When someone uses the phrase “costly signal”, I think it’s germane and not an isolated demand for rigor to point out that in the standard academic meaning of the term, it’s a requirement that honest actors have an easier time paying the cost than dishonest actors.
That is: I’m not saying you were bluffing; I’m saying that, logically, if you’re going to claim that costly signals make your claim trustworthy (which is how I interpreted your remarks about “a method of rendering a more costly signal”; my apologies if I misread that), you should have some sort of story for why a dishonest actor couldn’t send the same signal. I think this is a substantive technical point; the possibility of being stuck in a pooling equilibrium with other agents who could send the same signals as you for different reasons is definitely frustrating, but not talking about it doesn’t make the situation go away.
I agree that you’re free to ignore my comments. It’s a busy, busy world that may not last much longer; it makes sense that people to have better things to do with their lives than respond to every blog comment making a technical point about game theory. In general, I hope for my comments to provide elucidation to third parties reading the thread, not just the person I’m replying to, so when an author has a policy of ignoring me, that doesn’t necessarily make responding to their claims on a public forum a waste of my time.
When someone uses the phrase “costly signal”, I think it’s germane and not an isolated demand for rigor to point out that in the standard academic meaning of the term, it’s a requirement that honest actors have an easier time paying the cost than dishonest actors.
That is: I’m not saying you were bluffing; I’m saying that, logically, if you’re going to claim that costly signals make your claim trustworthy (which is how I interpreted your remarks about “a method of rendering a more costly signal”; my apologies if I misread that), you should have some sort of story for why a dishonest actor couldn’t send the same signal. I think this is a substantive technical point; the possibility of being stuck in a pooling equilibrium with other agents who could send the same signals as you for different reasons is definitely frustrating, but not talking about it doesn’t make the situation go away.
I agree that you’re free to ignore my comments. It’s a busy, busy world that may not last much longer; it makes sense that people to have better things to do with their lives than respond to every blog comment making a technical point about game theory. In general, I hope for my comments to provide elucidation to third parties reading the thread, not just the person I’m replying to, so when an author has a policy of ignoring me, that doesn’t necessarily make responding to their claims on a public forum a waste of my time.