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It's crazy to prefer a natural diamond for anything other than a collectors' item. It's not about being 'cheap' - whatever your budget is, if you're picking an
by OJFord 3y ago
It's crazy to prefer a natural diamond for anything other than a collectors' item. It's not about being 'cheap' - whatever your budget is, if you're picking an engagement ring say, why not get a technically superior (or larger) stone for the same price tag?
- Xcelerate 3y agoI want a lab grown diamond in the shape of a giant wafer. That way I can build a pan around it and use that to cook food in. That incredible thermal conductivity is wasted sitting in a piece of jewelry.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoLab diamonds are routinely grown in the shape of giant wafers. (And then smaller parts are cut out of the wafers.) This shouldn't be that hard to get if you really want it. (I have a friend who used to have a job drawing cut plans for diamond wafers at Kyocera Unimerco.)
- OJFord 3y agoHm, almost 5x the thermal conductivity of copper. Since this is HN.. let's say we were actually to build such a pan, is it practical? My first thought is that the high conductivity doesn't necessarily mean it won't, being loose and hand-wavey with terminology because I don't know it, fracture with thermal shock, like non-borosilicate glassware (don't change the temp. too quickly) say, or ceramics (don't introduce too much of a temp. delta across the item, e.g. heating on a hob)? Second thought is 'is it too much better than copper', in the sense that is the conductivity no longer the limiting factor? Copper is prized (and actually bloody hard to get these days - afaict everything on Amazon is copper-coloured or at best clad aluminium) because of fast 'response time' to change in heat, as you adjust the burner or pull it off the heat altogether. Conductivity also helps with even heating of course, but it doesn't help it cool particularly, which is limited by the rate of loss due to convection through air (and what's being cooked, which is what we want to limit if we're hoping for it to cool) and radiation?
- ipqk 3y agoAren't diamonds quite brittle? I feel hitting banging the diamond pan against the burner slightly too hard will cause it to shatter. Or using a metal spatula too roughly.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoYes, they are.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoI assume that wouldn't be as aggressive as tempered glass or something, but it's funny to imagine your pan shattering followed by every other piece of glass/ceramic in the room when the fragments hit them.
- slashdev 3y agoI pitched this to my wife a few years back. She insisted she’d rather have a smaller natural diamond. It makes no sense to me. Shiny carbon is shiny carbon to me. There’s no real logic in it. But given it’s a status symbol that derives its value from its rareness, I suppose it’s no different than a Luis Vutton or a Rolex. It’s not about the function, it’s about the fact that you can afford one. I hate that mentality, I refuse to buy anything like that for myself.
- failuser 3y agoThe one from the lab does not have blood, sweat and tears spent on mining it. Lab workers overtime at best. Maybe if artificial diamonds are made from forsaken orphan ashes they would have a similar sentimental value.
- kalupa 3y agoguess she prefers them to be forged by blood instead of a high pressure container
- scotty79 3y agoIt's all made up, through and through so it doesn't need to make any sense.
- paxys 3y agoA good Rolex at least has a thriving resale market, and can actually increase in value over time. Same for a lot of other luxury goods as well as other stores of value (like gold or Bitcoin). Diamonds on the other hand are effectively worthless the moment they leave the store. Their high prices are a product of marketing and social pressure, nothing more.
- londons_explore 3y ago> effectively worthless the moment they leave the store I hear this a lot... But where can I buy a massive diamond 2nd hand for a few bucks?
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- throw3747874747 3y agoIf future wife requires diamond, another stone is not going to fix root problem you have. Go with someone less materialistic.
- organsnyder 3y agoPlenty of people have been socialized to expect certain material things as part of the marriage process. Does it make sense? Probably not. Is it a character flaw? Absolutely not.
- jncfhnb 3y agoHow is it not a character flaw ?
- ethanbond 3y agoBecause all of us want stupid shit? Unless you’re willing to bundle everything beyond pure Buddha-tier equanimity as “character flaws.” it’s unfair to draw the line between “useless thing you were socialized to spend money on” and “useless thing someone else was socialized to spend money on.”
- bigbillheck 3y agoThe flaw isn't 'wanting the diamond', the flaw is 'being aware of the horrific nature of the industry and still wanting the diamond'.
- busterarm 3y agoA significant volume of the world's clothes are produced through sweatshop and child labor. Then there's consumer electronics manufacturing... ...or being a tourist to the Saudi Arabia/Turkey/Russia/UAE where modern-day slavery is taking place at scale. Out of sight, out of mind.
- ethanbond 3y ago
- xnx 3y agoWelcome to the world of Veblen goods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
- pjot 3y agoWhen the Apple App Store first came out there was an app called “I am rich” that cost $1000. It’s only functionality was a button that when pressed displayed the text, “I am rich!”
