> Fair point, but I still don't believe that just because something is more available, we'd discover more applications for it.
I really don't understand why you would believe this. There are countless things we can make out of widely available materials like stone, wood, glass, steel, etc., because we've spent an enormous amount of time learning how to work with these materials. Researchers have budgets that they have to work with, so they don't use much gold, just enough to plate something that needs to be corrosion resistant or another similar use. Some researchers have large budgets, but who would research the application of gold to everyday purposes if you know that it wouldn't be financially viable?
> Take platinum as another counter point. Even though it is more expensive than gold, we still put it in catalytic converters for millions of cars.
Platinum has been variously more and less expensive than gold over the course of history. At this particular moment it is less expensive, ten years ago it was more.
> If silicon were as rare as gold, we'd still be able to say "Hey, this gets transparent when we heat it up" and "Hey, this doesn't really conduct electricity well".
If silicon were as rare as gold, we would not have:
- Windows
- Eyeglasses
- Microscopes
- Telescopes
- Cameras
Except for use by the extremely wealthy and well-funded, or perhaps in extremely inferior versions. There are some better substitutes we could make in the latter half of the 20th century out of plastics.
> It is very malleable. It has a low melting point. It doesn't corrode. The best application I think we'd come up for it is something like using it for soldering like we use tin (it would probably do a better job there than tin does).
You wouldn't stop using tin just because you started using gold :-) You would use something like 80Au20Sn.
But I think that just because you can't imagine a use for it, doesn't mean that someone else hasn't.