4 ms·

I'd disagree with that. The prospect of a natural diamond is that it's unique (I mean, not visibly I suppose) and millions of years old. I'd say it's like AI m

I'd disagree with that. The prospect of a natural diamond is that it's unique (I mean, not visibly I suppose) and millions of years old. I'd say it's like AI music or art - something made by a machine, for some reason, just doesn't have any "soul" to it. I'm not actually entirely convinced in my argument, but there is something there...

whatevaa 1y ago
There is no "soul" in either pieces of rock.
- yen223 1y ago
  Tired: rocks don't have souls Wired: we will put a soul in this rock for $10,000
  - cantor_S_drug 1y ago
    Spintronics: Could diamonds be a computer's best friend? For the first time, physicists have demonstrated that information can flow through a diamond wire. In the experiment, electrons did not flow through diamond as they do in traditional electronics; rather, they stayed in place and passed along a magnetic effect called "spin" to each other down the wire -- like a row of sports spectators doing "the wave." Spin could one day be used to transmit data in computer circuits -- and this new experiment revealed that diamond transmits spin better than most metals in which researchers have previously observed the effect. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140323151718.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140323151718.h...
jqpabc123 1y ago
If you can't tell the difference by either looking or listening, I'd argue they both have a similar amount of "soul". And thus, any distinction between them exists mainly in your head.
- lightedman 1y ago
  The difference is instantly apparent under UV - most lab grown diamonds will not fluoresce unless they have a bad growth process that leaves flux and other impurities in the crystal. Natural diamonds won't always fluoresce but the ones that do will do so in a variety of colors, and sometimes change depending on what wavelength is irradiating them.
  - jqpabc123 1y ago
    Upside down and backwards. The difference is not instantly apparent under UV. Only about 30% of natural diamonds have fluorescence --- which is *caused* by impurities and imperfections in the material. Manmade diamonds tend to lack this because they have fewer impurities and imperfections. Equating increased perfection and purity with inferiority is highly debatable and smacks of marketing BS.
    - 9dev 1y ago
      Reminds me of the "vinyl is superior for its warmer sound" discussion, with a similar argument…
  - ridgeguy 1y ago
    Lab-grown diamonds can be tailored to exhibit the same impurities internal stresses, etc. that cause a minority of natural diamonds to fluoresce. This has not been a goal to date for synthetics because the highest price point is for diamonds that are most pure with least internal strain. If the economics of fluorescent diamonds suddenly become more attractive, I guarantee fluorescent synthetics will be on the market immediately thereafter, and will be indistinguishable from naturals without $100K worth of characterization tools.
mc32 1y ago
I agree. Kind of like factory vases vs hand thrown or glass blown vases. They’re practically the same but some people will pay lots more for certain hand made ones.
tehlike 1y ago
No one in the target audience cared about the age or the uniqueness as much as the size and the status it supposedly signals.
loloquwowndueo 1y ago
The atoms in the synthetic diamond are billions of years old as well.
CommieBobDole 1y ago
Every piece of gravel is unique and millions of years old, too.
- spwa4 1y ago
  Indeed. The oldest things on earth are the hydrogen atoms. Literally all of them were formed in the first 3 minutes after the big bang. So all of them have the same age, billions of years old, down to a few seconds difference at most.
  - rimunroe 1y ago
    > The oldest things on earth are the hydrogen atoms. Literally all of them were formed in the first 3 minutes after the big bang. Stable hydrogen wasn't able to form until several hundreds of thousands of years after the Big Bang when the universe cooled sufficiently for electrons to bind to protons. Even assuming you're counting lone protons as hydrogen atoms, it's still absolutely false. I don't know if that's true for the majority of protons in the universe, but there are mechanisms by which new protons are made all the time. Neutrons can turn into protons through beta decay, and high energy particle interactions like those involving cosmic rays can produce brand new protons. These processes can and do happen terrestrially.
    - spwa4 1y ago
      > These processes can and do happen terrestrially. ... and at rates that mean that the amount of non-big-bang hydrogen is not even a trillionth of a trillionth of the total.
      - rimunroe 1y ago
        > the amount of non-big-bang hydrogen is not even a trillionth of a trillionth of the total. I didn't say it was a huge fraction of the total. You said "literally all of them" were from the Big Bang, which is just wrong. Plenty of other processes produce protons/hydrogen
