One of the things you mention is that the signal should not be possible to fake by a bad actor (i.e.: someone who is not curious but wants to act curious to create plausible deniability).
Most responses here seem to be attacking this question from the perspective of modeling curiosity. Instead, let’s focus on use cases of feigning curiosity, and see if we can reason about what a bad actor may be incapable of doing.
Think about the disposition of someone whose intent is to embarrass rather than to learn. Such a person wants to assert dominance. He wants to win and show that he is superior. To gain status at your expense. He is calloused to his effect on your emotions.
In real life, mirroring shows empathy. Empathy is incompatible with this persona. Thus, mirroring is a good signal. In posts, mirroring can happen with adopting similar jargon.
Another thread here is the idea of coming out on top. If you can elevate the other person’s status and diminish your own, this is also incompatible with the persona of asking for the purpose of asserting dominance. There are many ways to do this. For example, I recently had an experience where I was asking a successful startup investor (who has been named in the Forbes’s Midas Touch list) for insight into what fueled his ambitions and risk-taking appetite. To increase the probability with which my question would be taken non-combatively, I related to him by saying, “when I was in college, I certainly wasn’t focused on building my own business—heck, it hadn’t even crossed my mind to do anything but study as hard as I could. And you somehow are one of the rare cases that managed to still graduate from a tough university while still successfully conducting your own businesses. How did you even get the resolve to go so above and beyond the ordinary levels of effort during a time where expectations are pretty set in stone?”
Finally, if your goal is to embarrass, and instead you end up embarrassing yourself, this also is incompatible with the disposition of someone whose goal is to embarrass. I don’t know of any examples of this off the top of my head, and I fear taking this approach—perhaps because I do indeed like to maintain some level of perceived respect. This is not something I am usually able to do. But it does seem possible to skillfully embarrass yourself, but not too much, in order to signal that your goal is not to embarrass the other.
One of the things you mention is that the signal should not be possible to fake by a bad actor (i.e.: someone who is not curious but wants to act curious to create plausible deniability).
Most responses here seem to be attacking this question from the perspective of modeling curiosity. Instead, let’s focus on use cases of feigning curiosity, and see if we can reason about what a bad actor may be incapable of doing.
Think about the disposition of someone whose intent is to embarrass rather than to learn. Such a person wants to assert dominance. He wants to win and show that he is superior. To gain status at your expense. He is calloused to his effect on your emotions.
In real life, mirroring shows empathy. Empathy is incompatible with this persona. Thus, mirroring is a good signal. In posts, mirroring can happen with adopting similar jargon.
Another thread here is the idea of coming out on top. If you can elevate the other person’s status and diminish your own, this is also incompatible with the persona of asking for the purpose of asserting dominance. There are many ways to do this. For example, I recently had an experience where I was asking a successful startup investor (who has been named in the Forbes’s Midas Touch list) for insight into what fueled his ambitions and risk-taking appetite. To increase the probability with which my question would be taken non-combatively, I related to him by saying, “when I was in college, I certainly wasn’t focused on building my own business—heck, it hadn’t even crossed my mind to do anything but study as hard as I could. And you somehow are one of the rare cases that managed to still graduate from a tough university while still successfully conducting your own businesses. How did you even get the resolve to go so above and beyond the ordinary levels of effort during a time where expectations are pretty set in stone?”
Finally, if your goal is to embarrass, and instead you end up embarrassing yourself, this also is incompatible with the disposition of someone whose goal is to embarrass. I don’t know of any examples of this off the top of my head, and I fear taking this approach—perhaps because I do indeed like to maintain some level of perceived respect. This is not something I am usually able to do. But it does seem possible to skillfully embarrass yourself, but not too much, in order to signal that your goal is not to embarrass the other.