9 Comments

Like I argued in other comments: We aren't attracted to the actual presence of good traits. We are attracted to the signals that historically correlated with good traits.

Then one could never discover new ways to signal desirable traits.

We pursue both actual presence and historic correlation. But I'm not sure these two pursuits represent a single psychological process.

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Ah, i see. Perhaps there is an added element of not only having the means to signal but also knowing "what" to signal. It's like fashion. We are signaling not just our "fitness" but our awareness of cultural trends.

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My whole point is that with a lack of privacy you don't have to take any initiative to have the info get it. So you have complete deniability about your intentions.

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I would lean towards insecurity and mendacity as explanations.

Greater transparency might introduce bias into discussions where person "A" does not make enough money or have a high enough IQ to give credence to their viewpoint. I find the wonder of the Internet is that you can be a nobody and go anywhere.

In terms of privacy, I see less hypocrisy. Essentially, we want to be intimate with our in groups and private with the government and outsiders. This seems very human.

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Overt signals would force everyone to admit they are signalling. No one wants that, lest it become apparent we are really not much different than the rest of the animal kingdom. Plausible deniability is the key ("i'm not signalling, i just love $5,000 handbags"). No one wants to admit they are playing hard in a zero-sum game (which has the unfortunate side effect of your progress being at someone else's expense)...so we lie to ourselves.

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You may have this backwards. People want to show what they don't possess to persuade others they do. In this, transparency would be counterproductive. Better to be imagined much better than you truly are. This is why people care about what their betters think of them and little of their lessors. Impressing all those you don't care about doesn't seem a efficient way to impress those you do.

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Hmm. In Sweden, all data the tax authority has in order to levy the proper amount of tax on every individual is public.

There used to be a company which printed the data of your region and sold it as something in the likeness of a phone directory "taxeringskalendern". Since this was in the days of the direct tax on capital, both your net worth and your annual income was printed out.

I wonder whether that practice had any influence on the tendency to otherwise signal wealth.

(Since all governmental documents are public unless classified, your grades and your SAT-scores are public as well. But never collected and printed, I think. The results from the IQ-test (and evaluation of leadership ability, both scored on a stanine scale) taken when reporting for conscription might be classified. I don´t know.)

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Even if we had this capacity, bothering to look up the data presupposes that we would admit to ourselves that we actually care enough about the IQ and bank balances of others. Even I'm not that far along. An arguably more relevant thing - a credit check - is already available and costs less than a date, but I never considered ordering a credit check on someone I know socially.

Like I argued in other comments: We aren't attracted to the actual presence of good traits. We are attracted to the signals that historically correlated with good traits. If I were ever in a situation where I could either go home with a women who appears to have good genes but doesn't, or one that doesn't appear to have good genes but does, I would always choose the former. The trait signal is the attractor, not the trait itself. And the signals that push our buttons are wired into our genes by evolution. A well-told joke may turn me on, but a IQ certificate never will.

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I suspect that lots of the ways we appreciate IQ (for mating and in evaluating friends/leaders) may be evolutionary hardwired the way being impressed by other traits that are correlated with evolutionary success.

I mean there are a very narrow range of circumstances we actually care about specific results (job interviews, promotions etc..) while the situations we want to show off our intelligence are much much wider. As such it might not be that merely knowing someone is smart is really relevant. Like knowing someone is freakishly strong but still doesn't look muscular wouldn't improve our opinion of their looks.

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