- 1y ago
nradov 1y ago
There's no such thing as "soul".
gooseus 1y ago
https://ia801604.us.archive.org/27/items/everything-is-bullshit/Priceonomics%20-%20Everything%20Is%20Bullshit.pdf https://ia801604.us.archive.org/27/items/everything-is-bulls... > We exchange diamond rings as part of the engagement process because the diamond company De Beers decided in 1938 that it would like us to. Prior to a stunningly successful marketing campaign, Americans occasionally exchanged engagement rings, but it wasn’t pervasive. Not only is the demand for diamonds a marketing invention, but diamonds aren’t actually that rare. Only by carefully restricting the supply has De Beers kept the price of a diamond high. Imho, that "soul" you describe is an artifact of human sentimentality and a very successful marketing campaign by a bunch of Afrikaner colonialists.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  Which, coincidentally, is exactly the same soul that appears in art. Walter Benjamin called it "aura" - something a physical original has, but a reproduction doesn't. It explains why collectors pay $$$$$ for a guitar played by [famous musician], even though they can't play. There's no objective way to look at any one guitar and divine its history. Without provenance or physical customisation, any Rickenbacker or Les Paul is indistinguishable from any other of the same production run. But we believe in sympathetic magic. Objects are charged with mysterious non-physical manna through proximity to wealth and status. Owning these special objects confers that manna on us, and perhaps our fortune will increase. It's the logic of witchcraft lurking at the heart of capitalism. One of the fun things about AI is that it deconstructs this while reinforcing it. Huge collections of high status manna are now inside a machine, and available for free, or near as. Do we still believe in magic, or not?
  - cantor_S_drug 1y ago
    > It explains why collectors pay $$$$$ for a guitar played by [famous musician], even though they can't play. They do that so, when they get together, they have a story to tell to other famous people. If that guitar were to be replaced, nobody would be able to tell the difference.
  - throawaywpg 1y ago
rollcat 1y ago
> I'd say it's like AI music or art - something made by a machine, for some reason, just doesn't have any "soul" to it. Diamonds are a product of natural geological processes. (Or, are grown in a lab, by recreating similar conditions.) Music and art are products of human talent, skill, and labor - that ML companies have used (without a license, permission, or even credit) to build datasets that are now being used to make money, at the expense of these artists. These are not the same things.
- pyman 1y ago
  Agree, though I think he meant one is real and the other's fake.
  - rollcat 1y ago
    I don't think "real" vs "fake" or "soulless" is what matters at all. Both issues should be discussed in terms of ethics and incentive structures. Who's profiting at whose expense.
kstrauser 1y ago
The difference is that there's a detectable difference between AI and human made art, at least today. The only detectable difference between a correctly-made lab diamond and one clawed out of the ground by children is that the latter will have flaws. I'm sure you could engineer similar flaws into the lab version if became fashionable.
- decimalenough 1y ago
  You sure about that? https://ai-art-turing-test.com/ https://ai-art-turing-test.com/
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    No, I'm not. I'm sure there's some overlap between the smartest AIs and the worst artists.
asadotzler 1y ago
I wanna only drink natural creek water with its natural biology and other "flaws" because, well, its natural and has a truly unique mix of critters and metals in it. Why would I want the same purified drinking water everyone else has. Natural creek water, unique and special, if unique and special were spelled g.i.a.r.d.i.a.
- lovich 1y ago
  I get your point, but on the other hand you don’t want to drink osmosis purified 100% h2o, or it’ll start leeching minerals from your bones.
  - cantor_S_drug 1y ago
    Artifically minerals can be added. Urea disproved "vital force" theory. You are doing something similar.
    - lovich 1y ago
      If you’re adding artificial minerals then it is no longer 100% a pure material
thrawa8387336 1y ago
LMAO diamonds have no soul...
dyauspitr 1y ago
There is something to a rock being millions of years old, you’re not wrong.
- umeshunni 1y ago
  Most rocks are millions of years old, some billions
cantor_S_drug 1y ago
> here is something there... Indeed there is a diamond planet that old too. A diamond planet, "55 Cancri E", is a super-Earth exoplanet known for its high density and potential diamond composition. It is located 41 light-years away and is about twice the size of Earth and nine times its mass. The planet's extreme heat and pressure are believed to have crystallized its carbon-rich composition into diamonds.

