
Signaling as a Service - antdke
https://julian.digital/2020/03/28/signaling-as-a-service/
======
roywiggins
My instinct is that the model proves too much. Same way evopsych just-so
stories were able to "explain" everything. Once you have a theory that
purports to explain every single thing, maybe your theory is actually too
vague to be useful, or you're just telling yourself stories.

For instance, while most donations aren't anonymous, I'd wager most people
don't know how much their friends donate and who to. Sure, the organization
knows, but unless you go out of your way to tell people that you gave $50 or
$500 or $5000 to MSF last year, nobody will know. It's not an _anonymous_
donation, but you're not signalling to anyone unless you stick a bumper
sticker on your car or whatever.

~~~
floatrock
Thing is, this model doesn't explain "everything". All it explains is how the
successful consumer-facing software companies of the last 1.5-ish decades
became so successful:

They unlocked the attention economy.

We consumers pay for facebook with our eyeballs, not our wallets (facebook
then is really good at selling specific eyeballs to specific wallets on the
backend).

In the limited scope of the attention economy, then sure, social signaling
could be the key metric of engagement. Facebook monetizes it by matching your
signaling with specific advertisers, and Fortnite monetizes it by letting you
customize the means of your signaling.

However, in the broader scope of the _human experience_ , signaling explains
very little...

Sure, you have a nice coffee table book, but you read Dickens to get lost in
the story. Or you read a physics textbook to understand the universe.

You might go to church to show your neighbors you're a good god-fearing
churchgoer, but you also do it to get closer to god or however you understand
the universe.

You might go on a vacation to a far-off land to get a selfie, but you also do
it to ponder how this park bench is older than your country and contemplate
the lives and cultures of the people who have sat there since.

Yoga pants signal you do yoga, but you also do yoga to quiet your brain or
meditate.

So sure, signaling theory is useful to explain all the cynical, vapid, and
narcissistic tendencies we have (as well as the software companies that have
become successful by industrializing the exploitation of those tendencies --
not saying they're not real!), but it certainly doesn't prove "too much".
Rather, all the things it _doesn 't_ explain are the parts of the human
experience that are not tied to the attention economy.

~~~
pm90
The only thing I object to your otherwise excellent comment is the
characterization of the attention economy as being driven primarily by
"cynical, vapid, and narcissistic tendencies". Seeking status is also a part
of the human experience, although perhaps one that many find distasteful.

~~~
teraku
Well, he is not wrong. The words he chose were morally charged, but at least
the "narcisstic tendencies" I think you can just take it as it is.

And it's not bad to sometimes just think about yourself. It's just when it
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy "I need status/affirmation in order to feel
fulfilled" that it's shifts towards being obnoxious.

------
didericis
Am I alone in finding a lot of signaling transparent and kind of repellant? I
realize I'm signaling to a certain crowd by saying that and am not denying
that I participate, but it's never seemed hidden to me.

I want to live in a world in which more time is spent increasing merit and
competency rather than advertising some sort of proxy. I understand that both
merit and competency are impractical to judge without any sort of easily
identifiable signal, but the inaccuracy of a lot of those signals and the
amount of time, money, and effort wasted on them is kind of mind numbing.

~~~
whalesalad
It’s a meta signal. You can observe the “shallow” signaling of others (for
lack of a better word) and it becomes a signal in and of itself.

~~~
floatrock
The only winning move is not to play.

But even by quoting that, I'm still playing (albeit by attempting to jump out
into the meta game).

So the only ones who are _actually_ not playing are the ones who are clicking
away from this vapid comment page and moving on with their lives.

~~~
pm90
You're right. Every form of communication indicates signalling, you're
literally sending signals from one entity to another. The only way to stop
signalling is to stop communication between entities.

~~~
postsantum
Deleting facebook is a signal. Abandoning social life altogether is a signal
too.

I believe the only way to stop is to generate white noise - by sending signals
so mixed that those who observe stop trusting them

------
op03
Signaling does not explain 90% of human behavior. Stopped reading right there.

That kind of talk only an Economist can come up with, and sell to folks who
have never heard about a subject called Psychology.

Economists are a bunch of people, who only recently discovered human behavior
needed to be taken into account, to explain everything inexplicable about the
economy. That mistake is how we end up with Alan Greenspan standing around
expressing "shock and disbelief" at the 2008 meltdown.

If Signaling explains everything about human behavior what are the 418 books
ranked above (the one in the article) in Amazon's Psychology category talking
about?

