Signalling Theory- Aspies are evolutionary liars

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Within evolutionary biology, signalling theory is a body of theoretical work examining communication between individuals. The central question is when organisms with conflicting interests should be expected to communicate "honestly". Mathematical models in which organisms signal their condition to other individuals as part of an evolutionarily stable strategy are the principal form of research in this field

Because there are both mutual and conflicting interests in most animal signalling systems, the fundamental problem in evolutionary signalling games is dishonesty or cheating. Why don’t foraging birds just give warning calls all the time, at random (false alarms), just in case a predator is nearby? If peacocks with bigger tails are preferred by peahens, why don’t all peacocks display big tails? Too much cheating would disrupt the correlation at the foundation of the system, causing it to collapse. Receivers should ignore the signals if they are not useful to them and signallers shouldn’t invest in costly signals if they won’t alter the behavior of receivers in ways that benefit the signaller. What prevents cheating from destabilizing signalling systems? It might be apparent that the costs of displaying signals must be an important part of the answer. However, understanding how costs can stabilize an “honest” correlation between the public signal trait and the private signalled quality has turned out to be a long, interesting process. If many animals in a group send too many dishonest signals, then their entire signalling system will collapse, leading to much poorer fitness of the group as a whole. Every dishonest signal weakens the integrity of the signalling system, and thus weakens the fitness of the group.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling ... st_signals

*yawn*

You are not a very nice person are you?

Whats this? My brain stopped functioning a few hours ago, and now I can only see something about Aspies being liars, which isn't true, and some evolution jargon about a peacock that my half-asleep brain cannot process at the time.

Is this the inane childish bullying on WP thingy?

yawn

Bluto's signals could be described as dishonest.....weakening the organsim or group.....

Ganondox? are you a second account to an existing troublemaker?

You sound so much like another here.....

I just noticed that the guy with the bunny as an avatar is swbluto. That's how tired I am right now. Now things are starting to make sense. I'm going to need to sleep on this and come back later, if I have time for sleep.

Screw this, I wont be back for awhile, so I wont comment or read responses

Its not important to me

Life is too short to waste arguing like this

Well, in the off chance that you may find your way back here... it's an interesting theory. But makes way too many assumptions.

Signalling within species is a fairly consistent evolutionary trait, most notably in reproduction. But, on the whole, these signalling traits are inherited and largely instinctual. In our species, these instinctual traits are further reinforced by culture. I can see where the leap of logic would brand AS as 'liars' in the sense that the rest of the species cannot clearly interpret AS signals or lack thereof. That reaction, in and of itself, would be instinctual as well. Fear of something 'different'. But, in many cases, the signals aren't all that 'wrong'. A pretty girl with AS may have her lack of social graces overlooked in favor of beauty. A somewhat geeky but brilliant inventor may attract a more cerebral minded wife who trades the 'romance' for long term stablity and intellectual stimulation. If AS were outright 'liars' - or too far outside the signalling curve - evolution would dictate that the trait would be excluded from the gene pool.

Perhaps 'pretenders' would be a more apt description. Or perhaps AS is at the far end of the spectrum of acceptable signalling capability.

Let's say that this theory actually applies at the individual level, too. If a person pretends or lies too often, then they tend to be ignored/excluded from the group, one person by one. If there's sufficient communication between members of the group, then they can more efficiently alert the group to exclude the pretender. Such seems to be case for trolls, where they tend to receive less responses to newer threads because members eventually catch onto their pretending behavior. This is why the most effective trolls with any sense of longevity need to carefully balance honest and dishonest posts to maintain an optimum ratio to optimize the overall response rate.