[T]rying to suppress overt signaling games runs the risk of driving them underground, forcing them to be disguised as something else, rather than doing them in a self-aware and fun way.
Borrowing from the “Guess vs. Tell (vs. Ask)” meta-discussion, then, perhaps it would be useful for the community to have an explicit discussion about what kinds of signals we want to converge on? It seems that people with a reasonable understanding of game theory and evolutionary psychology would stand a better chance deliberately engineering our group’s social signals than simply trusting our subconsciouses to evolve the most accurate and honest possible set.
The right rule is probably something like, “don’t mix signaling games and truth seeking.” If it’s the kind of thing you’d expect in a subculture that doesn’t take itself too seriously or imagine its quirks are evidence of its superiority to other groups, it’s probably fine.
Borrowing from the “Guess vs. Tell (vs. Ask)” meta-discussion, then, perhaps it would be useful for the community to have an explicit discussion about what kinds of signals we want to converge on? It seems that people with a reasonable understanding of game theory and evolutionary psychology would stand a better chance deliberately engineering our group’s social signals than simply trusting our subconsciouses to evolve the most accurate and honest possible set.
The right rule is probably something like, “don’t mix signaling games and truth seeking.” If it’s the kind of thing you’d expect in a subculture that doesn’t take itself too seriously or imagine its quirks are evidence of its superiority to other groups, it’s probably fine.