6 ms·

Or you/your wife could just find better friends that won't judge you for such petty crap. Believe it or not, materialist obsession with conspicuous consumption

Or you/your wife could just find better friends that won't judge you for such petty crap. Believe it or not, materialist obsession with conspicuous consumption is not universal.

asfarley 7y ago
I used to feel this way until I read about the costly signalling in terms of game theory. Maybe this type of signalling isn't universal but it definitely serves a (not-always-evil) purpose.
- liability 7y ago
  'Petty' fails to meet my bar for 'evil', but whatever. Try your best then, explain to me in terms of game theory why I should want friends who judge me for not purchasing overpriced jewelry.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    Because a friendship has multiple aspects and you've determined the friendship taken as a whole is a net benefit to you. For example, maybe they have a great sense of humour, or give good advice, or they invite you to things you like the sound of, or you share a great many interests with them.
    - liability 7y ago
      > For example, maybe they have a great sense of humour, or give good advice If they think failure to purchase a diamond makes you a lesser person in any way, I sincerely doubt either of those might still be true...
  - asfarley 7y ago
    The theory is not that 'failing to buy over-priced jewelry is bad'. The theory is that buying high-priced jewelry is a stronger signal of commitment than buying cheap jewelry. This is because, if someone is not comitted, it's easier to demonstrate commitment falsely to many people by purchasing large quantities of cheap jewelry. Buying over-priced items forces the person signalling committment to put their money where their mouth is. Think of it as the cost of fake commitment; our culture of wedding-rings, etc, is an attempt to increase the cost of fake commitment.
    - danShumway 7y ago
      The malignant genius of the diamond industry is not that they invented signaling or game theory, but that they convinced the public that the "proper" way to signal was to give the diamond industry money for an overpriced rock. There are an almost infinite number of healthier ways that we could signal commitment. There's no need for a middleperson, and there's no real value that the diamond industry is providing in exchange for their 'cut' of the money. Diamonds have always been relatively easily faked, and no one other than the recipient will likely be able to tell a fake diamond from a real one -- so they're not even particularly good public signifiers. A private gesture would work just as well. Honestly, if the engagement process involved dropping a bundle of cash on a public sidewalk and lighting it on fire, even that would be a better system than diamonds. If the whole benefit of this is that we're making it costly to get married, and thus costly to blithely propose to someone, then I dunno. Getting rid of money is not hard; it's very, very easy. We don't need a complicated, ethically challenged system for that.
      - asfarley 7y ago
        I have to disagree that there are any healthy ways of costly signalling at all. Yes, there doesn't need to be a middle-man but there does need to be a sacrifice, some type of value destruction. On a technical level, you're probably right about diamonds. It's probably a legitimate signalling hack in the romantic sense to buy a zirconia and pass it off as a real diamond. This will probably be a short-term play if women start catching on. I also disagree that a private gesture ever works as well as a public one, if that's the comparison. Public gestures signal commitment to a wider group, therefore increasing the cost of defection. Public commitments are one of the prime examples of costly signalling (as compared to private commitments) out of game theory. Not saying I'm a game theory authority, or that game theory is always right, but this is textbook. I agree that burning a pile of cash is even better than giving diamonds in terms of signal-quality. Seems to me that the global human cost is lower if you have middle-men involved. You have a similar signalling cost but humanity overall retains some value by paying the middle-men, whereas the burn-cash strategy leans 100% towards signalling at the cost of value retention. Edit - potentially lower if you have middle-men involved.
- michaelt 7y ago
  In this age of people marrying in their mid 30s after cohabiting, isn't a $10,000 diamond trivial as a signal compared to the opportunity cost of the time spent cohabiting?
  - asfarley 7y ago
    Probably, yes... I'm not advocating any particular method of costly signalling, just that it's a valid concept
dev_north_east 7y ago
Who said anything about friends?

Or you/your wife could just find better friends that won't judge you for such petty crap. Believe it or not, materialist obsession with conspicuous consumption is not universal.

asfarley 7y ago

I used to feel this way until I read about the costly signalling in terms of game theory. Maybe this type of signalling isn't universal but it definitely serves a (not-always-evil) purpose.

liability 7y ago
'Petty' fails to meet my bar for 'evil', but whatever. Try your best then, explain to me in terms of game theory why I should want friends who judge me for not purchasing overpriced jewelry.
- michaelt 7y ago
  Because a friendship has multiple aspects and you've determined the friendship taken as a whole is a net benefit to you. For example, maybe they have a great sense of humour, or give good advice, or they invite you to things you like the sound of, or you share a great many interests with them.
  - liability 7y ago
    > For example, maybe they have a great sense of humour, or give good advice If they think failure to purchase a diamond makes you a lesser person in any way, I sincerely doubt either of those might still be true...
- asfarley 7y ago
  The theory is not that 'failing to buy over-priced jewelry is bad'. The theory is that buying high-priced jewelry is a stronger signal of commitment than buying cheap jewelry. This is because, if someone is not comitted, it's easier to demonstrate commitment falsely to many people by purchasing large quantities of cheap jewelry. Buying over-priced items forces the person signalling committment to put their money where their mouth is. Think of it as the cost of fake commitment; our culture of wedding-rings, etc, is an attempt to increase the cost of fake commitment.
  - danShumway 7y ago
    The malignant genius of the diamond industry is not that they invented signaling or game theory, but that they convinced the public that the "proper" way to signal was to give the diamond industry money for an overpriced rock. There are an almost infinite number of healthier ways that we could signal commitment. There's no need for a middleperson, and there's no real value that the diamond industry is providing in exchange for their 'cut' of the money. Diamonds have always been relatively easily faked, and no one other than the recipient will likely be able to tell a fake diamond from a real one -- so they're not even particularly good public signifiers. A private gesture would work just as well. Honestly, if the engagement process involved dropping a bundle of cash on a public sidewalk and lighting it on fire, even that would be a better system than diamonds. If the whole benefit of this is that we're making it costly to get married, and thus costly to blithely propose to someone, then I dunno. Getting rid of money is not hard; it's very, very easy. We don't need a complicated, ethically challenged system for that.
    - asfarley 7y ago
      I have to disagree that there are any healthy ways of costly signalling at all. Yes, there doesn't need to be a middle-man but there does need to be a sacrifice, some type of value destruction. On a technical level, you're probably right about diamonds. It's probably a legitimate signalling hack in the romantic sense to buy a zirconia and pass it off as a real diamond. This will probably be a short-term play if women start catching on. I also disagree that a private gesture ever works as well as a public one, if that's the comparison. Public gestures signal commitment to a wider group, therefore increasing the cost of defection. Public commitments are one of the prime examples of costly signalling (as compared to private commitments) out of game theory. Not saying I'm a game theory authority, or that game theory is always right, but this is textbook. I agree that burning a pile of cash is even better than giving diamonds in terms of signal-quality. Seems to me that the global human cost is lower if you have middle-men involved. You have a similar signalling cost but humanity overall retains some value by paying the middle-men, whereas the burn-cash strategy leans 100% towards signalling at the cost of value retention. Edit - potentially lower if you have middle-men involved.
michaelt 7y ago
In this age of people marrying in their mid 30s after cohabiting, isn't a $10,000 diamond trivial as a signal compared to the opportunity cost of the time spent cohabiting?
- asfarley 7y ago
  Probably, yes... I'm not advocating any particular method of costly signalling, just that it's a valid concept

dev_north_east 7y ago

Who said anything about friends?