In competitive situations where there’s lots of optimization experience this tends to be a good strategy. People have been selling and buying used cars for 100 years—all the tricks and counter-tricks have been worked out, and pretty much cancel each other out.
So by not making any special attempt to signal and just being honest, you save the costs of all that signaling. And the other party saves costs protecting themselves from the false signals. Putting you both ahead.
In competitive situations where there’s lots of optimization experience this tends to be a good strategy. People have been selling and buying used cars for 100 years—all the tricks and counter-tricks have been worked out, and pretty much cancel each other out.
So by not making any special attempt to signal and just being honest, you save the costs of all that signaling. And the other party saves costs protecting themselves from the false signals. Putting you both ahead.