My research into animal mimicry, which closely resembles Baudrillardian simulacra, makes me think the slide in language/signaling from the first to second step is a potentially intractable problem. Once some association in information-space develops a reputation among situated actors, and is recognized as open to manipulation which benefits some of those actors at the cost of others… well, there’s no way to break the freeriders of dishonest signaling.
Let’s say that a black and red phenotype on a butterfly develops a reputation among predators as inedible (the butterfly releases toxins on being eaten). Now it’s protected, great! What used to be a lose-lose (predator eats toxins, butterfly gets eaten) is transformed to a win-win (predator avoids toxins, butterfly survives) by the power of information: honest signaling benefits everyone. This is “step 1.”
Unfortunately, the next step is other, non-toxic butterflies “noticing” (which is to say, evolution exploiting) this statistical association, and protecting themselves by dishonestly signaling the black and red, protected phenotype. This works alright at first, but it’s driven by frequency-dependent selection: the more dishonest signalers, the less protection for everyone, toxic or not. This is “step 2.”
But the actually toxic butterflies—the original honest signalers—they can’t go anywhere. They’re just stuck. One might happen to evolve a new phenotype, but that phenotype isn’t protected by reputational association, and it’s going to take a very long time for the new signal-association to take hold in predators. Once other insects have learned how to replicate the proxy-association or symbol that protected them, they can only wait it out until it’s no longer protective.
You may have noticed this is a very similar mechanism to Goodhart’s Law; the mechanism’s the same far as I can tell. It’s all about a publicly visible signal proxies for a hidden quality which outsiders do not have access to. (E.g. the lemon problem in used car sales, or size/confidence as a proxy for fighting ability in macaque hierarchies.) It can be easier and more reliable to just learn and copy the proxy than to evolve the hidden quality and hope other people catch on. (Think how many black and red butterflies got munched before the predators learned). It’s a bleak problem; I haven’t been able to make much progress on it, though I’d be super curious to hear if you think I’ve made errors in my premises, or if there’s literature in game theory on this problem.
Signaling frontier moves. Movement speed depends, as you note, on how rapidly the noisy channel becomes a sexual or survival impediment. There is some research on this in game theory but only rudimentary simulations of populations forming high trust networks using unfakeably costly signals to out compete the free riders since they can internalize the benefits of their network.
Like posting a picture of yourself in a luxury resort. There are now companies offering to fake this for you since it is so commonly used as currency on social media/dating apps.
High trust networks usually use shibboleths of shared vocabulary plus some basic litmus tests.
My research into animal mimicry, which closely resembles Baudrillardian simulacra, makes me think the slide in language/signaling from the first to second step is a potentially intractable problem. Once some association in information-space develops a reputation among situated actors, and is recognized as open to manipulation which benefits some of those actors at the cost of others… well, there’s no way to break the freeriders of dishonest signaling.
Let’s say that a black and red phenotype on a butterfly develops a reputation among predators as inedible (the butterfly releases toxins on being eaten). Now it’s protected, great! What used to be a lose-lose (predator eats toxins, butterfly gets eaten) is transformed to a win-win (predator avoids toxins, butterfly survives) by the power of information: honest signaling benefits everyone. This is “step 1.”
Unfortunately, the next step is other, non-toxic butterflies “noticing” (which is to say, evolution exploiting) this statistical association, and protecting themselves by dishonestly signaling the black and red, protected phenotype. This works alright at first, but it’s driven by frequency-dependent selection: the more dishonest signalers, the less protection for everyone, toxic or not. This is “step 2.”
But the actually toxic butterflies—the original honest signalers—they can’t go anywhere. They’re just stuck. One might happen to evolve a new phenotype, but that phenotype isn’t protected by reputational association, and it’s going to take a very long time for the new signal-association to take hold in predators. Once other insects have learned how to replicate the proxy-association or symbol that protected them, they can only wait it out until it’s no longer protective.
You may have noticed this is a very similar mechanism to Goodhart’s Law; the mechanism’s the same far as I can tell. It’s all about a publicly visible signal proxies for a hidden quality which outsiders do not have access to. (E.g. the lemon problem in used car sales, or size/confidence as a proxy for fighting ability in macaque hierarchies.) It can be easier and more reliable to just learn and copy the proxy than to evolve the hidden quality and hope other people catch on. (Think how many black and red butterflies got munched before the predators learned). It’s a bleak problem; I haven’t been able to make much progress on it, though I’d be super curious to hear if you think I’ve made errors in my premises, or if there’s literature in game theory on this problem.
Signaling frontier moves. Movement speed depends, as you note, on how rapidly the noisy channel becomes a sexual or survival impediment. There is some research on this in game theory but only rudimentary simulations of populations forming high trust networks using unfakeably costly signals to out compete the free riders since they can internalize the benefits of their network.
What sort of unfakeably costly signals?
Like posting a picture of yourself in a luxury resort. There are now companies offering to fake this for you since it is so commonly used as currency on social media/dating apps.
High trust networks usually use shibboleths of shared vocabulary plus some basic litmus tests.
Any chance you could point me to some keywords/authors/texts on this topic? I’d love to learn more.
I’d chase citations+check connected papers from these two high level reviews:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsif.2012.0997
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.07161.pdf
Thank ya!
Great analogy.
Do you have examples of equilibria around these dynamics in the animal world? Do you have a sense of how stable these equilibria are?
e.g. do toxic black-and-red butterflies persist after their non-toxic lookalikes arrive?