Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever • Hacker News Board

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

#671

Post by nickik » Wed, May 05, 2021, 11:30 AM UTC

ASalazarMX wrote: post #624

nickik wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is partly a myth. More important was the non legal enforcement of engagements. Many couples in the past would start to have sex when engaged. If the engagement is not legally secure, the diamond basically serves as signal. That why 3-month salary make sense. If I buy a 3-month salary worth diamond I'm probably not gone leave you after a month. Its an easily portable high value item that also serves as signaling…

> Its an easily portable high value item that also serves as signaling for the person wearing it. It makes more sense then livestock in the modern world. Jewelry is not a great value store, unless you're fine with selling it at a significant loss. Diamonds specially, unless they're rare, seem to magically lose a lot of its value as soon as they print your receipt. To be honest, I find the whole love-engagement-sex-we…

This is true but this happen partially over time and the more important function is the initial signal.

And displaying the wealth that is mobile is also an important signal.

Pure economics would suggest a small gold bar would make more sense if you want to signal commitment.

> To be honest, I find the whole love-engagement-sex-wedding handling retrograde and inappropriate for the current times.

Me to but that is not the discussion.

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

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Post by notyourday » Wed, May 05, 2021, 11:43 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #659

notyourday wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Part of the significance of the gesture is the level of painful expense involved. So making the item much cheaper also cheapens the gesture. Call it what it is: diamonds are a down payment from a man to a woman for access to sex. The higher the price, the higher the value he assigns to it.

If you post egregious flamebait to HN again we will ban you. You did it repeatedly today (not cool), and we've had to warn you about this before. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Apologies.

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

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Post by klmadfejno » Wed, May 05, 2021, 11:54 AM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #475

klmadfejno wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cocaine is also a drug, and yet, one doesn't need to date someone addicted to either. > I wouldn't go that far - we all have hobbies/interests we are passionate about that we're not utilitarian about and are willing to go all-out on. Judging a person on one axis feels like a mistake to me. I don't this is a hobby so much as a world view, or as you stated, an addiction. To me it indicates a very materialistic, shallow…

> To me it indicates a very materialistic, shallow worldview. If 40k rings are required to show love, what do they think of people who aren't as wealthy? Or - hear me out - the partner was embarrassed to verbalize that she's competing with the friend's engagement ring, and therefore created a less embarrassing, post-hoc rationalization as to why she wants a $40k ring too. Here's a thought experiment - had the friend…

> Or - hear me out - the partner was embarrassed to verbalize that she's competing with the friend's engagement ring, and therefore created a less embarrassing, post-hoc rationalization as to why she wants a $40k ring too. Here's a thought experiment - had the friend gotten a $6k ring, would she have asked for a ring closer to $6k or still gone with $40k, by some intuition?

Marginally better, but still greatly concerning that the person you're supposed to trust most is too embarrassed to communicate openly imo.

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

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Post by Kalium » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:05 PM UTC

mNovak wrote: post #586

Kalium wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it helps to remember that diamonds are a status symbol and a form of conspicuous consumption. People often want as much of that expensive, visible status and commitment signal as they can get. Part of the significance of the gesture is the level of painful expense involved. So making the item much cheaper also cheapens the gesture.

The amusing factor to all of this, is that 99% of people can't visually tell the difference between a $100 and $10,000 ring. As a status symbol, it effectively works on the honor code, or based on someone directly reporting its cost! Sort of like fancy wine or art. e.g. people will make a judgment on the 'realness' of your ring and it's validity as a status symbol, based if it's inflated value is perceived to be with…

I suspect - but obviously cannot prove - that this is an arena where being challenged means you've already lost because your claim is not credible. You're right, it's odd that something that's supposedly a clear signal is so murky to others.

Obviously this suggests that the status symbol hypothesis is kinda weak.

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

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Post by bsanr2 » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:23 PM UTC

aerostable_slug wrote: post #520

bsanr2 wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More fundamentally: we're conditioned to privilege our ambitions (or maybe just grand ambitions in general) over things like concern for the horrific-yet-ultimately-banal suffering that enables them, or for building and maintaining a stable and sustainable "floor" for human existence. We pour funding into tech startups that promise to maybe change the world when we know that we can move the needle (often for a fracti…

> we know that we can move the needle (often for a fraction of the cost) by spending on basic needs and not looking for a direct ROI Based on San Francisco's experience, I'd say spending other people's money isn't enough to do much about the homeless issue. Further, I suspect a startup that moves the economy upwards results in citizens with more disposable income to donate to good causes. Ideally, the competition for…

"San Francisco's experience" proves my case. I suspect that if you poofed one or two of the larger tech companies or VC firms and took the delta in housing prices from reduced demand/speculative pressure and put it towards building, NIMBY laws notwithstanding, you'd solve homelessness in SF. That is the magnitude of money (that is, our past and future time, energy, and belief in our own produftive capacity, converted to fungible currency) that is being siphoned from society in order to prop up an industry with, frankly, a mixed record of public good ROI. That's just one case of many.

The anti-moon mission people were right, in the end. The advances solely attributable to it were few (to ask someone to name them is akin to asking a government official what assets and missions, exactly, Edward Snowden's leaks compromised), and NASA and the government abandoned the effort not when the possibility of further advances dried up, but when the prestige of beating the USSR wore off. This, of course, is the fundamental issue: that the shininess blinds and then dulls, leaving the problems that were ignored still unaddressed. The people protesting the moon missions were:

*Environmental advocates

*Anti-war protestors

*Black and PoC Civil Rights advocates

Consider then, in good faith, the troubles that continue to rock our society, some 40-50 years hence. Interesting parallels.

