There's also going to be a lot of bias in what is visible to you here - you're only going to see the people who loudly boast on Instagram about say donating to charity or using eco friendly cups or whatever - because of course the people that just do it quietly because they care and don't boast aren't going to be noticeable.
Maybe there's 10 people who aren't signalling for every one you see, but you have no way of knowing because they're not signalling.
The non-signalling 10 others are then cast as "following" the trends set by a signalling one.
But even by quoting that, I'm still playing (albeit by attempting to jump out into the meta game).
So the only ones who are actually not playing are the ones who are clicking away from this vapid comment page and moving on with their lives.
I believe the only way to stop is to generate white noise - by sending signals so mixed that those who observe stop trusting them
https://www.theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-d...
Area man doesn't signal.
^ And this one isn't?
I was asking in part because I was skeptical about the claim that most are deluded and unaware of their own signaling. I think more people are aware of it than this article would suggest, and that they just don't talk about it. But I don't have any evidence either way.
The idea of "hiding it" seems way too loaded, because it's usually in a context with an implicit value judgement.
I suspect that there are multiple factors of various importance going into every decision, and the observer is reducing, reprioritizing, and judging it against their own opinions.
Perhaps that book or some other source offers a more rigorous analysis.
Signaling is taught in Game Theory 101 in undergrad econ. Varian, Pyndick etc probably have plenty of "more rigorous analysis".
Furthermore, one of the authors of the book also authored this blog post, which I hesitate to summarize, but yeesh: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/04/two-types-of-envy.html
Someone on the outside looks at these signals and shakes their head, but it's just a bug in human nature.
Sounds to me like you object to false signalling, rather than signalling in general. Just think of all the positive forms of signalling like giving someone a gift to indicate that you’re thinking about them. Is that repellant?
I regret my original wording. I think I should have jumped directly to my main question about whether or not people are as unaware of signaling as the article suggests.
I want to live in a world in which more time is spent increasing merit and competency rather than advertising some sort of proxy. I understand that both merit and competency are impractical to judge without any sort of easily identifiable signal, but the inaccuracy of a lot of those signals and the amount of time, money, and effort wasted on them is kind of mind numbing.