AN: This my first attempt at fiction in quite a while. Please point out anything you think I could do better. I did my best to have each character be an in character as possible, but if you notice anyone acting out of character, don't hesitate to tell me. All in all, please, don't hesitate, tell me what you think of my story in a review. This story was inspired by a post in the open thread on Less wrong, about how awesome a rationalist!Magic Schoolbus fic would be. (Although this is not exactly a rationalist fic in the style of HPMOR, but that was what was my inspiration.) I hope you learn a bit about what signaling is while reading this. Have fun!
The day it happened seemed like a normal day at first. But in Ms. Frizzle's class, there is no such thing as a normal day.
The principal was giving a boring speech to the school about how some rich guy donated a ton of money for a new baseball field. (In my opinion, the baseball field we have is just fine, but I don't really play baseball, so I wouldn't know.)
As the class walked down the corridor back to Ms. Frizzle's classroom we talked among ourselves about the donor, a Mr. Alfred P. Banhosen. Apparently he had gotten rich off of selling electronic coathangers, and now wanted to "give back to the world" by giving us this donation.
"But that's silly!" exclaimed Wanda. "If he really wanted to help the world, he could have done a thousand and one better things than buying us a new baseball field we don't really need. For the same amount of money, he could have done so much more for the word. For example, there are people in Africa dying off by the thousands from malaria. If he bought them bed nets to hold off the mosquito's, he could have saved hundreds of lives for the same money. If he really wanted to help the world, why didn't he do something like that!"
"A very good question" said Ms. Frizzle. "To the bus!" She sped off on the rocket powered skates she was wearing, and we all had to race to keep up with her.
We all climbed on board the bus, as Ms. Frizzle leaped behind the wheel and revved the engine. When we finally were all on board, the bus sprouted wings and sped off into the air, twisting and turning as it went. "I think I'm going to be sick..." thought Arnold.
"The answer" shouted Ms. Frizzle over the roar of the bus' engine, "Is something called signaling. Extend the signaling detector!" A large green antenna sprouted from the roof of the bus. "Signaling is something that goes on a lot around us. It is one of the more basic forms of communication that people do with one another" explained Ms. Frizzle.
"I thought signaling is when you turn on those little indicator lights on your car when you are about to turn" thought Arnold, but he did not say it out loud.
The signaling detector spun around a couple of times, before pointing at a cafe down below us. Ms. Frizzle pressed a button on the dashboard, and suddenly the bus turned invisible. It's really a very strange sensation to be able to see through your own body.
As we zoomed in on the cafe and saw a young man sitting at a table, obviously waiting for someone. As we watched, a young woman came up and sat down opposite him. He looked rather relived that she finally arrived.
"Look, class" said Ms. Frizzle. "This is a prime example of the kind of signaling that goes on in everyday life. By being late for her date, she is informing him that she is a good enough potential mate that she need not fear him leaving before she arrived. By signaling this way, she is increasing her value as a mate in his eyes, for were she not that attractive and desirable, he would have given up and left long before. So, as only desirable people can be late for dates without their dates probably giving up and not waiting for them, that young man now knows that she must be a desirable mate. Got it?"
We were all more than a bit confused. "By coming late she shows that she can come late? But how did he know that she was desirable enough in order to wait for her if he only got to know about her desirability from the signal?"
"Learning is an iterative process" explained Ms. Frizzle. " You have a bit of information, and then you get a bit more information, and you update your knowledge based on that. Remind me to teach you about Bayes theorem sometime."
Well, that did not really clear it up, but just then a piece of paper fell out of the young man's pocket, and the bus dived foreword and at it. The paper fluttered down to the sidewalk, and just as we were about to crash into it, we saw that on it was written an address. The bus span, twisted, and popped out in a college dormitory somewhere. Presumably the address on the paper.
"This is a university" explained Ms. Frizzle. "An institution devoted to signaling."
"That's not true!" cried Dorothy Ann. "I know that universities are institutes of learning. They're just school for grown-ups. How is that anything like being late for a date?"
"While it's true that universities pass on knowledge, that is far from their main purpose" explained Ms. Frizzle. "You must understand that the stated purpose of a thing and it's real, deep down purpose are often different from one another. Why would one lock oneself up for years in a school or university just to get knowledge? Knowledge is far easier to get than that. While I try to do my best to teach you all, I don't fool myself into thinking that that is the main purpose of school."
"You mean all the things we learn in your class are pointless?" cried Arnold. "Then way did we do them? Why did we go on all these crazy and terrifying adventures if we didn't need to learn all that stuff?"
"Now, now" scolded Ms. Frizzle. "Just because school is not about learning doesn't mean learning is not a good thing to do. To live life is to learn, Arnold, I hope you will remember that. Would you really have preferred to have a dull, boring, uninteresting life over the wacky and wild one you have now?"
Arnold opened his mouth to answer, but Ms. Frizzle carried on. "Any non-smart people who go to university will have a hard time and perhaps flunk out. So, going to collage is a signal of intelligence. Anyone with a diploma can wave it in the face of a potential employer, and so that employer will most likely hire an applicant with a diploma, because being an applicant without a diploma means you did not go to university, and who doesn't go to universities? That's right, the not-smart folk. Because it's easier to go to university if you are smart, smart people are disproportionately represented among diploma holders, and so employers have a way to get a bit of information about which applicants are smart. That is what university is about."
"That cannot be true!" cried Dorothy Ann. "You're saying that the only purpose of university is to prove that you are smart?"
