Things You Can't Countersignal

When incomplete strangers - i.e. not literal complete strangers off the street, but people who've been introduced to me by a mutual friend without having any idea who I am - ask about my cryonics necklace, I often lead with, "It's my contract of immortality with the Cult of the Severed Head".

This seems to work fine.

In fact, I strongly suspect it works better than most other cryonics explainers, because I don't sound the tiniest bit nervous. It helps to understand that most people have no independent grasp on reality. I may post about this at some point.

In any case, this is successful countersignalling performed on very loose acquaintances.

For instance, when I explained my change in life plans to people who are very familiar with me, I was able to use the phrasing "I'm dropping out of school to join a doomsday cult" because I knew this sounded so unlike me that none of them would take it at face value. Alicorn wouldn't really join a doomsday cult; it must be something else! It elicited curiosity, but not contempt for my cult-joining behavior. To more distant acquaintances, I used the less loaded term "nonprofit". I couldn't countersignal my clever life choices to people who didn't have enough knowledge of my clever life choices; so I had to rely on the connotation of "nonprofit" rather than playing with the word "cult" for my amusement.

I'm not sure this is a very good example. The reason that saying "I'm dropping out of school to join a doomsday cult" works is that people who are really joining a doomsday cult wouldn't say that. Acknowledging that you are aware of the phenomenon of doomsday cults is an effective way of signalling that you are not in fact falling for the recruitment tactics of such a cult and does not require the person you are talking to to know anything much about you personally.

If anything this is a more effective tactic when used on relative strangers who do not know you very well and might think you actually are joining a doomsday cult if you just tried to describe what you are doing in a few short sentences. This seems more like an example of straightforward signalling that you are fully aware of the existence of doomsday cults and so people can assume that you have not in fact been seduced by one.

Your countersignals are more opaque than you think they are.

Personal example: I like to insult my friends (facetiously, of course), and they're aware of that. But when I'm with people who know my proclivities less well (or not at all), my instinctive reaction is to make the insults more severe, so it's more clear than usual that I'm kidding (i.e., lowering the politeness bar so the audience's prior is more likely to fall in the medium-to-high category). It almost goes without saying that this has backfired more than once.

So is one implication that people who interact with non-representative populations systematically reduce their effectiveness in dealing with outsiders via inappropriate counter-signaling? Seems plausible.

My example is the possibility that advertising has become less effective with time because the advertising specialists have to signal their cleverness to other advertisers (who have seen a lot of advertising and who are very sensitive to it) to get the job. They show this cleverness by making advertisements which are too subtle for the consumer audience to 'get'.

might start chanting or something any moment

I don't necessarily see any reason we shouldn't start the day off with some pleasant chanting...

Irony is a means of simultaneously signalling and countersignalling.

By ironically obeying correct social forms, it is possible to receive status from conventional culture and counter-culture. The conventional culture does not want to admit that it is the butt of irony, and the counterculture likes people who score points off of the conventional culture. Is anyone aware of research into irony as a signalling strategy?

When I read this in my google reader I just had to break an electronically enhanced lesswrong.com moratorium to sign on and vote it up. This part I particularly appreciated:

The trouble is that it's easy to think one's positive traits are so obvious that no one could miss them when really they aren't. You are not as well known as you think you should be. Your countersignals are more opaque than you think they are. If you tell a stranger you've joined a cult, they will probably think you actually joined a cult.

Two thoughts:

1. This explains a lot about how different your approach should be when meeting women in different places. What you do has to be different in a bar, at a professional conference, or at a party where you are best friends with the host. What is perfectly normal in a bar is overkill at the party.

2. You can get away with saying much more controversial things among people who know you well. Eg. You can much more easily talk about possible average genetic differences in IQ with people who know you're not a racist than you can among people who don't know you from squat.

Thanks, that was a interesting read.

There's a bit of a gray area between counter-signaling and feigned self-mockery - for example to counter some not so well though-out ideas "Could you please explain in simple terms, I'm not smart enough for your Powerpoint slides". In that case, the main thing we'd like to signal is probably that the presenter is unclear (or worse); but obviously it depends on some minimum of status as an intelligent person to make this work.

I've seen this kind of veiled attack on a presenter happen a few times; in some cases, only the audience seems to pick up the subtleties.

There is a very nice and closely related paper with the excellent title "Too Cool for School? Signaling and Countersignaling," summarized here:

http://www.zhongwen.com/cs/index.html

Somebody I know once conjectured that this story might not work if there were a continuum of types instead of discrete types. I don't know if anyone has ever worked that out.

Educational!

I wonder to what extent we should apply this idea to our dialogue here.

Strangers and counter-signaling:

You cannot counter signal with people who have no previous impression about the attribute you are counter-signaling.

Whether the person is a stranger or friend is irrelevant. A counter-signal is likely to work whenever the recipient already has a positive view of the attribute you are counter-signaling.

Note you can send a positive and negative (counter) signal at the same time. If the net is positive counter-signal will work.

Good friends don't signal:

I think that friends that know you well do not pay much attention to signals or counter-signals. Signals are used when a person has incomplete information about another person.

Friends who really know you will not be fooled by fake counter-signals while strangers may be fooled if primed correctly beforehand with a positive signal.

You can't countersignal humility.

