Re: Why Are Courting Signals Ambiguous?

[Alexander Robert William Robson]

Robsin Hanson wrote:

People are usually not very direct when flirting,  courting, etc.
For example, people usually do not just say "Do you want to have sex?".

One reason could be that some groups of individuals, by virtue of their
natural (or artificial!) physical or other attributes, and by virtue of
the way human tastes have evolved, might have some kind of market
power with respect to the ability to withhold sex from the other.

So a member of one of these groups who simply asks "do you want to have
sex?" is effectively engaging in price undercutting, and
is breaking the implicit (or explicit) collusive agreement that exists
between members of this group.  Such an individual, who lowers the price
in such an obvious way, raises the risk of social stigmatization by other
members of the group and may even be banished from the group, thereby
losing the privileges of being a cartel member.

Therefore members of the cartel have an interest in giving out ambiguous
signals which, on the one hand, say  "I'm interested in having sex with
you" to potential mates, but which, on the other hand cannot be detected
or easily interpreted by fellow cartel members.  I guess this is kind of
a Green-Porter theory of ambiguity in mating and dating.

Alex Robson