"Well, no" said Ms. Frizzle. "Now that you mentioned it, there are other advantages that going to university gives: It proves that you are not too poor, as you managed to pay tuition and you managed to spent three or four years of your life at university rather than doing something that would earn you money, and there is the advantage that you might learn a bit, especially if you have good teachers."
Left unsaid was what Ms. Frizzle considered a good teacher. "But why is it this way?" asked Phoebe. "In my old school, we didn't do this signaling stuff!"
"That's were you are wrong!" shouted Ms. Frizzle. "Signaling is something that everyone does all the time. Just because you didn't see it, doesn't mean it wasn't there. And as for where it comes from: Hold on tight!"
The last bit was screamed over the whine of the engine as the bus spun around and folded in on itself. We thought that we would all be crushed, but rather we all felt a weird twisting sensation as if we ourselves were being turned inside out. We all blacked out for a second, and when we came to, we were in a wide open grassy area. "This is a savannah" explained Dorothy Ann, now a bit recovered from being told that learning was not the real objective of school.
"And not any savannah, but the ancestral savannah" said Ms. Frizzle. "If you look over there, you will see a bunch of our ancestors chasing that woolly mammoth."
Indeed they were. And they were running over in this direction. "Watch out!" called Carlos. "If that mammoth crashes into our bus, we will all be crushed! Remember that we are still invisible!"
Liz shot out, ready for the challenge. As the mammoth charged towards us, beams of light shot out of Liz's eyes, causing the mammoth to suddenly change direction. It flew backwards, towards the hunters, rather than at our bus. The mammoth tripped and fell, and it was all over. The hunters delivered the killing blow, and began butchering the mammoth. "In the ancestral environment..." started Ms. Frizzle, "That means in the environment in which our ancestors lived" interrupted Wanda. "Exactly" said Ms. Frizzle. "Those people over there are probably our ten thousand times or so great grandparents. Anyway, as I was saying, The ancestral environment was one based mostly on wheeling and dealing. What deals and alliances you could make would determine whether you had food for the winter or not and whether you would get a good mate."
"And that's why humans have such powerful brains relative to other animals" said Dorothy Ann. "They needed to outwit other humans, and so constantly needed to be smarter than their rivals. So, their intelligence was aiming at a moving target. It was always a huge advantage to be just that tiny bit smarter than your rival, and that would be true in each generation, spurring human intelligence to constantly increasing heights."
"You should have said a mammoth advantage" said Carlos. "Look at those people chopping up and sharing out that mammoth meat."
We all groaned at his pun, but Ms, Frizzle was already telling us to get back on the bus. "Come on, we have somewhere to be by one o'clock" she said. "Don't we have a time machine?" thought Arnold.
"And now you can see why any effective method of communicating would be a great advantage to these people. If they have some way of efficiently getting a message across, they'd grab the opportunity as fast as they could" Ms. Frizzle said as we all clambered onto the bus. "That's why signaling is such a big part of life. You will see it everywhere you go."
The bus did it's weird time-traveling thing again, and we landed in the school parking lot just as the clock struck one. We rushed inside to get to the school hall. Inside was just starting the presentation ceremony where Alfred P. Banhosen would give the school the money for the new baseball field.
We all sat down on the chairs. The principal glared at us for being late and interrupting the ceremony, but Ms. Frizzle glared right back at him so hard that he had to run off back to his office for a bit of a rest.
While we were waiting for him to get back, we talked a bit more about signaling. "So you see" said Ms. Frizzle. "The reason this Alfred guy is donating a new baseball field is to show all his friends how rich he is. Only a rich person could give such a big donation, so the fact that he gave it proves that he is rich. And everyone who walks past the new Alfred P. Banhosen baseball field will know it. If he gave the donation to a more cost-effective cause, it would not be anywhere as near as public, and so less people would be impressed by his signal of wealth."
Wanda wasn't quite paying attention. "But then so why does he wear that worn-out tee-shirt?" she asked. "Why isn't he wearing a some fancy-smanchy expensive suit if he wants to show off his wealth?"
"Good question" said Ms. Frizzle. "The answer is called countersignaling."
"Doesn't that mean indicating a turn one way but then actually turning the other way?" thought Arnold. "It seems like a dangerous thing to do. Other cars could crash into you."
"It's got nothing to do with cars, Arnold" explained Ms. Frizzle. We had forgotten that she acted sometimes like she could almost read minds. "In this day and age, fancy suits are a dime a dozen. Anyone can order a suit dirt cheap from a factory in China."
"That's great!" exclaimed Phoebe. "Now everyone can signal thier wealth easily!"
"But as soon as it becomes cheap to get a suit, it is no longer a signal of wealth. Anyone trying to look wealthy will wear it, regardless of whether of not the really are wealthy." explained Carlos.
"More than that" said Ms. Frizzle. "Those who are really wealthy will not want to be confused with those just wanting to look wealthy. Alfred P. Banhosen can dress like a homeless man because he is Alfred P. Banhosen. He is rich. People already know he is not homeless. And so, he can signal that he has enough status that no one would confuse him with a homeless man, by dressing like a homeless man. Wannabe pretenders cannot to that reliably, because people really will confuse them with homeless people. That's why we get this strange equilibrium where Alfred P. Banhosen wears casual clothes, and wannabe pretenders were suits. That's what countersignalling is."
At long last, the principal returned and the ceremony started. When it was over, we went back to our classroom to pack up for the day. We certainly learned a lot about signaling today, and I have a strange suspicion that now whenever we just walk down the street we will be able to see a hundred and one instances of signaling at every corner. But that is what is so great about Ms. Frizzle's class: After the terrifying adventure is over with, you walk out with a far deeper understanding of the world.