~~~
anonytrary
This is a misleading comment. You're saying you disagree with the author and
stopped reading here:

> In fact, Hanson believes that “well over 90 percent” of human behavior can
> be explained by signaling. Whether or not you agree with that exact number,
> I think it’s an interesting thought experiment to look at a specific
> behavior and think about what the hidden signaling subtext of that behavior
> might be.

You do realize the author is _citing_ someone else making the assertion you
disagree with? The next sentence validates this interpretation. Your comment
is a textbook straw man against the author.

Also, your bit about economists sounds incredibly inaccurate. No, economists
didn't randomly realize human behavior needed to be taken into account one
day. Since the beginning, the people studying economics already knew that it
emerged out of the intricacies of human behavior. Simplifying a phenomenon for
the purposes of modeling it is how we study things initially. We iterate on
those solutions as we go.

------
wilg
"Signaling" has never struck me as a particularly useful model of human
behavior. It feels like just a repackaging of cynicism in more "objective"
language.

This article doesn't seem to have a lot of real insight, other than to loosely
(and half incorrectly) justify various beliefs and misunderstandings the
author has about selected social interactions. I guess that's fine, but
doesn't seem particularly useful.

~~~
lukifer
I don't think signaling need be cast through a cynical lens. A great deal of
signaling is explicitly _honest signaling_ , expending resources to
demonstrate integrity and form stable trust bonds.

------
franciscop
This is amazing and perfectly explains something that I didn't understand
until now: in Japan there are A LOT of sock shops. The tall socks that show
above the shoes sure I get it, but I didn't understand about the normal/small
ones and just attributed it to the normal over-consumerism of Japan. But in
fact there are a lot of situations (restaurants, some offices, etc) where you
take your shoes off and socks become visible clothing.

> So how are you going to distribute the signal message of your sneakers? You
> simply wear them where other people can see them. The obvious constraint
> here is that your signal distribution is limited to things you can display
> in public. This is why people are willing to spend hundreds of dollars on
> shoes but not on socks.

------
si1entstill
I found this a good read, but I don't feel that Fortnight's business model is
really as novel as the author suggests. Free to play games (MMOs in
particular) had been leveraging this consumer behavior for quite a while. I
think it is the audience and their perception that have changed.

(This is largely anecdotal, but) 7-10 years ago, a game having a cash shop of
_any_ kind caused it to be shunned by a large portion of the (US) gaming
community. However, the model proved so effective (particularly with the "non-
traditional gamer"), that it eventually became the norm. The market shifted
that way as it grew and now the community is resigned to it. Don't get me
wrong, there are still a multitude of games that follow the traditional model,
but those aren't the cash cows of the industry because the market is simply
smaller.

With Fortnight, I feel that Epic succeeded because they took a known formula,
applied it to a budding, ultra-competitive genre, gave it an unassuming art
style that had mass appeal, and made the game play simple and approachable.

~~~
golergka
Free2play games with in-game shops became popular in Asia in 00s - mostly
because piracy prevented traditional offline titles from taking off in many
second world countries at all. But Fortnite and the latest breed of western
free2play games is very significantly different, because they are not pay2win.

The shift hapenned in 2010s, at the same time as free2play gmaes moved west.
For example, World of Tanks had some pay2win shop mechanics, but the core of
monetization was on purchasing faster progress: you would spend less time
grinding or new gear, but once you got into battle with other players matched
to you, you wouldn't get any advantage. Such game design focus was already
pretty risky and revolutionary at the time when other free2play developers
considered non-paying users as cannon fodder for paying ones, and it paid back
with a much higher % of paying users and user loyalty, although the game did
have a significantly lower ARPPU, relying on the mass of paying subscribers
instead of a tiny amount of whales.

~~~
si1entstill
Yeah, I agree - I think that shift is a part of what prompted the change I
mentioned. I just feel like there were already a smattering of other games
that followed the "convenience" or "vanity" based cash shop model and Fortnite
isn't that novel.

------
Procrastes
> charitable behavior is heavily driven by visibility (hardly any donations
> are anonymous)

That doesn't bear out with what I see. Looking at a dataset of 2.8 million
donations through our site, roughly 20% are anonymous. That's not the
majority, but it's much more than "hardly any."

