I fear you’re assuming a consistency of expectations that leads toward a vastly oversimple model of incentives. Groups value some kinds of diversity, and some instances of deviant competence (unusual things that work out), while punishing some that on many dimensions seem very similar to the things they reward.
Details matter, and path-dependencies abound (where you can’t get from here to there without a viable intermediate which may not be optimal for anything).
I want to be uniquely desirable to my mate and to my employer, to avoid competing on a level field with others, and to avoid the admission that I’m just one of 7.5 billion living humans, and so can’t actually be all that special. I simultaneously want to signal that I’m predictably productive on standard dimensions, and a positive outlier on at least one. Counter-signaling is an important part of this. Showing that I deviate from norms on some (harmless) dimensions is an indicator that I’m competent enough in more important dimensions that I don’t have to care about conformity.
You have to dance in sync for some parts of some songs, and show your unique strengths (which includes showing weaknesses and neutral distinctions as part of counter-signaling) during other parts of the dance. even line dances and highly-prescriptive victorian dances have segments where some amount of freestyle performance is beneficial.
I fear you’re assuming a consistency of expectations that leads toward a vastly oversimple model of incentives. Groups value some kinds of diversity, and some instances of deviant competence (unusual things that work out), while punishing some that on many dimensions seem very similar to the things they reward.
Details matter, and path-dependencies abound (where you can’t get from here to there without a viable intermediate which may not be optimal for anything).
I want to be uniquely desirable to my mate and to my employer, to avoid competing on a level field with others, and to avoid the admission that I’m just one of 7.5 billion living humans, and so can’t actually be all that special. I simultaneously want to signal that I’m predictably productive on standard dimensions, and a positive outlier on at least one. Counter-signaling is an important part of this. Showing that I deviate from norms on some (harmless) dimensions is an indicator that I’m competent enough in more important dimensions that I don’t have to care about conformity.
You have to dance in sync for some parts of some songs, and show your unique strengths (which includes showing weaknesses and neutral distinctions as part of counter-signaling) during other parts of the dance. even line dances and highly-prescriptive victorian dances have segments where some amount of freestyle performance is beneficial.
I agree that mating complicates this substantially.