Performativity ruins the value of aggregate signals.

· Bits and Bobs 8/25/25
  • Performativity ruins the value of aggregate signals.
    • If it's authentic, if it's just for you, then when they're summarized at the level of the collective, the noise of each interaction drops out and the distilled signal is all that remains.
    • One of the reasons the querystream is such a powerful ranking force for search engines is that each user's querystream is private.
      • The only thing they're wasting if they do a weird query is their own time.
    • Transactions in an economy actually have consequences, so they are an authentic signal, even if they are (somewhat) public.
    • Contrast that with social media likes, which are free to give, are mostly public, and have no direct consequences for the giver.
      • You can still get some emergent signals, but they are warped away from a "ground truth" of quality and can get warped by political dynamics.
    • If there's no cost to them doing it, then the signal is superficial and performative.
      • Meaning comes from cost.
      • For the signals to be meaningful, and thus aggregate to a deeply true signal, they must have had some cost for the user.

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