This feels clearly wrong to me, so I think I’ve either misunderstood you or you are trusting honesty too much.
It might be easier to be honest than to signal correctly, but it can’t be “almost strictly more effective.”
To be honest and give the presentation of being “good”, you have to do both of those things, which aren’t perfectly correlated. To be dishonest and give the presentation of being “good”, you only need to lie well. The skill “give the presentation of being ‘good’” is in both sets, only the honest person also has to actually be “good”. They’re at a strict _dis_advantage.
In another sense, you can note that the dishonest person can be arbitrarily dishonest, meaning that they should be capable of any signal the honest person is, if they have enough resources. In that sense, it may not be cost effective to pretend to have a time machine, but it’s easier than having a time machine.
Also, it may be that all other “actually good” people reliably signal. In that sense, you are signaling goodness worse than a liar.
I think these are 3 good reasons to suspect that this post isn’t pointing at something as solid as it claims.
This feels clearly wrong to me, so I think I’ve either misunderstood you or you are trusting honesty too much.
It might be easier to be honest than to signal correctly, but it can’t be “almost strictly more effective.”
To be honest and give the presentation of being “good”, you have to do both of those things, which aren’t perfectly correlated. To be dishonest and give the presentation of being “good”, you only need to lie well. The skill “give the presentation of being ‘good’” is in both sets, only the honest person also has to actually be “good”. They’re at a strict _dis_advantage.
In another sense, you can note that the dishonest person can be arbitrarily dishonest, meaning that they should be capable of any signal the honest person is, if they have enough resources. In that sense, it may not be cost effective to pretend to have a time machine, but it’s easier than having a time machine.
Also, it may be that all other “actually good” people reliably signal. In that sense, you are signaling goodness worse than a liar.
I think these are 3 good reasons to suspect that this post isn’t pointing at something as solid as it claims.