~~~
hirundo
A primary consumer of signaling is the signaller. We do things to convince
ourselves of our qualities, which isn't necessarily bad.

~~~
roywiggins
Once you add that in, no wonder someone could find a way to tie 90% of human
behavior to "signalling." Why did you do something? To convince yourself that
you are the sort of person who would do that thing. This story works with a
large majority of things people do. That seems too clever by half.

------
Spivak
I don't want to detract too much from the author's main point because Tinder's
super likes are a form of signaling but they have the opposite effect the that
the author (and Tinder themselves) makes it seem and it's a lot more
interesting. Using super likes or paying for Tinder Plus/Gold is a signal of
desperation and so people don't readily admit to it. The status signal on
Tinder is not needing to pay and ultimately not needing to use Tinder at all.

It's such an odd dynamic but I'm thankful for it since it gives me more
information about a guy.

~~~
apdar
The author used Tinder as an example of “signal amplification”, in that, a
method to reach more people.

So the signalling on Tinder is your profile - pictures and description, they
monetise the ability to signal to more people. And, as you alluded to, they
absolutely don’t make that action public since amplifying your signal on a
dating app reeks of desperation.

------
Timpy
I don't agree that signaling can explain 90% of human behavior, however I
think you can find signals (intentional or otherwise) in about 90% of human
behavior.

When I became aware of my signaling habits I tried to reduce my signals, only
to find that there's no "opt out". If you need a car, no matter what car you
drive it will send a signal. No car sends a signal. If I want to wear the same
plain clothes every day like a uniform, this is still participating in
signalling. It's like mistaking 0 for null, I've signaled that I care more
about pragmatism than fashion, but it's still a signal. While I'm sure the
book recommended in the article is fascinating, I think I shouldn't read it
because I won't be able to get outside my own head for a long time if I do.

------
saagarjha
> Another point of evidence is the lack of luxury software products. People
> spend absurd amounts of money on jewellery, handbags and cars, but I can’t
> think of a piece of software with an even remotely similar price tag.

The author isn't looking hard enough: professional software frequently goes
for many thousands of dollars.

~~~
julian_digital
Author here:

There's a difference between a high price tag and a high price tag for the
sake of signaling wealth / social status. I wouldn't classify professional
software as luxury goods (such as jewelry, watches, etc).

But agree that I should have phrased that sentence differently.

~~~
totetsu
Neat blog.

~~~
julian_digital
:)

------
mud_dauber
I didn't get the same negative reaction as many readers have, maybe because I
felt this is how humans _do_ behave, not how they _should_ behave.

It would be interesting to see a dataset of people's t-shirt collections
mapped against their consumer preferences. My two cents.

------
motohagiography
I used to write about fashion, and the reason I took it seriously was because
it was how people signalled their beliefs about power every morning when they
got dressed. Luxury goods are just one very narrow dimension. The only
question is what you perceive to represent power, and who you intend to signal
that to.

Linux was a great example, where originally you could signal your technical
skill by just having it installed at home. Today the equivalent would probably
be having a functional language on your CV. It's a costly signal in that you
need to make a non-trivial investment in learning it to be able to claim it.
It also says that what you perceive to be power is esoteric knowledge with
intelligence, and you are looking for people who meet that level. Signals are
also tells.

What fashion companies did is recognized powerful people, and watched how they
signalled to one another, and then sold that to everyone else, while
flattering the powerful ones enough to adopt them. Ralph Lauren and Tommy
Hilfiger made billions on that.

Luxury goods like say, a handbag or a BMW 3-Series, are things you can pay
enough for to show that you have money, or in the latter case, credit. If you
think money and credit represents power, you will signal that to other people
who think the same. Some people think an Ivy education or an advanced degree
is power, which it can be in political and finance circles, but not in say,
car racing or sailing circles.

Facebook really was the original online luxury good, as it showed you believed
in ivy schools, fame, technology, and gossip, but now it's the same as a
hollowed out haute couture fashion house owned by a conglomerate that makes
its money selling perfume in big box drug stores and airports.

Apple is a luxury company that sells tech, as their real product is privacy
and a unified brand experience, and not selling users to advertisers like
almost every other platform out there. I think they have risk under Cook's
vision as he's just not sexy enough to carry the brand much further. You can
see it with his whole push with old celebrities and wholesomeness, I think the
lack of eros makes them vulnerable.

Twitter seems to be trying to upgrade its brand to a luxury product, with the
opportunity to be a channel for infinite minor status upgrades beyond the blue
check. If you can persuade hundreds of millions of people to put up with the
character limit and whole culture of the place, it's like the indignity of
economy class in airlines, where people will pay stupid amounts of money for
small mercies.

Signalling is a rich enough metaphor to capture dynamics in pretty much any
human endeavour. Such an interesting area.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Completely agree about tech signalling - and it is probably the only useful
way to sift CVs. I certainly used Python as that signal from 90s through to
2008 ish.

please link to your old fashion writing - if they are as good as this Inwoukd
love to read some.

