“Human verbal communication is the quintessential “cheap talk” and thus seems very far from qualifying as a costly signal. This is wrong. **What matters isn’t the cost borne by those who would keep their promises but the cost borne by those who do not keep them**. “As long as there is **a mechanism to exert a sufficient cost on those who send unreliable messages**—if only by trusting them less in the future—we’re dealing with costly signaling, and communication can be kept stable. Undoubtedly, the fact that humans have developed ways of sending reliable signals without having to pay a cost every time they do so has greatly contributed to their success” --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[signalling]], [[social-proof]], [[in-group-out-group-bias]], [[authority-bias]], [[false-consensus-effect]], [[groupthink]], [[halo-effect]], [[liking-bias]], [[mimetic-theory]], [[not-invented-here-syndrome]], [[advertising]], **Source** -- [[260102102051 - B - Not Born Yesterday]]