Not having to care is often part of the countersignaling. An honest signal doesn't always take effort. In fact it's the tryhard imitators that have to expend effort emulating this. The real deal is effortless and comes naturally.
The silverback gorilla can come across as scary and formidable even when its just lazing around not trying to look intimidating. It's just big, without spending thought cycles on having to appear big, but the others still recognize it.
> Not having to care is often part of the countersignaling
If it’s used to signal, yes. The absence of a signal can be a signal. Or it can blend into the background. My point is wealthy folks wearing ordinary, loved clothes can be either, and in many cases it’s honestly just not giving a fuck and blending in with everyone else by happenstance.
A signal is a two way street. It remains a signal even if the signaler is oblivious to it but the observers still draw conclusions.
That's called projecting. If someone doesn't send a signal, but you believe you received it, that's on you, not them. You may _think_ the color of their skin or hair or the way they talk or dress or whatever "means/says something" (and, in some cases, it might) but it might just as well say something about you, not them.
You can call it whatever you want but people make inferences. Also there is no bright line between intentional and unintentional signaling. The brain is capable of hiding plenty of stuff from its own other parts. See the book "The elephant in the brain".
> You can call it whatever you want but people make inferences
This is an incorrect definition of a signal.
I agree that intention is irrelevant. But a powerful person blending in with their dress isn’t actually sending a signal. There is nothing to perceive because they look like everyone else.
The signal is only in if they’re recognized. Your definition of signal is congruous with any trait someone thinks a powerful person has whether it’s real or imagined.
I've met a few celebrities. When they wear worn, ordinary street clothes, they often go unrecognized. That may be a strong reason why they do that.
> When they wear worn, ordinary street clothes, they often go unrecognized. That may be a strong reason why they do that
Yup. Camouflage isn’t a signal.
If you dress down in a context where formal attire is expected, it's a signal. What it signals depends on what happens. If you're shunned and avoided, then you're just a loser or a hobo. If you're clearly valued, listened to with interest etc, despite that mismatch, it is a countersignal. You could only afford to do this by having high status and importance in the community that outweighs such expectations. It doesn't matter if you simply don't care and never think about how you dress and this just comes naturally. The signal is still picked. The person to whom general expectations and rules don't quite apply the same way as to the average person is the one of higher status.
In other words, it's not enough to flaunt the rules, you also have to get away with it for it to count.
Reminds me of how Nassim Taleb (famous for Black Swan among other books) says that he wants his surgeon to look like a butcher. The thinking goes that if despite all that roughness and sticking out, he’s a surgeon, he must be a pretty damned good surgeon.
> You can call it whatever you want but people make inferences.
This isn't about what it's called, it's about who's doing it. If people make inferences, that's something being done by the people making the inference, not by the people they are making the inferences about.
This is a pretty fundamental point, and grasping it is essential to having healthy interactions with others.
There is the "I don't (have to) give a fuck" counter-signaling. But also what about people that really don't care too much, out of ignorance even, or just fatigue.
Sure there is intentionality in there, but do we really call that _counter-signaling_?
They can try it and sometimes it works, but generally it's hard to imitate well. You have to not give a fuck about the right things. The imitators who just don't give a fuck about anything will stumble on something genuinely important.
Like the cool guy at school who doesn't give a fuck about what the teachers say will have to give a fuck about his friends and the community around him, to the skills that he gets his coolness from to preserve his status.
A boss who sends informal messages should still give a fuck about the overall state of the team, on being timely to respond to actually important matters even if just giving a quick ok sent from my iPhone.
The countersignaling is more about "I care about/provide more important things that are more valuable or impactful for you than getting caught up in bullshit insignificant superficial matters"
Well I agree and support that! Everyone cares about something. That's good and healthy.
There is a ton of value in intentionality. I realize I'm defending against this idea that if you don't do a given thing it must mean you really, really care about signaling that you'd never be caught doing that thing. You want to be caught signaling that you aren't doing it!
Of course that's true for some, many even. It's also true that someone just thought and lived and experienced and through intentionality, they come to opt-out of more and more of the fuss, in either direction.
Yes, overthinking this is also possible. I've had bosses who type correctly capitalized, with punctuation and paragraphs, and it's simply their style, not much else to read into it. But sometimes it can indicate a certain pedantic busybody personality who misses the forest for the trees and can be a pain in the ass to interact with.
That’s why there are entire books based on the joke that you can’t tell a homeless guy from a hippie with a trust fund.
And of course you can, at latest after one or two sentences.
100%. The homeless guy will sound way more coherent and less sociopathic.
> An honest signal doesn't always take effort.
I would guess that the non-effort signals instead involve risk tolerance.
It's a statement that they could easily withstand the consequences of an adverse judgement in ways regular people can't.
If I get turned away from Le Foie Heureux for failing to meet the restaurant dress-code, there's not much I can do. If the sommelier thinks that a billionaire looks like a vagrant, well, the billionaire will make a phone call...