As I understand it, the point of a costly signal is that it’s supposed to be relatively more affordable if you actually have that quality.
Yeah. In hindsight the terminology of “costly signal” is a bit unfortunate, because the payment here would actually work a bit like Mario’s jump or LessWrong karma—it’s a very simple mechanism which can co-opted to solve a large number of different problems. In particular, the money is not intended to be burnt (as would be the case with status signals, or proof-of-work as mentioned in some other comments), but actually paid to you.
Overall appreciate you writing up those points, they’re pretty helpful in understanding how people might (and might not) use this.
Yeah. In hindsight the terminology of “costly signal” is a bit unfortunate, because the payment here would actually work a bit like Mario’s jump or LessWrong karma—it’s a very simple mechanism which can co-opted to solve a large number of different problems. In particular, the money is not intended to be burnt (as would be the case with status signals, or proof-of-work as mentioned in some other comments), but actually paid to you.
Overall appreciate you writing up those points, they’re pretty helpful in understanding how people might (and might not) use this.