whatevaa 1y ago

There is no "soul" in either pieces of rock.

yen223 1y ago
Tired: rocks don't have souls Wired: we will put a soul in this rock for $10,000
- cantor_S_drug 1y ago
  Spintronics: Could diamonds be a computer's best friend? For the first time, physicists have demonstrated that information can flow through a diamond wire. In the experiment, electrons did not flow through diamond as they do in traditional electronics; rather, they stayed in place and passed along a magnetic effect called "spin" to each other down the wire -- like a row of sports spectators doing "the wave." Spin could one day be used to transmit data in computer circuits -- and this new experiment revealed that diamond transmits spin better than most metals in which researchers have previously observed the effect. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140323151718.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140323151718.h...

jqpabc123 1y ago

If you can't tell the difference by either looking or listening, I'd argue they both have a similar amount of "soul". And thus, any distinction between them exists mainly in your head.

lightedman 1y ago
The difference is instantly apparent under UV - most lab grown diamonds will not fluoresce unless they have a bad growth process that leaves flux and other impurities in the crystal. Natural diamonds won't always fluoresce but the ones that do will do so in a variety of colors, and sometimes change depending on what wavelength is irradiating them.
- jqpabc123 1y ago
  Upside down and backwards. The difference is not instantly apparent under UV. Only about 30% of natural diamonds have fluorescence --- which is *caused* by impurities and imperfections in the material. Manmade diamonds tend to lack this because they have fewer impurities and imperfections. Equating increased perfection and purity with inferiority is highly debatable and smacks of marketing BS.
  - 9dev 1y ago
    Reminds me of the "vinyl is superior for its warmer sound" discussion, with a similar argument…
- ridgeguy 1y ago
  Lab-grown diamonds can be tailored to exhibit the same impurities internal stresses, etc. that cause a minority of natural diamonds to fluoresce. This has not been a goal to date for synthetics because the highest price point is for diamonds that are most pure with least internal strain. If the economics of fluorescent diamonds suddenly become more attractive, I guarantee fluorescent synthetics will be on the market immediately thereafter, and will be indistinguishable from naturals without $100K worth of characterization tools.

mc32 1y ago

I agree. Kind of like factory vases vs hand thrown or glass blown vases. They’re practically the same but some people will pay lots more for certain hand made ones.

tehlike 1y ago

No one in the target audience cared about the age or the uniqueness as much as the size and the status it supposedly signals.

loloquwowndueo 1y ago

The atoms in the synthetic diamond are billions of years old as well.

CommieBobDole 1y ago

Every piece of gravel is unique and millions of years old, too.

spwa4 1y ago
Indeed. The oldest things on earth are the hydrogen atoms. Literally all of them were formed in the first 3 minutes after the big bang. So all of them have the same age, billions of years old, down to a few seconds difference at most.
- rimunroe 1y ago
  > The oldest things on earth are the hydrogen atoms. Literally all of them were formed in the first 3 minutes after the big bang. Stable hydrogen wasn't able to form until several hundreds of thousands of years after the Big Bang when the universe cooled sufficiently for electrons to bind to protons. Even assuming you're counting lone protons as hydrogen atoms, it's still absolutely false. I don't know if that's true for the majority of protons in the universe, but there are mechanisms by which new protons are made all the time. Neutrons can turn into protons through beta decay, and high energy particle interactions like those involving cosmic rays can produce brand new protons. These processes can and do happen terrestrially.
  - spwa4 1y ago
    > These processes can and do happen terrestrially. ... and at rates that mean that the amount of non-big-bang hydrogen is not even a trillionth of a trillionth of the total.
    - rimunroe 1y ago
      > the amount of non-big-bang hydrogen is not even a trillionth of a trillionth of the total. I didn't say it was a huge fraction of the total. You said "literally all of them" were from the Big Bang, which is just wrong. Plenty of other processes produce protons/hydrogen
1y ago

nradov 1y ago

There's no such thing as "soul".

