For example, a bird performing an impressive mating display signals that it is healthy and has good genes.
But we already have a term for signalling desirable properties about yourself: virtue signalling!
I don’t understand the objection.
Virtue signalling is a subset of signalling. Specifically, it is signalling of moral virtues.
Therefore, a bird signalling health and good genes is not virtue signalling (but it is signalling in general). Because health and good genes are usually not considered to be moral virtues.
In some of these cases, mere assertion goes a long way. [...] In other cases, mere assertion doesn’t work.
I’ll charitably assume that he meant both cases to be types of signalling.
I think Scott got this right, but you misunderstood it.
X is a signal of Y if seeing X makes Y more likely. In some cases, mere assertions do that, in some cases, they don’t.
For example, saying “I read Less Wrong” is a signal of reading Less Wrong, because people who read Less Wrong are more likely to say that they read Less Wrong. However, saying “I am not a criminal” is not a signal of not being a criminal, because criminals also say it a lot.
It’s not about what the words mean, it’s about what they correlate with. Sometimes the act of speaking the words correlates with their literal meaning (not lying, or lying rarely). Sometimes the act of speaking the words has almost zero correlation with their literal meaning (lying almost always).
.
I agree with your third objection, that Less Wrong uses signalling in the narrower sense (about agent), because that is how Robin Hanson typically uses it, and most of us were probably introduced to the concept by him.
(I am not sure whether Robin never used signalling in the wider sense, or he did but we just didn’t notice.)
Virtue signalling is a subset of signalling. Specifically, it is signalling of moral virtues.
Therefore, a bird signalling health and good genes is not virtue signalling (but it is signalling in general). Because health and good genes are usually not considered to be moral virtues.
I agree that virtue signalling is specific to moral virtues rather than signalling virtues-in-general such as good genes, and I made a mistake by suggesting otherwise. My objection was really the part you agree with later, that people use signalling to refer exclusively to signalling properties of the self (and also use it predominantly to refer to duplicitous or otherwise negative cases, rather than to the general thing). But I don’t know what word to give people for what they’re trying to mean. “Virtue signalling” was my attempt.
Too bad I don’t have a good suggestion for a way to improve the terminology.
I think Scott got this right, but you misunderstood it.
X is a signal of Y if seeing X makes Y more likely. In some cases, mere assertions do that, in some cases, they don’t.
I also agree that mere assertions of X don’t necessarily signal X. I neglected to mention that because it wasn’t my focus in that part of the essay.
I don’t understand the objection.
Virtue signalling is a subset of signalling. Specifically, it is signalling of moral virtues.
Therefore, a bird signalling health and good genes is not virtue signalling (but it is signalling in general). Because health and good genes are usually not considered to be moral virtues.
I think Scott got this right, but you misunderstood it.
X is a signal of Y if seeing X makes Y more likely. In some cases, mere assertions do that, in some cases, they don’t.
For example, saying “I read Less Wrong” is a signal of reading Less Wrong, because people who read Less Wrong are more likely to say that they read Less Wrong. However, saying “I am not a criminal” is not a signal of not being a criminal, because criminals also say it a lot.
It’s not about what the words mean, it’s about what they correlate with. Sometimes the act of speaking the words correlates with their literal meaning (not lying, or lying rarely). Sometimes the act of speaking the words has almost zero correlation with their literal meaning (lying almost always).
.
I agree with your third objection, that Less Wrong uses signalling in the narrower sense (about agent), because that is how Robin Hanson typically uses it, and most of us were probably introduced to the concept by him.
(I am not sure whether Robin never used signalling in the wider sense, or he did but we just didn’t notice.)
I agree that virtue signalling is specific to moral virtues rather than signalling virtues-in-general such as good genes, and I made a mistake by suggesting otherwise. My objection was really the part you agree with later, that people use signalling to refer exclusively to signalling properties of the self (and also use it predominantly to refer to duplicitous or otherwise negative cases, rather than to the general thing). But I don’t know what word to give people for what they’re trying to mean. “Virtue signalling” was my attempt.
Too bad I don’t have a good suggestion for a way to improve the terminology.
I also agree that mere assertions of X don’t necessarily signal X. I neglected to mention that because it wasn’t my focus in that part of the essay.