On the other hand, welfare works. Full stop.

Like I said, we've been conditioned. And by "we", I mean "you."

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

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Post by arein3 » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:25 PM UTC

i_haz_rabies wrote: post #565

arein3 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could buy second hand clothes and electronics if you care that much, but you don't. The author is outraged at the hypocrisy, without realising the value of diamonds is that they are scarce. If you can produce them artificially, they are no longer in the same league with the scarce ones.

Unnecessary ad hominem aside, second hand items are just as likely to have been made by slaves as new ones. The point is that our marketplace is full of the products of slave labour and almost no reliable information about it.

Yes, but at least you are recycling.

Reminds me when they closed a china assembly factory because of online activism, and the chinese people there started starving, because they had no other income. They would gladly have their factory back.

Also most of the help for african countries does the following: 1) There are 1 Million people starving 2) a lot of food is sent there 3) There are now 2 million people starving

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

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Post by lewisflude » Wed, May 05, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #670

lewisflude wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, which is why I put real diamond in quotes here. Lab or earth grown, both are real. Sadly, not everyone sees lab grown as having as much desirability as earth grown diamonds. While I would be open to receiving a lab diamond, I've met many people for whom it would be seen as a budget option. Although through an objective lens they are the same, for a lot of people there is an emotional difference betw…

> Sadly, not everyone sees lab grown as having as much desirability as earth grown diamonds. Fortunately, almost no diamond-wearer has the ability to tell the difference, which alludes to the easy solution.

Oh absolutely! My partner studied jewellery, and had an interest in picking the exact stone for the ring, so in this case that wasn't a viable option. I think in a lot of cases, when you're buying gifts for people etc. defaulting to a lab diamond is a great choice. Big companies (Pandora etc.) moving to lab diamonds will help make that choice the norm and push back against the stigma that lab diamonds aren't "the real thing".

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

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Post by shatnersbassoon » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

y2kenny wrote: post #647

shatnersbassoon wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tube amplifiers are still where it's at for guitars. Still not beaten despite the attempts of digital signal processing. The reason is that the same thing that makes it a bad general amplifier makes it an excellent guitar amp.

Can you elaborate more? What are the things that are bad for general amp but good for guitar amp? Is the amplification non-linear in some specific ways and how does it help with guitar music? (I know nothing about guitar except what it looks like.)

General amps seek to diminish distortion. In particular: 1. Clipping - an overly amplified signal can have the peaks of its signal "clipped" off. 2. Cross-over distortion - because of the way most amplifiers work, one part of the circuit amplifies the positive signal, and one the negative (above and below the midpoint of the signal). Where the one part "crosses over" you can get a misalignment which results in distortion. 3. Harmonic distortion - for example the extent to which a 400Hz tone is translated into a certain amount of 800Hz, 1600Hz etc overtones.

All of these things can actually result in a cool guitar sound in the right proportions. Hard rock in particular has strongly distorted sounds created by tube amps (for the most part). But even sounds which we think of as cleaner have a significant amount of tube distortion (e.g. the intro to Sweet Home Alabama, or the main riff of Day Tripper). If you put an electric guitar into a regular amplifier, in general, it sounds flat and terrible.

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

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Post by aksss » Wed, May 05, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #575

aksss wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude.. people don’t think about who’s making their Nikes or Apple products or tshirts. They buy these incidental products with zero concern for the people producing them. How noble are we , talking about refusing to buy blood diamonds when the very MEMS mic in a household device probably vibrated to the scream of people watching a friend jumping out a factory window. Getting people to care about who’s winning and los…

> How noble are we, talking about refusing to buy blood diamonds when the very MEMS mic in a household device probably vibrated to the scream of people watching a friend jumping out a factory window. The suicide rate in those factories is greater than zero but is not high at all. You picked the wrong analogy.

It (as an example) is sufficient to remind you that the production environments for many goods _more accessible than diamonds_ are highly, highly exploitive. We don’t need to argue about specific frequency of people jumping out of windows (btw, enough for one building to install nets), to understand the broader point. We could talk about child labor. We could talk about labor camps. Again, nobody in the first world can claim to be surprised by these things. For people to walk around on sneakers cushioned by children’s tears and fret about the provenance of their diamonds seems a bit of a joke.

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

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Post by Dylan16807 » Wed, May 05, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

aksss wrote: post #679

Dylan16807 wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How noble are we, talking about refusing to buy blood diamonds when the very MEMS mic in a household device probably vibrated to the scream of people watching a friend jumping out a factory window. The suicide rate in those factories is greater than zero but is not high at all. You picked the wrong analogy.

It (as an example) is sufficient to remind you that the production environments for many goods _more accessible than diamonds_ are highly, highly exploitive. We don’t need to argue about specific frequency of people jumping out of windows (btw, enough for one building to install nets), to understand the broader point. We could talk about child labor. We could talk about labor camps. Again, nobody in the first world c…

I understand the broader point, but you don't want to use incorrect information as part of making it. "forced labor, child labor, unreasonable overtime, people dying in mines, and a factory with a well-below-average suicide rate that got a lot of media attention for a cluster over a decade ago" One of these things is not like the others, and detracts from the actual point. It's a distraction from the real problems.