gooseus 1y ago

https://ia801604.us.archive.org/27/items/everything-is-bullshit/Priceonomics%20-%20Everything%20Is%20Bullshit.pdf https://ia801604.us.archive.org/27/items/everything-is-bulls... > We exchange diamond rings as part of the engagement process because the diamond company De Beers decided in 1938 that it would like us to. Prior to a stunningly successful marketing campaign, Americans occasionally exchanged engagement rings, but it wasn’t pervasive. Not only is the demand for diamonds a marketing invention, but diamonds aren’t actually that rare. Only by carefully restricting the supply has De Beers kept the price of a diamond high. Imho, that "soul" you describe is an artifact of human sentimentality and a very successful marketing campaign by a bunch of Afrikaner colonialists.

TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
Which, coincidentally, is exactly the same soul that appears in art. Walter Benjamin called it "aura" - something a physical original has, but a reproduction doesn't. It explains why collectors pay $$$$$ for a guitar played by [famous musician], even though they can't play. There's no objective way to look at any one guitar and divine its history. Without provenance or physical customisation, any Rickenbacker or Les Paul is indistinguishable from any other of the same production run. But we believe in sympathetic magic. Objects are charged with mysterious non-physical manna through proximity to wealth and status. Owning these special objects confers that manna on us, and perhaps our fortune will increase. It's the logic of witchcraft lurking at the heart of capitalism. One of the fun things about AI is that it deconstructs this while reinforcing it. Huge collections of high status manna are now inside a machine, and available for free, or near as. Do we still believe in magic, or not?
- cantor_S_drug 1y ago
  > It explains why collectors pay $$$$$ for a guitar played by [famous musician], even though they can't play. They do that so, when they get together, they have a story to tell to other famous people. If that guitar were to be replaced, nobody would be able to tell the difference.
- throawaywpg 1y ago

rollcat 1y ago

> I'd say it's like AI music or art - something made by a machine, for some reason, just doesn't have any "soul" to it. Diamonds are a product of natural geological processes. (Or, are grown in a lab, by recreating similar conditions.) Music and art are products of human talent, skill, and labor - that ML companies have used (without a license, permission, or even credit) to build datasets that are now being used to make money, at the expense of these artists. These are not the same things.

pyman 1y ago
Agree, though I think he meant one is real and the other's fake.
- rollcat 1y ago
  I don't think "real" vs "fake" or "soulless" is what matters at all. Both issues should be discussed in terms of ethics and incentive structures. Who's profiting at whose expense.

kstrauser 1y ago

The difference is that there's a detectable difference between AI and human made art, at least today. The only detectable difference between a correctly-made lab diamond and one clawed out of the ground by children is that the latter will have flaws. I'm sure you could engineer similar flaws into the lab version if became fashionable.

decimalenough 1y ago
You sure about that? https://ai-art-turing-test.com/ https://ai-art-turing-test.com/
- kstrauser 1y ago
  No, I'm not. I'm sure there's some overlap between the smartest AIs and the worst artists.

asadotzler 1y ago

I wanna only drink natural creek water with its natural biology and other "flaws" because, well, its natural and has a truly unique mix of critters and metals in it. Why would I want the same purified drinking water everyone else has. Natural creek water, unique and special, if unique and special were spelled g.i.a.r.d.i.a.

lovich 1y ago
I get your point, but on the other hand you don’t want to drink osmosis purified 100% h2o, or it’ll start leeching minerals from your bones.
- cantor_S_drug 1y ago
  Artifically minerals can be added. Urea disproved "vital force" theory. You are doing something similar.
  - lovich 1y ago
    If you’re adding artificial minerals then it is no longer 100% a pure material

thrawa8387336 1y ago

LMAO diamonds have no soul...

dyauspitr 1y ago

There is something to a rock being millions of years old, you’re not wrong.

umeshunni 1y ago
Most rocks are millions of years old, some billions

cantor_S_drug 1y ago

> here is something there... Indeed there is a diamond planet that old too. A diamond planet, "55 Cancri E", is a super-Earth exoplanet known for its high density and potential diamond composition. It is located 41 light-years away and is about twice the size of Earth and nine times its mass. The planet's extreme heat and pressure are believed to have crystallized its carbon-rich composition into diamonds.