~~~
motohagiography
Thanks! I compartmentalize my writing a fair bit, so the fashion stuff I did
in the early '00's was commercial writing aimed at getting work, with this
kind of direct analysis only as a leitmotif. Lately, seems my best stuff is
here.

I'd also argue that one can't simultaneously write well, not be pseudonymous,
and work for a living, because what you hold in reserve to remain employable
accumulates as pulled punches in your writing, and while nobody else may know,
for an artist the shame can become unbearable. :)

Weak pseudonymity mitigates that somewhat.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Well in that case I definitely want to read the stuff you have been holding
back :-)

------
pipework
The title of this has nothing to do with webrtc or the type of signaling I was
expecting here on HN.

~~~
ummonk
Funny, I saw the title and was hoping this article was about social signaling
rather than signaling in software infra.

~~~
airstrike
I expected a joke project dressed as the latter but poking fun at the former

------
charlieflowers
There's a transcript of an interview with the book author here [1].

Personally, I'm impressed. There's depth and insight here. I plan to buy and
read the book.

[1] [https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/robin-hanson-
tyl...](https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/robin-hanson-tyler-cowen-
signaling-the-elephant-in-the-brain-e1444b69baa7)

~~~
charlieflowers
Here's a quote I bet many here can appreciate:

`I would say if you have a project with a deadline today, quite often, that
goes badly. That is, you’ll have reviews of the project, and people will say,
“Yes, of course we’re going to make the deadline.” Then finally the deadline
comes, and you don’t make the deadline, and you’ve failed.

This happens a lot, and if you ask people, “Why does that happen?” they often
say, “It was because they wouldn’t listen to us about the problems with the
project and all the things going wrong, and they kept saying it would work.”

If you turn it around and look at it from the guy running the project’s point
of view, they’re thinking, “I might fail on this project. It might not make
the deadline. What will my excuse be? I need a good excuse.”

Their favorite excuse is usually, “Everything was going fine until all of the
sudden, something came out of left field. No one could have seen it coming.
It’ll never happen again. It knocked us flat, but you don’t need to hold
anybody accountable or prepare or change it in any way because this was a one-
time event.”

In order to make that excuse work, you need everybody to say “It’s going fine”
until all of a sudden, it doesn’t.`

------
peter_d_sherman
Excerpts:

"Fortnite has seen even greater levels of financial success: In the last two
years combined, the game has brought in more than _$4 billion_ in revenue –
and like Tinder, it too monetizes primarily with signal amplification."

[...]

"In contrast to mobile games however, Fortnite is also free to win. None of
the in-app purchases available impact the core gameplay. You can’t buy more
powerful weapons or stronger armor that give you an advantage over other
players."

[...]

"Fortnite’s monetization model is based on cosmetics: The skin your character
wears; the looks of your glider and the tools you use; the way your character
dances (emotes) – all of these are signaling amplifiers with different signal
messages to _uniquely express yourself_ in the game. And you have to
_purchase_ them."

~~~
postsantum
I disagree with the Tinder bit. Tinder is full of games and signalling, but
displaying that you have to pay to boost your visibility comes off as
desperate and thirsty at worst and that you're punching above your league at
best

------
ro00776aas
As a "watch person" I generally tune out when someone brings up the "Rolex vs
Casio" example.

I do not care what people think of me. To wit, I choose to live in a place
(for various reasons) where I deal with racism on a daily basis. It's hard to
care about status when the average person around you is ignorant enough to
believe they're on the winning side of some kind of race math.

I do care what is attached to my body or inhabits my personal space. I use a
Mac mostly because it looks good. I drive a BMW because of the level of trim
inside. Ditto various designer clothing brands.

My Submariner is almost never off my wrist and is honestly one of my favorite
(non-human) things. It's built like a tank, is appropriate for any occasion
and yes, is more accurate than I need.

