You're only considering intrinsic value. That's helpful for raw commodities.
For nearly everything else, value is tied to perception, history, etc.
If I have two identical baseballs, they're both "just" baseballs. But one of them could have much more value due to its history: maybe it was a homerun ball by a famous player, or a ball that I or a family member hit/caught. Same function. Could be otherwise identical, but could also be worth very different amounts.
The stories we tell is where the primary value is.
In this case, your wife values the story of a natural diamond that was formed through long, natural processes and required the effort of finding, excavating, cutting and so on.
Now you could disagree with that story, or you could dislike the tellers and amplifiers of that story, but the fact remains that your wife and many others value that story, making it more precious than merely "shiny carbon."
This is branding and marketing 101. Humans are storytelling machines and they understand value largely via stories and relationships. Misunderstanding that is a failure to understand essential human characteristics.
> Misunderstanding that is a failure to understand essential human characteristics.
I’ll add that to the list of human behavior that I don’t really understand.
Note: my engagement ring cost $12.00 on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/TIGRADE-Titanium-Polished-Wedding-Com...
I see this come up a lot, but I doubt very much that this story forms a large part of many people's thinking.
People want the status symbol and they want what they perceive as the ‘real’ thing, not what they rightly or wrongly perceive as an imitation.
As such ‘natural’ diamonds currently have successful marketing around them. I really don’t think the geology figures in many peoples minds. Geologists excepted of course.
Humans are indeed story telling machines, but you know what else they are? Hierarchy-driven apes who love showing off shiny, expensive shit to make themselves appear high status. The emergence of chemically, physically identical synthetic diamonds has triggered this in really very predictable ways - rationalisations of prior behaviour and desperate searching for ways to utilise this new phenomenon to maintain or elevate status.
The story here is a prime example. When both 'prettier' and 'not real' can no longer be defended, a new rationalisation for the large outlay of cash, and new explanation of how this makes the outlayer special, must be found. It doesn't have to be true (please don't try to tell me that all women have some sort of innate appreciation of carbon geology, I'm sorry but I don't believe it) it just has to sound right and allow the teller of the tale to continue to claim the high ground.
Because otherwise we have to face up to questions like "Did I spend all that and not prove I'm better than Bob who spent half as much?" and "Was I just doing this because of peer pressure and societal expectations? What does that say about me?"
For simplicity, I was considering "story" as part of the "status" side too (i.e.- there's a story here that I'm better than you for these reasons).
I know it's Hacker News, but come on folks, it's not that hard to understand that marketing, branding, storytelling and whatnot are real, meaningful forces in human dynamics.
so my plastic bottles are naturally grown?
There is no such thing as natural versus unnatural, this dichotomy is a holdover from the time when we believed there was another plane of reality outside or distinct from the "natural" universe, which was somehow tainted by flaws unique to humans, being creatures with one foot in both realities.
I realize it sounds like a technically correct Internet argument of the nitpick variety, but I think that the norm of asseting an unchallenged bias toward "natural," and against "artificial," could use a general reassessment as it is constantly exploited by people using this ultimately baseless distinction as a way to bias opinion uncritically toward one kind of behavior or another.
https://www.teachersource.com/product/preforms-and-caps/chem...
Don't enrich Russia by buying mined diamonds, but there's definitely a compelling argument for lab-grown ones.
Amplified?
There is no practical value in jewelry anyway, it is a status symbol and the context of coming from the wild extracted under wild conditions (and maybe violently, ooh, blood diamonds, how exiting, erm shocking) has of course a higher symbolic value. So a artificial made one would be considered "fake".
Romanticism is not attached to logic. But it is still a real factor in human decision making. And to be honest, if I would be into jewelry, I probably would prefer the "real" one, too. But I am rather into extreme sports and any rings or alike are just dangerous baggage there (a friend of mine allmost lost a finger, while climbing over a fence and his ring got stuck on some metal piece).
But if your wife happens to be into it - applying logic here will be probably seen as a cheap way to save money.
