″ If many animals in a group send too many dishonest signals, then their entire signalling system will collapse, leading to much poorer fitness of the group as a whole. Every dishonest signal weakens the integrity of the signalling system, and thus weakens the fitness of the group.”
Did you just use the appeal ‘weakens the fitness of the group’ to predict or describe the signalling behaviors of individuals?
A lot of signalling is bad for the group, whether honest or dishonest. When it happens to be good for the group that is, well, good for the group but not something one should necessarily expect from an individual.
You’re accusing me of group selectionism? We might disagree on a point of terminology, but come on, I’m not a completely nutter. Anyway, my point in quoting the wikipedia article is that too much dishonest signalling makes signalling completely pointless (‘weakens the integrity of the signalling system’), so for signalling to work you need some way of keeping out the cheats. I’m not proposing anything as daft as “groups without cheats will prosper”. Indeed, that’s why I was making such a big deal about criterion 4 and cost asymmetry, because the analysis of signalling has to work on an individual basis, including the individuals that might be tempted to cheat.
In my limited imagination, the only way I could think of for keeping out the cheats was having an asymmetric cost structure for honest signalling compared to dishonest signalling. Thus cheating wouldn’t be worth it. I now realize this is not the only way. ialdaboth called my attention to Batesian Mimicry, where cheaters are “kept out” simply by the fact that mimics are comparatively rare. Doubtless other ways could be invented.
I think I prefer MagnetoHydroDynamics definition of signalling, and would reserve my criteria for describing costly signalling.
No, I carefully avoided that particular charge because it doesn’t strictly apply even to the author that you quote—at least not without additional context.
Nevertheless, thankyou for elaborating on which part of the quote you intended to emphasize. You are indeed a non-nutter.
Did you just use the appeal ‘weakens the fitness of the group’ to predict or describe the signalling behaviors of individuals?
A lot of signalling is bad for the group, whether honest or dishonest. When it happens to be good for the group that is, well, good for the group but not something one should necessarily expect from an individual.
You’re accusing me of group selectionism? We might disagree on a point of terminology, but come on, I’m not a completely nutter. Anyway, my point in quoting the wikipedia article is that too much dishonest signalling makes signalling completely pointless (‘weakens the integrity of the signalling system’), so for signalling to work you need some way of keeping out the cheats. I’m not proposing anything as daft as “groups without cheats will prosper”. Indeed, that’s why I was making such a big deal about criterion 4 and cost asymmetry, because the analysis of signalling has to work on an individual basis, including the individuals that might be tempted to cheat.
In my limited imagination, the only way I could think of for keeping out the cheats was having an asymmetric cost structure for honest signalling compared to dishonest signalling. Thus cheating wouldn’t be worth it. I now realize this is not the only way. ialdaboth called my attention to Batesian Mimicry, where cheaters are “kept out” simply by the fact that mimics are comparatively rare. Doubtless other ways could be invented.
I think I prefer MagnetoHydroDynamics definition of signalling, and would reserve my criteria for describing costly signalling.
No, I carefully avoided that particular charge because it doesn’t strictly apply even to the author that you quote—at least not without additional context.
Nevertheless, thankyou for elaborating on which part of the quote you intended to emphasize. You are indeed a non-nutter.