As a watch person I also see the value of a Casio (as do collectors) or an
Apple Watch. But I only have one watch slot on my body and my favorite happens
to be a Sub.

I _do not_ evaluate people by their watches. I know lots of people don't value
the things I do, may not like watches or may not care. All I learn by looking
at someone's watch is whether or not they're also watch people.

Often, if someone is wearing a watch that costs 4+ digits, there's an
interesting story behind it. They may have bought it to celebrate something or
it may be one of a collection. I recently made a friend after asking him about
his AP. Turned out he bought it towards the end of his first career, which was
in the same area as my first career.

There was a time when a mechanical watch was near the pinnacle of technology.
Watchmakers were the "rocket scientists" of their day. A lot of iconic watches
have really interesting histories that can go back over 100 years.

They're still at the pinnacle of craftsmanship and aesthetics. They're the
opposite of general, disposable consumer culture. They're built to last
decades, hold their value well and are often multi-generational. They're
green.

Investing in a mechanical watch today helps keep that tradition alive. If your
reaction to a Rolex is eye rolling cynicism, you're poorer for it.

------
anonytrary
A person may buy sneakers to run, or a person may buy sneakers to cause other
people to think that he runs. Regardless, the person bought the sneakers and
why he bought it was baked into the price.

This is why popular things cost more money. It's almost like the mere fact
that an active market exists increases my probability of participating in it.

------
narag
Also, and more specifically HN relevant: how it's exploited in SaaS
environments.

------
Sophistifunk
How could this theory be applied to fund dev tools, I wonder?

~~~
satanspastaroll
As signaling is the opposite of practical, it's like asking how kryptonite
could best help superman

~~~
Sophistifunk
Nice in theory, but the people who write dev tools still need to pay the rent.

~~~
satanspastaroll
I'm not sure I get what you mean. It's just that it's incredibly difficult to
signal anything with a tool that exists for the sole purpose of utility. It's
like trying to sell cotton with signaling; it doesen't really raise any kinds
of emotion

------
esseti
Does someone knows how the images/pictures are made? is it by hand or is it a
tool to do that kind of drawing?

------
scott_paul
The projection in this article is strong. This is the product of a very alien
mind, to me. Intentional signaling is irritating to others, and often self-
destructive. I really doubt most people's actions are driven by signaling,
except in particularly mentally ill clumps of humanity.

In other words: what do you mean "we", weirdo?

~~~
roywiggins
Ah, you see, it's supposed to be largely unconscious. So it can explain nearly
anything, by saying that you didn't realize you were signalling, but actually,
deep down, that's why you did it. Like Freudian theories, or evo-psych
theories, or whatever. It's all deep somewhere in your brain cells, you just
don't know about it. Allegedly.

It sure seems to be able to prove way too much. Once a theory is flexible
enough to explain nearly anything that happens, then maybe it's not actually a
useful theory.

It can explain things you buy, but it can explain things you don't buy (you're
signalling that you're not the sort of person who would spend $X for Y), it
can even "explain" things you do that nobody ever sees- because your brain
still considers what signals you might be sending even when nobody's watching.
Marvelous.

~~~
chrisdirkis
For something to be a useful hypothesis, it must both match historical data
and be good at predicting future data. Given that the signalling explanation
is usually used post fact, and when used to predict is wrong as often as not
(in my experience), it seems like a pretty useless hypothesis when used
broadly.

Possible that there's a narrower hypothesis, or someone that uses it to
accurately predict systems and behaviours. Would like to see it in that case.

------
patcon
This article makes a ton of sense to me.

Also, it aligns with my guilty belief/fear that this paper is onto something:

Chasing the Rainbow: The Non-conscious Nature of Being
[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.0192...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01924/full)

Basically, the paper hypothesizes that all of conscious experience is just an
artifact of the messaging layer between the real players -- our subconsciouses
-- aka the geometry of our neural connectomes. (my spin)

tl;dr - Consciousness is pretty much just CapnProto or TCP/IP, which we happen
to perceive as meaningful, when it's really just the chatter of subconsciouses
shaking the air between themselves in complex ways, to signal things about the
structures within.

And the next question: Communicate about what? Maybe just finding and
gathering and converting structures with high degrees of symmetry out in the
milieu. Like attracts like. Similar structures self-persist and reinforce one
another. If similar enough, they can be merged and together sustained with the
least energetic