- m-ee 3y agoIt was better than that, it displayed a few sentences that included a misspelling
- NiloCK 3y agoFrom memory: "i deserv it"
- JKCalhoun 3y agoSo funny.As I understand it, $1000 was the highest price tier Apple provided for the App Store. There must be a lesson (or perhaps even a metaphor?) in that half a dozen or so copies sold. At least one or two of the "marks" claimed they bought it on accident. Maybe. Or maybe some people have a lot more disposable income than I do. It still feels to me like developer performance art.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> At least one or two of the "marks" claimed they bought it on accident. Maybe. Not really a problem if you're the developer; just offer an absolute refund guarantee. My mother likes to tell the story of an American company that used to sell pills to determine the sex of your baby. You'd buy (and take) a girl pill if you wanted a girl and a boy pill if you wanted a boy. If your baby came out the wrong sex, they'd give you a refund.
- Trias11 3y ago..and add here technically superior plastic flowers with a selection of natural scent sprays :)
- OJFord 3y agoThey're not though, because they are actually a different thing (plastic) and you can tell that from some distance. Lab-grown diamonds are the same thing as natural, the same material, and can be produced to a higher specification for the same cost as finding (due to scarcity, labour, etc.) an objectively worse stone. (Or equivalently a given spec can be manufactured cheaper than it can be found.) The correct flower analogy would be growing nicely coloured varieties in a nursery vs. hunting for those random mutations in the wild. (Nobody does the latter!)
- blacksmith_tb 3y agoBut if we're being logical then you might as well go with Moissanite (lab-grown silicon carbide) instead of diamond, which is cheaper, nearly as tough, and also has better fire?
- jpn 3y ago> The handicap principle is a hypothesis proposed by the biologist Amotz Zahavi to explain how evolution may lead to "honest" or reliable signalling between animals which have an obvious motivation to bluff or deceive each other. It suggests that costly signals must be reliable signals, costing the signaller something that could not be afforded by an individual with less of a particular trait https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle
- Waterluvian 3y agoI dunno… it seems no less crazy than people who put “three months salary” on their finger.
- OJFord 3y agoMy point is whether you use that or any other method to determine a budget, a lab-grown stone at that price will be objectively superior to a mined naturally occurring one at the same. Or the cheeky version: use such a rule to determine the clarity, colour, etc. of natural diamond you want; then buy that lab-grown and pocket the difference.
- Waterluvian 3y agoI agree with you. My point is that logic clearly isn’t playing a role anyways. The origin of the stone, even if it’s fungible or even superior, likely has value to these people.
- irrational 3y agoI purchased a 1 carat diamond ring for my now-wife in the mid-1990s for $600. For our 25th wedding anniversary my wife and I designed a new solid gold ring using Moissanite stones that cost about $700. She loves her new ring and everyone thinks the stones are real diamonds. We've even had jewelers comment on her diamond ring. I truly don't understand why anyone would go with diamonds these days.
- gnicholas 3y agoWhere did you get the stones, and did the jeweler who built the new ring care at all?
- irrational 3y agoWe had it made in China. There are a number of online chinese jewelers. They will work with you to make the ring to your exact specifications. They will create a 3D rendering of the ring for your approval. They will let you pick out the stones you want. After it is manufactured, they will create a video showing the ring (or earrings or whatever) to you for approval before shipping it to you. I figured that for $700 we could risk it, but it turned out to be a gorgeous ring and we have had zero complaints about it in the 4 years since we received it. It is rock solid (pun intended) and as pretty today as the day she first put it on.
- xwdv 3y agoWhat about an artificial meteorite instead of an actual one?
- mortureb 3y agoBecause it’s something women show off precisely as a signal of how much it cost. It has only so much to do with its aesthetic beauty.
- OJFord 3y agoWhat is? The certificate? Because otherwise you wouldn't know. For the same value of 'how much it cost', a lab-grown diamond (we're not talking about other non-diamond synthetics) will look better (clearer, fewer flaws) and/or be bigger. If you want to show it off on your finger, you want lab-grown.
- mortureb 3y agoSure you can just lie about it but most people don’t. This isn’t about when people look at it but for the follow up conversation where you mention “its natural and x carats.”
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- OJFord 3y agoI'm not suggesting lying about it, I've just never heard anybody show off their finger and say 'it's natural' and it didn't occur to me anyone would. One can just not do that, and as a bonus, seem more normal.
- RandallBrown 3y agoHumans assign value to tradition and history. While a lab grown diamond might be technically superior, there's something sort of romantic and interesting with the fact that it has been in the earth for a billion years and somehow made its way into your ring. That said, my wife has a lab grown diamond in her engagement ring.