What do you suppose is the value that distinguishes these two processes? The story? Or is it the persistence of the naturalistic fallacy, surfacing in all sorts of places and in all kinds of minds including those one would expect are habitually vigilant against what is essentially a generalized form of superstition.
Diamonds are just about the only thing I can think of where artificial and natural are encouraged to be seen as equals. I’m sure some people have a naturalist/spiritual angle, but I’d bet most are simply applying the wisdom of so many other shopping areas to this one.
Well I say we should avoid artificial distinctions - such as the one between natural and artificial!
An artificial diamond would be something like cubic zirconia.
Of course it is the story. The value in everything is the meaning we attach to it, not the thing itself.
With a natural diamond, it's the idea that you have a unique artifact formed over millions of years, an irreplaceable corner of the Earth and its history owned by you and you alone, which then suggests that you yourself have a certain uniqueness and irreplaceability.
You can argue that people should not choose that particular story and that particular meaning, but that's a moral argument, and not an argument about the object itself. (And if you choose to make that argument, I would first suggest introspecting over how much of your own stories and meaning are as arbitrary as that one.)
I don't care a bit for natural diamonds, but I have infinite respect for the stories and meaning people choose to embue their lives with. Ultimately, it's all we have.
In fact my username, chain of fools, is the title of a song whose lyrics, although very brief, are very much about believing stories told with the motivation to do harm - or at very least to deprive others of something valuable so that the teller can have that same something cheaply.
Diamonds are the hardest objects found naturaly. While everything around them was crushed and changed ober the eons - they persisted. And if polished they shined. And can cut any other known material.
It makes for a good story, which is why humans are after them, since a long time. Kings and queens wore them. Pirates stole and buried them.
Is the story justified categorically? I don't know, but it is an old story.
But personally I rather would like to have the sci-fi story, where diamonds are cheaply avaiable, as a very strong building material..
No it isn't. There are plenty of ugly diamonds — they are also formed over millions of years and are never sold to consumers. This is an ad hoc justification. People only cared about the beauty of the diamond until lab made ones came along. They are cut to increase the beauty. That already makes it processed. Nobody buys uncut diamonds. And I'm sure there are other stones formed over millions of years that are just black and nobody cares for. Raw olivine for example is priced by the ton. I'm sure there are even cheaper minerals at these depths that nobody cares about at all.
It is ad hoc, yes, but is not the only justification.
Diamonds are also rare (unlike olivine) and clear diamonds are pretty (unlike ones with lots of inclusions). We can like things for multiple reasons.
Only if you define them such that you exclude lab-made diamonds. But I agree that we can like things for multiple reasons and that rarity is a part of the demand for diamonds.
In any case, I believe people will eventually forget about "unnatural" diamonds. People will be more creative with thier works if a failure does not cost so much, and the average size will be larger. Consider that modern farmed perls were once considered unnatural. But they are not only cheaper but more uniform than wild ones and now nobody buys those.
> ... has of course a higher symbolic value.
To some people, others of us think that it's frickin amazing what can be done with machines in a lab, and that the sheer ingenuity and advanced tech used to make that lab-created gem is awesome.
Anyone can dig shiny rocks out of the dirt.
I hear this a lot... But where can I buy a massive diamond 2nd hand for a few bucks?
Look up Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace in your area and you'll find plenty of cheap listings for diamond jewelry. Will you really take a chance on any of them though?
https://www.konkurser.dk/search/?s=diamant
It is in Danish, but it is bankruptcy auctions, the high price is the valuation (typically the retail price before bankruptcy), the low price is the final highest bid, all in DKK.
Edit: searched and found about 25 places, none of them have much inventory, most are lower quality (or incredibly expensive), many are in-person only with no real pictures you can see, closest I can find is https://www.catawiki.com but still for the type/size I've been looking for there's really only two options and both are lower grade.
