We seem to be in agreement that Miller’s argument (such as it can be reconstructed from the quotes) is weak, but disagreeing about the reasons why?
Likewise, anyone can claim to like weird foreign films on MySpace, but only a person very confident in her popularity actually will, because all the other people are too worried about being shunned.
The difference between the two cases is that the gazelle is wasting time that she could use to get a head start on the predator, as well as energetic resources which could prolong its flight. The behaviour is obviously paradoxical and demands explanation.
There is no similar loss of valuable resources on the part of someone expressing admiration for Lynch films: quoting lines from Mulholland Drive does not result immediately and systematically in being socially shunned. It is at most a way of expressing affiliation with one particular group rather than another, as PJ suggests, but any cultural behavior is going to do that anyway. There is nothing obviously paradoxical about expressing one’s likes and dislikes, and furthermore it has no obvious direct impact on reproductive fitness.
IOW, if you hadn’t invented costly signaling theory (or “handicap principle”) and came across teenagers quoting obscure references on Myspace, you wouldn’t feel compelled to invent that theory specifically.
I’m no expert on costly signaling theory, but I can’t see any reason it shouldn’t apply to opportunity costs as well as any other kind of cost. If I see twenty people using a social network to establish themselves as hip, popular kids who like all the cool trendy things to like, and one person using that network to quote obscure references instead, the fact that that kid is giving up the opportunity to cement their status as hip and popular seems noteworthy.
If everyone is using the same sorts of signals to establish themselves as hip and cool, then it diminishes the value of the signal. That’s when countersignaling becomes useful.
We seem to be in agreement that Miller’s argument (such as it can be reconstructed from the quotes) is weak, but disagreeing about the reasons why?
The difference between the two cases is that the gazelle is wasting time that she could use to get a head start on the predator, as well as energetic resources which could prolong its flight. The behaviour is obviously paradoxical and demands explanation.
There is no similar loss of valuable resources on the part of someone expressing admiration for Lynch films: quoting lines from Mulholland Drive does not result immediately and systematically in being socially shunned. It is at most a way of expressing affiliation with one particular group rather than another, as PJ suggests, but any cultural behavior is going to do that anyway. There is nothing obviously paradoxical about expressing one’s likes and dislikes, and furthermore it has no obvious direct impact on reproductive fitness.
IOW, if you hadn’t invented costly signaling theory (or “handicap principle”) and came across teenagers quoting obscure references on Myspace, you wouldn’t feel compelled to invent that theory specifically.
I’m no expert on costly signaling theory, but I can’t see any reason it shouldn’t apply to opportunity costs as well as any other kind of cost. If I see twenty people using a social network to establish themselves as hip, popular kids who like all the cool trendy things to like, and one person using that network to quote obscure references instead, the fact that that kid is giving up the opportunity to cement their status as hip and popular seems noteworthy.
If everyone is using the same sorts of signals to establish themselves as hip and cool, then it diminishes the value of the signal. That’s when countersignaling becomes useful.