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Comment by roywiggins | Hacker News Reader

My instinct is that the model proves too much. Same way evopsych just-so stories were able to "explain" everything. Once you have a theory that purports to explain every single thing, maybe your theory is actually too vague to be useful, or you're just telling yourself stories.

For instance, while most donations aren't anonymous, I'd wager most people don't know how much their friends donate and who to. Sure, the organization knows, but unless you go out of your way to tell people that you gave $50 or $500 or $5000 to MSF last year, nobody will know. It's not an anonymous donation, but you're not signalling to anyone unless you stick a bumper sticker on your car or whatever.

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Thing is, this model doesn't explain "everything". All it explains is how the successful consumer-facing software companies of the last 1.5-ish decades became so successful:

They unlocked the attention economy.

We consumers pay for facebook with our eyeballs, not our wallets (facebook then is really good at selling specific eyeballs to specific wallets on the backend).

In the limited scope of the attention economy, then sure, social signaling could be the key metric of engagement. Facebook monetizes it by matching your signaling with specific advertisers, and Fortnite monetizes it by letting you customize the means of your signaling.

However, in the broader scope of the human experience, signaling explains very little...

Sure, you have a nice coffee table book, but you read Dickens to get lost in the story. Or you read a physics textbook to understand the universe.

You might go to church to show your neighbors you're a good god-fearing churchgoer, but you also do it to get closer to god or however you understand the universe.

You might go on a vacation to a far-off land to get a selfie, but you also do it to ponder how this park bench is older than your country and contemplate the lives and cultures of the people who have sat there since.

Yoga pants signal you do yoga, but you also do yoga to quiet your brain or meditate.

So sure, signaling theory is useful to explain all the cynical, vapid, and narcissistic tendencies we have (as well as the software companies that have become successful by industrializing the exploitation of those tendencies -- not saying they're not real!), but it certainly doesn't prove "too much". Rather, all the things it doesn't explain are the parts of the human experience that are not tied to the attention economy.

The only thing I object to your otherwise excellent comment is the characterization of the attention economy as being driven primarily by "cynical, vapid, and narcissistic tendencies". Seeking status is also a part of the human experience, although perhaps one that many find distasteful.

Well, he is not wrong. The words he chose were morally charged, but at least the "narcisstic tendencies" I think you can just take it as it is.

And it's not bad to sometimes just think about yourself. It's just when it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy "I need status/affirmation in order to feel fulfilled" that it's shifts towards being obnoxious.

> Thing is, this model doesn't explain "everything".

To use an example: If I go to work wearing a nice shirt that is cleaned and ironed, signalling theory would say I'm showing I can afford nice clothes, and to keep them looking nice. But if I go to work wearing a worn out tee-shirt I got for free from a vendor, signalling theory would say I'm signalling tech worker group membership, and that I have a modern trendy employer, or even that I'm so confident in my skills that trivial matters like clothes are inconsequential.

Likewise, I travel to work by nice car? Signalling wealth. By economical car? Signalling good financial sense. By running or bicycle? Signalling fitness and free time. By public transport? Signalling virtue and environmentalism.

If no matter the input, signalling theory would say "aha, exactly as expected" then can signalling theory ever be disproven?

Hanson's theory is not trying to explain everything. He is puts limits to this theory. He also explains how signalling component helps to get real progress outside signalling. Even this article uses the words 'most' and 'a lot' because that's the message you get from the book.

Signalling explains a lot. Since we are social animals where the survival and status of the group is important, it should explain a lot.

Using words like "most" and "a lot" certainly signals that there is very little limit to the applicability of the theory.

But the commenter points out that most charity is in practice anonymous, which is a serious challenge to any framework that presupposes one's actions are publicly know by others.

It's like the creators of this theory only consider the charity of celebrities, which indeed do it mostly for signalling, and forgot the vast majority of humanity that doesn't get their actions described in the papers...

Charity is very small percentage of our life. We can also internalize our signalling.

If you look at how people act in work, family and love life, signalling explains 90% of it.

Hanson became interested in signalling because his work in prediction markets. Prediction market well implemented seems to work and produce good actionable information. Companies were eager to adopt them. In practice they are catastrophe because they reveal how the choices being made are based on other things than what is said. The whole social structure in workplace is destroyed if the positions and knowledge people signal is revealed to be not true.

I should be interested in reading some examples of catastrophes causes by adoption of prediction markets.

> If you look at how people act in work, family and love life, signalling explains 90% of it.

But it equally explains why I don't buy a car (because I want to signal that I'm not the sort of person who would) as much as explains why I do by a car (ditto). So of course it "explains" 90% of how people behave, but only after the fact. Which is suspicious.

But this is exactly what people do. Donating is not about helping others (in many cases) but to feel better for themselves. And people like to share when they feel better. I'd say we are, not so rarely, being nudged to donate, either by friends or coworkers who did this. I'm observing the change, in some circles, that makes you feel bad if you don't donate. Donating is something people talk about, bragging about, advocating for - it may not be signal per se but people are making it a signal.

With the charities I've donated to afaik providing at least your name and email is the default - you'd have to go out of your way to be anonymous. So it doesn't really tell you much.

I think there's also something to be said for "signaling to yourself".

Just because nobody knows you gave $50 to wikipedia, doesn't mean the reason you gave $50 isn't because you were asked to, and you've evolved to act as if it were a public face-to-face transaction, your post-hoc rationalisation of it notwithstanding.

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