Quotes from “The Fallacy of Conventional Signalling”

By Amotz Zahavi (1993)

• Signals evolve only if it is in the interest of the signaller to supply that information, and only if the information thus supplied is reliable enough for the receiver to take it into account. Hence it is reasonable to assume that once the reliability of the signal is gone the signals will be selected out rather than become conventional.#
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• For every message there is an optimal signal, which best ampli­fies the asymmetry between an honest signaller and a cheater.#
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• A signal is reliable when the investment required for its use is greater than the potential gain a cheater would make from using it improperly.#
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