I certainly am careful about how “lively” I appear in many settings, so that it doesn’t become a distraction or cause social penalties to me or whatever aim I’m trying to accomplish. This is the way that societies work—we all have shared norms for many interactions that allow for violations up to a point, and then much more freedom in private or with trusted friends and family.
And of course what counts as weird in any group depends on the group. At work, advocating for cryonics makes you a weirdo. At Less Wrong, you might be more weird if you don’t support cryonics!
It might be closely related but I think you’re leaving a large argumentative gap here: why should ‘weirdness points’ have anything to do with ‘social predators’? Why do you need to tailor one to the other? I’d suggest two possible arguments stemming from the same basic consequence of weirdness increasing danger.*
Having lots of (visible) weirdness is dangerous because it singles you out for predation: the weirdnesses themselves are probably intrinsically dangerous vulnerabilities (if they were not considered dubious or disgusting or unpopular or immoral, why are they ‘weird’?), and even if they are completely harmless eccentricities which merely deviate from the norm, they make you more visible and salient to a predator.
So this has two possible problems:
Weirdness points scale with prestige and status. The Nobel Prize-winning scientist can get away with just about anything, even talking about radioactive glowing space raccoons telling him the secret of life or PCR; the undergrad had better keep his LSD use on the downlow, among friends, and not act above his station in life. Everyone understands this, or should understand this.
So: if you have ‘more weirdness points than status’, that implies that you are broken. You are failing to either understand or follow prudent social norms by spending an appropriate amount of weirdness points for your visible status. Either way, you are broken and make a bad unpredictable ally.
Being an especially appealing target of predators also makes you a bad ally. You are going to be a burden if attacked, you will be less useful as reinforcements, and merely being associated with you in any way may be a severe liability.
Either way, that means people will be sensitive to how many weirdness points you are spending in each context, and whether your status in each context is high enough to let you spend those points prudently. Failure to skillfully navigate these contexts reflects badly on you and makes you unappealing. Hence, if you are capable of doing so skillfully, you will be more concerned to do so skillfully, and will do so, while broken or dangerous people continue to heedlessly do so poorly, thereby reinforcing the signaling equilibrium.
* Note: this danger does not need to be real. My interpretation of things like CoZE is that contemporary Americans in most circumstances overestimate the danger, even if it may’ve been accurate in more EEA-like situations like villages. But for signaling, all that matters is that this is a widespread error.
This seems closely related to the concept of weirdness points.
I certainly am careful about how “lively” I appear in many settings, so that it doesn’t become a distraction or cause social penalties to me or whatever aim I’m trying to accomplish. This is the way that societies work—we all have shared norms for many interactions that allow for violations up to a point, and then much more freedom in private or with trusted friends and family.
And of course what counts as weird in any group depends on the group. At work, advocating for cryonics makes you a weirdo. At Less Wrong, you might be more weird if you don’t support cryonics!
It might be closely related but I think you’re leaving a large argumentative gap here: why should ‘weirdness points’ have anything to do with ‘social predators’? Why do you need to tailor one to the other? I’d suggest two possible arguments stemming from the same basic consequence of weirdness increasing danger.*
Having lots of (visible) weirdness is dangerous because it singles you out for predation: the weirdnesses themselves are probably intrinsically dangerous vulnerabilities (if they were not considered dubious or disgusting or unpopular or immoral, why are they ‘weird’?), and even if they are completely harmless eccentricities which merely deviate from the norm, they make you more visible and salient to a predator.
So this has two possible problems:
Weirdness points scale with prestige and status. The Nobel Prize-winning scientist can get away with just about anything, even talking about radioactive glowing space raccoons telling him the secret of life or PCR; the undergrad had better keep his LSD use on the downlow, among friends, and not act above his station in life. Everyone understands this, or should understand this.
So: if you have ‘more weirdness points than status’, that implies that you are broken. You are failing to either understand or follow prudent social norms by spending an appropriate amount of weirdness points for your visible status. Either way, you are broken and make a bad unpredictable ally.
Being an especially appealing target of predators also makes you a bad ally. You are going to be a burden if attacked, you will be less useful as reinforcements, and merely being associated with you in any way may be a severe liability.
Either way, that means people will be sensitive to how many weirdness points you are spending in each context, and whether your status in each context is high enough to let you spend those points prudently. Failure to skillfully navigate these contexts reflects badly on you and makes you unappealing. Hence, if you are capable of doing so skillfully, you will be more concerned to do so skillfully, and will do so, while broken or dangerous people continue to heedlessly do so poorly, thereby reinforcing the signaling equilibrium.
* Note: this danger does not need to be real. My interpretation of things like CoZE is that contemporary Americans in most circumstances overestimate the danger, even if it may’ve been accurate in more EEA-like situations like villages. But for signaling, all that matters is that this is a widespread error.