"Paradox of Signaling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Social Signaling is the idea that people, through actions or even words, may be trying to get others to believe something about them. A simple example might be trying to signal you are smart by using big words. Or conversely, trying to signal you\u2019re a chill bro\u2122 by using all those latest slang words and memes. Or signal you\u2019re rich by purchasing a certain item.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course there\u2019s a paradox here \u2013 if somebody suspects they are being judged on a signal (using big words) then it\u2019s really not that hard to manipulate the signal (go memorize a bunch of big words and use them a lot).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges of manipulating a signal is that often it\u2019s not that easy. The term “nouveau riche\u201d refers to somebody who grew up poor with poor tastes, but suddenly came into wealth, and stands out starkly in their tastes and preferences. This is because what a poor person thinks a rich person looks like (gold toilet) might not be what a rich person thinks a rich person looks like (\u201csummering\u201d in the Hamptons).
Likewise what sounds smart to a dumb person probably isn\u2019t what sounds smart to a smart person. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So to finally get to the point the paradox is that most signals are now anti-signals<\/strong>. If somebody is going out of their way to show you their golden toilet and talk about their $500 meal, it\u2019s much more likely that they want you to think they are rich than that they already are rich. Likewise if somebody is using a slew of words you don\u2019t understand it\u2019s more likely they want you to think they are smart than that they actually are smart. And if somebody is obsessively hammering you with the trendiest new slang it\u2019s because they very much care that you think they are cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One concrete example is that with so many people leasing cars or buying on a 6+ year auto loan (now the average) owning a mercedes with a $1,000 a month loan payment isn\u2019t evidence that you have tons of disposable income; to me it looks like evidence that you don\u2019t. Likewise I\u2019m hearing that a surprising number of people who own a \u201cMcMansion\u201d actually struggle with the tremendous upkeep costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back when I was in the dating pool I\u2019d see this a lot. Most profiles were aspirational fabrications, every picture chosen to emphasize that they were somebody who was prettier or more adventurous or more popular than we all are. Some people would post pictures next to vehicles they didn\u2019t own, a fish they didn\u2019t catch, or I even personally know somebody who used AI to put themselves on a boat that didn\u2019t exist. Many felt like they were supposed to have a more active social life than they did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is more than theoretical, this is my lived experience. The smartest people I know aren\u2019t trying to outdebate everybody, the strongest people I know aren\u2019t talking about reps every day, the nicest people I know aren\u2019t the ones yakking about volunteer work, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The paradox cuts the other way too. If you asked me right now to name somebody smarter than myself I might pick 3Blue1Brown (a person who makes complex ideas sound simpler, to the best of his ability). And it\u2019s not just because he seems like a nice dude, it\u2019s because he explains complex things at my level that I am able to verify that what he says is smart. However when you take some pop-cultural icons of braininess e.g. Neil DeGrass Tyson or Bill Nye, I don\u2019t actually know either way.

Of course signaling does work sometimes, otherwise nobody would ever do it. There are things that are genuinely hard and there are things that can be made to seem hard, and not everybody is equally equipped to differentiate the two.

Here\u2019s my mental model, I\u2019d be curious to hear what others think:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social Signaling is the idea that people, through actions or even words, may be trying to get others to believe something about them. A simple example might be trying to signal you are smart by using big words. Or conversely, trying to signal you\u2019re a chill bro\u2122 by using all those latest slang words and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/think-twice.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/think-twice.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/think-twice.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/think-twice.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/think-twice.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/think-twice.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94,"href":"https:\/\/think-twice.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/94"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/think-twice.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/think-twice.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/think-twice.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}