You may be interpreting “signalling” in a more specific way than I intended. You might be thinking of the kind of signalling that is largely restricted to status jockeying in zero-sum status games.
But I was using “signaling tool” in a very general sense. I just mean that you can use the signaling tool to convey information, and that you and your intended recipients have common knowledge about what your signal means. In that way, it’s basically just a piece of language.
As with any piece of language, the fact that it signals something does place restrictions on what you can do.
For example, you can’t yell “FIRE!” unless you are prepared to deal with certain consequences. But if the utterance “FIRE!” had no meaning, you would be freer, in a sense, to say it. If the mood struck you, you could burst out with a loud shout of “FIRE!” without causing a big commotion and making a bunch of people really angry at you.
But you would also lack a convenient tool that reliably brings help when you need it. This is a case where I think that the value of the signal heavily outweighs the restrictions that the signal’s existence places on your actions.
You may be interpreting “signalling” in a more specific way than I intended. You might be thinking of the kind of signalling that is largely restricted to status jockeying in zero-sum status games.
But I was using “signaling tool” in a very general sense. I just mean that you can use the signaling tool to convey information, and that you and your intended recipients have common knowledge about what your signal means. In that way, it’s basically just a piece of language.
As with any piece of language, the fact that it signals something does place restrictions on what you can do.
For example, you can’t yell “FIRE!” unless you are prepared to deal with certain consequences. But if the utterance “FIRE!” had no meaning, you would be freer, in a sense, to say it. If the mood struck you, you could burst out with a loud shout of “FIRE!” without causing a big commotion and making a bunch of people really angry at you.
But you would also lack a convenient tool that reliably brings help when you need it. This is a case where I think that the value of the signal heavily outweighs the restrictions that the signal’s existence places on your actions.