Hi everybody this is Gad Sad today. I wanted to spend a few minutes discussing

Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter using the framework of costly signaling or what's called also the handicap principle or honest

signaling.

You have to read this book also called Zahavian signaling. You have to read this book,

also called Zahavian signaling.

Okay?

And the idea basically is, I discussed this by the way

in the parasitic mind, I talk about costly signaling versus virtue signaling.

So let me again give you the background and the reason why here you've got the

peacock's tails because it is a beautiful example of this kind of costly signaling. The idea behind costly

signaling is that for a trait to evolve that doesn't confer survival advantage

such as for example the peacock's tail could not have evolved through the mechanism of natural selection linked to survivability precisely because that burdensome tail reduces your survivability.

And so it evolves through sexual selection, meaning it confers a reproductive advantage, but specifically what it is communicating is that despite the fact that I have this big burdensome tail that reduces my survivability, I'm here standing.

Therefore it's an honest signal of my phenotypic quality and it is an honest signal precisely because it is

handicapping and so again if you see here the handicapped principle or

Zajavian signaling the reason why it's called also Zajavian signaling is because Zajavavian signaling. The reason why it's called also Zavian signaling is because Zavi was an Israeli ornithologist who studied

costly signaling via the Arabian Babler, which is a type of bird that engages in costly

signaling via some altruistic acts. Now I take this principle and in my first book, my 2007 book, the Evolution and Basis of

consumption and then subsequently in my 2011 book, The Consuming Instinct, I demonstrate how costly signaling can be found in all sorts of areas

related to consumer behavior, if not in other areas of human behavior.

So for example the the fact that the upper uppers don't drive typically very fancy cars can very much be linked to the handicapped

principle why because if I'm a billionaire I don't need to be driving a

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