What about being in a group-say a conference, party etc where people have heard of you-assume you've a quality or other that's desirable or attractive- so they never met you but know of you and your exploits/wisdom/whatever?

IMO in that situation even though you don't actually know the people they know of you, and signaling might not be just unproductive but Counter-productive, you'll simply seem arrogant and too full of yourself. for eg. you meet someone, you tell a story about your exploits or share useful knowledge-signal-, they get impressed, you repeat the process every time you see them and they actually get irritated and treat you negatively.. as silly as it sounds, I observed this happening once, and it really puzzled me until I read more on signaling and status games. would you say this was a valid conclusion?

linking this to the main article, couldn't not being able to countersignal certain things-to certain people?- work to your advantage as well? though if mismanaged it could quickly make for potentially awkward social situations.

I don't think I usually mean it as counter-signalling (from the inside, it feels like I'm talking in a way that I find more fun/interesting/funny), but I have little bits of self-depreciation as part of my normal speech. I have to consciously turn it off for job interviews, because in that context it always gets taken literally. This is probably why. (Possibly also some influence from the other person consciously trying to evaluate me during the conversation.)

See also: (Meta) Poe's Law.

Interesting post. The--I shall dub it--Schrödinger's Racist example is very good, and it brings me cold-warm fuzzies of indignant recognition from my experiences of 'Not really racist'/'Just banter'/etc., even if that's not for what you were aiming.

Edit after a brief a-Googling: Hah! Someone beat me to 'Schrödinger's racist'.

See also Glenn Loury's Self-Censorship in Public Discourse: A Theory of “Political Correctness” and Related Phenomena.

Seems to me the racism example doesn't work because it never was countersignaling to begin with.

The idea of countersignaling is that you are so secure in your possession of some high status trait/situation you perspicuosly fail to promote/advertise THAT trait/situation. The racism case isn't countersignaling because your casual behavior doesn't suggest confidence in your actual non-racism (that's largely irrelevant to the consequences of such talk to you) but rather confidence in other people's belief that you are non-racist. However, other people believing you are non-racist isn't actually a high status trait, it's the situation of people believing you have such a trait.

In other words you can countersignal you are smart by not fretting about grades but it doesn't make sense to countersignal that other people think you are smart.

This explains why so much “signalling” stuff sounded so implausible to me. Nearly all of the people I interact with (not counting NPC-like situations such as those with clerks) already have so much information about me that what I can do in a short period of time (unless it's something very unusual) will be unlikely to substantially affect their opinion about me; this situation is probably much rarer among people who live in larger cities and/or are not as easily recognizable.

One of my strongest signaling attempts was the language I used in The Wannabe Rational. Was this signaling or countersignaling? I am not up to snuff on the signaling terminology, so this is an attempt at clarification and not an objection to your points.

Another clarification example: If a community used what you know as a status symbol, would it be signaling or countersignaling to ask for an answer you didn't have?

Is there a reason that this post is entitled Things You Can't Countersignal? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that there are Places You Can't Countersignal? The problem isn't the countersignal. It is the target of the countersignal that causes issues. Or am I wrong?

Not countersignaling as such, but and interesting related question. If you do a favor for somebody without them knowing, should you tell? On one hand you might feel it's bragging (so NOT telling might be viewed (or confused with) as countersignaling). On the other, there is a an element of social reciprocity that is a communal benefit, and the information contributes to it. Cialdini (in 'Yes!') and the Talmud (do not remember where) specifically say yes, even though Talmud generally places high value on humility.

One model for tourism consumer behaviour is the 'bragging rights model'. It probably applies to cars as well. Among those of us with better things to do with our time and model, the bragging probably comes from the ethical and intelligence consumerism. Despite tangential work experience that probably would get me cred in that line of work, I wouldn't even apply for jobs at a car dealership. Waste of production, not just consumption!

I find excruciating honesty a worthy ideal, but not everyone is prepared for it. So, plainly describing everything you intend to signal and counter-signal might come off as eccentric, but worth doing if you can pull it off. It requires the right type of audience.

"So to sum up, countersignaling is hazardous when your audience can't separate you from the general population via personal acquaintance or context."

This, like the whole post, is based on the assumption that you want people to know about you. If you want to remain Unknown, then you just don't signal anything, and people can think whatever they like.

First off, the concept of "counter-signaling" is not a useful abstraction. There is just signaling, period. Using your definition of counter-signaling, you only counter-signal when the content of what you're saying contradicts the rest of the signal via body language, tone of voice, context, non-verbal communication, etc. The content of what you verbally say is not a major player in signaling.

When you take what you say at face value when "counter-signaling", you're lowering the status of the thing you're referring to. In your case, you'd be lowering the status of the singularity institute by calling it a cult (even if it was a joke). You don't want to come off pretentious by making a big deal out of the singularity institute so you lower its status to make people like you more. And you can lower something's status with non-verbal communication too. For instance, saying "singularity institute" in your original example in a sarcastic tone would do the job too.

If I started dating a black girl (I am white) and came up to my friends (who know I am not racist) and I say "Guess what guys? I am dating a nigger!" (sorry for the crude example). In this case, I don't come off as pretentious dating a black girl so there is no reason to lower her status.

In short, what you refer to as a "counter-signal" is a normal signal with a dab of humility.