It feels like there are three separate issues / claims being debated here:
* Introducing noise into a social signal is generally wrong, because obtaining correct information on people is valuable to making social choices, and because these social choices influence the expected utilities of the various parties involved.
* Choosing an advantageous profile picture most likely introduces noise into this particular signal, because the difficulty of doing so is not correlated with your social skills / what the signal is supposed to tell people about you, given that profile pictures are perceived as such a signal.
* This particular kind of introducing noise into a signal is more akin (closer in conceptspace) to lying verbally than it is akin to directly performing a social skill, for the standard reasons such a claim could be made.
While I agree that deceiving people is Bad, I think that
Introducing noise into a social signal is generally wrong, because obtaining correct information on people is valuable to making social choices, and because these social choices influence the expected utilities of the various parties involved.
is way too broad to be useful. Social signals are usually already somewhat noisy to begin with, so avoiding making them a little noisier isn’t always worth the trouble. Politically conservative men tend to have shorter hair, so if I’m a libertarian socialist I shouldn’t get a haircut lest people misjudge my political stance? People with wealthy parents tend to wear more expensive clothes, so if my parents are wealthy I shouldn’t wear cheap clothes lest people underestimate my parents’ income? Scientists tend to be skinny, so if I am a scientist I shouldn’t exercise lest I become too muscular and people underestimate my interest in science? Pale-skinned people tend to be smarter, so if I’m smart I shouldn’t spend time outdoors during the day lest I get a suntan and people underestimate my IQ? That’s preposterous (especially given that if someone I know explicitly asks about my political stance, my parents’ jobs, my job, or my IQ,¹ I’ll answer truthfully). If I don’t know someone, certain things about me are none of their business, and I don’t give a damn about accurately signalling those things to them; and if they misjudge me due to a stereotype and act upon that misjudgement and get screwed over as a result, that serves them right: I hope the next time they actually ask rather than guessing based on superficial appearances. (OTOH, if someone whose opinion I do care about misjudge me due to a stereotype, that’s my fault because I haven’t provided them with enough evidence that the stereotype doesn’t apply to me. And no, that’s not in conflict with what I said earlier, because Postel’s law,² and fault is not a pie.)
Well, to tell the whole story, while “I took an Internet test and it said it’s 135, but, you know, such tests aren’t that reliable” is denotatively true, it has the connotation that I believe the test overestimated my IQ, which in the case of iqtest.dk I’m pretty sure is not the case. The fact is, I have an emotional hang-up against bragging, and I still haven’t found a decent way to overcome that.
I know Postel’s law wasn’t intended to apply to humans, but I still think it’s a good idea.
EDIT: Don’t I ramble a lot when I write at three o’ clock in the morning.
It feels like there are three separate issues / claims being debated here:
* Introducing noise into a social signal is generally wrong, because obtaining correct information on people is valuable to making social choices, and because these social choices influence the expected utilities of the various parties involved.
* Choosing an advantageous profile picture most likely introduces noise into this particular signal, because the difficulty of doing so is not correlated with your social skills / what the signal is supposed to tell people about you, given that profile pictures are perceived as such a signal.
* This particular kind of introducing noise into a signal is more akin (closer in conceptspace) to lying verbally than it is akin to directly performing a social skill, for the standard reasons such a claim could be made.
While I agree that deceiving people is Bad, I think that
is way too broad to be useful. Social signals are usually already somewhat noisy to begin with, so avoiding making them a little noisier isn’t always worth the trouble. Politically conservative men tend to have shorter hair, so if I’m a libertarian socialist I shouldn’t get a haircut lest people misjudge my political stance? People with wealthy parents tend to wear more expensive clothes, so if my parents are wealthy I shouldn’t wear cheap clothes lest people underestimate my parents’ income? Scientists tend to be skinny, so if I am a scientist I shouldn’t exercise lest I become too muscular and people underestimate my interest in science? Pale-skinned people tend to be smarter, so if I’m smart I shouldn’t spend time outdoors during the day lest I get a suntan and people underestimate my IQ? That’s preposterous (especially given that if someone I know explicitly asks about my political stance, my parents’ jobs, my job, or my IQ,¹ I’ll answer truthfully). If I don’t know someone, certain things about me are none of their business, and I don’t give a damn about accurately signalling those things to them; and if they misjudge me due to a stereotype and act upon that misjudgement and get screwed over as a result, that serves them right: I hope the next time they actually ask rather than guessing based on superficial appearances. (OTOH, if someone whose opinion I do care about misjudge me due to a stereotype, that’s my fault because I haven’t provided them with enough evidence that the stereotype doesn’t apply to me. And no, that’s not in conflict with what I said earlier, because Postel’s law,² and fault is not a pie.)
Well, to tell the whole story, while “I took an Internet test and it said it’s 135, but, you know, such tests aren’t that reliable” is denotatively true, it has the connotation that I believe the test overestimated my IQ, which in the case of iqtest.dk I’m pretty sure is not the case. The fact is, I have an emotional hang-up against bragging, and I still haven’t found a decent way to overcome that.
I know Postel’s law wasn’t intended to apply to humans, but I still think it’s a good idea.
EDIT: Don’t I ramble a lot when I write at three o’ clock in the morning.