How reliable must a signal be for a signaling system to function?
100%? 51%? The reliability necessary for a signal to be useful is based on the cost of receiving the signal, the benefit of receiving an honest signal, the cost of believing a deceitful signal, and the cost of acquiring the information directly (by other means). Even a system that is 90% unreliable may still function if the cost of believing an incorrect signal is close to nothing, the cost of receiving a signal is low, the cost of acquiring the information directly is high, and the benefit of receiving a true signal is high. Similarly a system with fairly high reliability may not function if the cost of acting on an incorrect signal is too high. How do signals become correlated with a quality? What happens when the signaler receiver interpret the signal differently? Some signals are thought to become correlated with a quality based on their direct relationship to an action – for example, raising a fist comes before a punch, so it can become correlated with attacking. Others can be lea
