-Edit it looks like Academian said most of this already, I need to stop going afk mid-comment.
I see several problems with this article. The most obvious is that it is arguing about definitions, and doing so in a situation were the majority of the participants seem to understand each other well enough that I don’t think the argument is necessary for clarifying communications. The next is that I feel like the phrase “you can’t signal to rubes” is confusing, and certainly not a good slogan. Lastly, to extent its meaningful to argue about the meaning of words what you say is wrong or at least not accepted in all disciplines. Based on my psychology classes and how I’ve seen the words used off of LW, what your four features loosely pinpoints is costly signaling. This is the type of signaling that people commonly are talking about when they say signaling, but it is just a subset of signaling which very much includes what you call “cheap talk” in one of the earlier comments. If I’m understanding wikipedia correctly this is also the case in biology. I’m not sure about economics or other disciplines.
Even then most definitions only require 3 & 4. If trait A is something you want others to think you posses and doing behavior B without trait A is more costly than people thinking you have trait A is worthwhile, then B is a costly signal of A. Even if B is possible without A and/or it is worthwhile for people with A to do B even if nobody gets the signal.
-Edit it looks like Academian said most of this already, I need to stop going afk mid-comment. I see several problems with this article. The most obvious is that it is arguing about definitions, and doing so in a situation were the majority of the participants seem to understand each other well enough that I don’t think the argument is necessary for clarifying communications. The next is that I feel like the phrase “you can’t signal to rubes” is confusing, and certainly not a good slogan. Lastly, to extent its meaningful to argue about the meaning of words what you say is wrong or at least not accepted in all disciplines. Based on my psychology classes and how I’ve seen the words used off of LW, what your four features loosely pinpoints is costly signaling. This is the type of signaling that people commonly are talking about when they say signaling, but it is just a subset of signaling which very much includes what you call “cheap talk” in one of the earlier comments. If I’m understanding wikipedia correctly this is also the case in biology. I’m not sure about economics or other disciplines. Even then most definitions only require 3 & 4. If trait A is something you want others to think you posses and doing behavior B without trait A is more costly than people thinking you have trait A is worthwhile, then B is a costly signal of A. Even if B is possible without A and/or it is worthwhile for people with A to do B even if nobody gets the signal.