> Diamonds are effectively worthless the moment they leave the store
That's not the case! You can have the stone removed from the ring and, in case you don't have the original certificate, sent to a certification authority (like GIA) to have it graded. I think it also, once graded, gets automatically laser-engraved (above a certain carat) but I'm not sure about that: maybe you need to pay for the laser engraving too. And it's then got a value on the market: there's a worldwide market (or several) and every single jeweler in the world can see which stones are available at which price depending on their specs and book any stone and have it shipped in a few clicks.
Source: I've got a good friend who's a jeweler and he showed that to me.
Now: fancy shops (with famous names) may make fun of people by selling them stones at 3x their values or more (I don't doubt that) but you can also go to an independent jeweler and have him model/build the ring (or he'll outsource the 3D modelling) then put the stone on it and you'll pay a price much closer to actual price of the stone (the jeweler doesn't really work harder for a 0.5 carat stone vs a 2 carat one, so the bigger the stone, the less is "wasted" on the ring).
Regarding the differing values: I think it's mandatory that every lab-grown diamond above a certain carat are laser-engraved so unless labs growing these diamonds are cheating, it's extremely hard to make a lab-grown one pass for a billion years old one.
https://www.gemsociety.org/article/lab-grown-diamonds-faq:
“Many lab-made diamonds have an inscription that identifies them as lab-made.
Diamonds can also have a lab report number inscribed on the girdle”
I think it’s very likely that, If that “above a certain carat” were true, that page would have mentioned it.
I also cannot think of a good argument why it would be reasonable to require producers of artificial diamonds to add such markers.
> I think it's mandatory that every lab-grown diamond above a certain carat are laser-engraved
That’s not “diamonds that are lab-grown by GEM Society members”.
Why would it be reasonable to require anybody who’s not the GEM Society to engrave their products, so that the GEM Society can protect its source of revenues?
But there’s also a lot of concern about stolen jewelry and even diamond swapping for seemingly legitimate businesses. So, not too hard to make it also sound like it’s for the consumers best interest.
Try hey will also burn readily at house firm temperatures
The reason why on an anvil you need to orient the diamond carefully to break is just because the tip needs to be facing some kind of reasonably hard material like tool steel, if it's being driven into mild steel, that will basically just act as a pillow for the diamond and allow the flat face to align parallel to the surface of hammer, minimizing the impact.
Hah!
The big issue with choosing a smaller, natural stone is you can't really be sure it's actually natural. The industry has so many unethical practices I wouldn't be confident in any "certification" that comes with a stone's origin. Even lower-grade stones might just be from lab rejects, or labs intentionally growing good, but not perfect stones.
Mined diamonds may actually be lab grown diamonds certified as mined.
The financial incentives only goes in one direction on this one.
Yes, but the subset of people that can afford and would drink a $200 bottle of wine is hardly any bigger than the subset of people that can afford and would drink a $2000 bottle of wine.
It makes perfect sense to me why people would drink the $2000 bottle of wine. Why not? They've got the money.
If you balk at a $2000 bottle of wine, you're probably not casually drinking $200 bottles of wine either - and if you are - you're in a very small percentage of people where the price difference means something. It's maybe 2% of the population.
The other 97.75% isn't buying $200 bottles of wine. And the other 0.25% can buy $2000 bottles just fine.
I don't think this is correct. Most wine nerds/enthusiasts I know (and I include myself) would consider dropping $200 on one of their 'dream bottles' in the right circumstance, especially if splitting the cost with a couple of friends. I don't know a single person who would ever drop $2000 on a bottle of wine under any circumstance.
I also have a friendly relationship with a local wine shop, where I usually buy bottles for 10-15 bucks. They also carry (and sell) many bottles at 5K a pop and up.
And if you want to get all mathematical about it, assuming the right kind of power law distribution, it is more likely to see one person who would pay 2000 for a bottle than to find 2 people who would pay 200.
power law stats is weird. Once you are outside of the bell, the bell area has NO constraint on the observation. Unlike Gaussian and similar distributions, where probability falls off very rapidly as you move out of the bell.
Maybe if artificial diamonds are made from forsaken orphan ashes they would have a similar sentimental value.