Kevin Simler

The chapter on medicine in @robinhanson and @KevinSimler book is absolute must read. How can this inform so little of policy debate? https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyday/dp/0190495995/ …

The need to do "conspicuous caring" in the book as a driver for health care spending seems plausible. Could we get talking computers to do some of delivery of soothing advice and coaching as a way to cut costs?

The costs are the main part of the signal. Costless signaling seems unlikely to work. But maybe just maybe we could switch to more useful costly signals.

But who has to be convinced of the costliness? Can parts of medical care just look expensive?

I think you can sometimes fool people with cheap (fake) signals, but usually they cotton on after a while and learn to spot and hate them. Occasionally we don't really care about the fakes though (e.g., cosmetics, cosmetic surgery), so it might be possible?

"[I]n order to be effective, signals have to be reliable; in order to be reliable, signals have to be costly." One way for a signal to be costly is to waste, in a relevant way. But, a signal doesn't necessarily have to be wasteful to be reliable. (Sufficient but not necessary)

nice citation there :)