But equally-intelligent equally-polite people are still expected to dance the dance even if they’re alone
I think this could be considered to be a sort of “residue” of the sort of deception Zack is talking about. If you imagine agents with different levels of social savviness, the savviest ones might adopt a deceptively polite phrasing, until the less savvy ones catch on, and so on down the line until everybody can interpret the signal correctly. But now the signaling equilibrium has shifted, so all communication uses the polite phrasing even though no one is fooled. I think this is probably the #2 source of deceptive politeness, with #1 being management of people’s immediate emotional reactions, and #3 ongoing deceptiveness.
I think this could be considered to be a sort of “residue” of the sort of deception Zack is talking about. If you imagine agents with different levels of social savviness, the savviest ones might adopt a deceptively polite phrasing, until the less savvy ones catch on, and so on down the line until everybody can interpret the signal correctly. But now the signaling equilibrium has shifted, so all communication uses the polite phrasing even though no one is fooled. I think this is probably the #2 source of deceptive politeness, with #1 being management of people’s immediate emotional reactions, and #3 ongoing deceptiveness.