Having recently purchased an engagement ring, I am amazed by how inexpensive synthetic diamonds have become. Back in 2015 I paid for a natural stone. Prices then were nuts. You can get so much more weight, color, and clarity now. I really hope the extraction of natural diamonds becomes a historical shame soon.
I do not understand people who want a natural stone. My buddy is marrying a woman who insisted on a natural rock. It’s one of many things wrong with her, and fits the pattern I’ve seen with her to a T.
An engagement should never be a surprise. The ring can be a surprise, but you’d do good to ask your partners input since it’s for them. Many couples go to the jewelers together to pick out, generally, why they want. The actual purchase can be made later.
My girlfriend, now wife of seven years, put together a Pinterest board of ring styles that she liked. It worked fantastically well… I still got to surprise her with the actual final ring and she was thrilled that it was the style that she liked and enjoyed the surprise.
Perhaps not for everyone but I certainly enjoyed having it be more thoughtful than me essentially clicking the buy button for her. She did, too.
A savings bond, or even a symbolic gold chain... provided that the price is reasonably represented in gold weight.
Dowries are/were a symbolic and real proof of financial fortitude, intent. They often a represent real safety net. In some cases, increase the woman (or man's) ability to leave a marriage, a liberty and power balance function.
So much of our modern culture is a corrupt cargo cult. We are completely removed from the meaning behind our symbolisms, both intellectually and culturally.
China's adoption of Christmas and Christmas-like festivities for retail purposes is my favourite example. A copy of a copy with all meaning distilled to "winter shopping."
Anyway... there's no inherent reason for engagement rings, gifts or donations. If we like the traditional/cultural aspects... use them. Otherwise, why so sheep?
That is not how dowry worked. The bride brought the dowry, not the groom. So basically the father/family would pay the husband to be to take the daughter off their hands.
That depends entirely on the culture. Some expect the bride's family to pay the groom (dowry) while others expect the groom to pay the bride's family (bride price). Others are mixed (e.g. in the most common American culture, the groom is expected to pay for an expensive ring, while the bride's parents are expected to pay for an expensive wedding).
Generally, it boils down to economics. If the wife is not expected to be a direct source of family income (as in most of Western society until fairly recently -- it was considered vaguely shameful if the wife had to work outside the home), dowry is more common. If the wife does provide income (as in many African cultures, where the wife or wives do the majority of food production), bride price is more common.
Humans are seemingly infinitely variable in the ways in which they've invented workable cultures (not necessarily what one would call equitable, but workable).
Sure, but the OP was confusing dowry, which is common in western world, Europe, with bride price. People today are too squeamish about this, but in the past, the women were just not setup to be good main providers: it was hard physical labor working the fields, or in the forest, mines, construction etc. just meant the man was the provider, so the women had to be worked into this "workable culture"
As you can see, dowry is a misogynistic practice because women are worthless, whereas bride price is a misogynistic practice because women are valuable.
I don't think the parent is arguing that financial transactions involving humans aren't bad, he's arguing that labeling the transaction as "misogynistic" regardless of which side receives the value doesn't make sense. It'd be like arguing that consumers paying for a widget is "anti-consumer" (seems reasonable enough) but at the same time consumers getting paid to take a widget is "anti-consumer" (wtf?) and finally if there's no value exchanged then it's magically hunky dory.
2) It obviously is misogynistic because in either case a woman is being held and transacted as property between men.
The point is that women (and people in general) are not widgets, no matter how you wish to transact them. There's nothing mysterious going on here: it looks like property changing hands because it's property changing hands, and those people were property for the exclusive reason that they were born as women.
In your widget analogy: the widget is absolutely a secondary player in the exchange and is treated as property as compared to both other parties regardless of which way the money flows. Any such transaction would correctly be called "widget-ist" if you wish.
> a woman had little chance of making a living of her own
A state of affairs created and maintained by exactly the same people transacting in women…
How odd
A solo man couldn’t create a self-sustaining life either. Ultimately women got transacted around to solve this problem rather than men because men tend to be physically stronger than women, and that’s it. No matter how you dress it up.
Was that a thing though (in the west) as the dowry was usually brought by the womans family? Wasn't it more like the womans family bying the son in order to have someone to support them. Trades was not really a thing for most people throughout history so the ability to toil in the fields were of paramount importance as the only way to support the family.
> No longer purchasing women from fathers is a strict improvement over the allegedly pristine culture of the past.
Blah. This is pious view, and a pious dismissal... not a thought out or real feminist perspective... imho.
The past (and present) is complicated... and patriarchal. Marriage, dowries, other symbols, customs and language around marriage... they all relate pretty directly to patriarchy because marriage was (and often still is) patriarchal.
Intertwined within that web were all sorts of dowry customs. Money can go either way, be symbolic or actual. It can explicitly represent a prospective divorce settlement... etc.
Diamond engagement rings happen to have very little to do with either patriarchy or liberty. They're just common consumer culture in a void that once housed real cultural content, whether those were patriarchal or otherwise.
What's the "pious view?" That women used to be treated as property (and still are in much of the world), or that that's bad?
> real cultural content
The "realness" of any "cultural content" is circularly defined by its culture. Nothing makes exchanging goats more "real" than exchanging a shiny rock or exchanging nothing at all.
Plot twist: Northern Europe happily kept doing several of its pre-Christian activities. Christianity was superficially conformed to, to avoid repression, but it didn't really supersede as much as add to and slightly change things. For example, while you don't see people actually worshiping the old gods[1], the local version of Easter is filled with the old symbols of fertility, witches, and evil spirits.
[1]: If they ever were ever really "worshiped" in the modern sense, in an animistic belief system.
Dowries are the opposite. Paid by the wife's family to the husband's family. Justified because women don't work and are therefore a financial burden. So when a couple leaves their respective family, that's less expense for the wife's family and less income for the husband's family, the dowry is supposed to balance that.
It is not hard to understand why dowries are a thing of the past in western society. But it is still a thing in other parts of the world.
This is pointless semantics, like the perpetual insistence on correcting "monopoly" to "oligopsony" or whenever monopoly is discussed.
No one knows the word "dower," and the term "dowry" is used pretty widely to describe the entire mess of different customs that do and did exist. IRL, these are all symbolically complex and play a role that is usually different to the symbolic one.
Yup, a lot of people don't have realize it, but an engagement ring is a collateral to a commitment: you see no other men because we intend to marry and if I waste your time you're compensated for it with something valuable. Why anyone would use a diamond for something like this is beyond me.
Dowries upon marrying is an extension of this: if I abuse you and you have to leave me you can afford to live your life with this thing I gave you.
> In 1938, amid the ravages of the Depression and the rumblings of war, Harry Oppenheimer, the De Beers founder’s son, recruited the New York–based ad agency N.W. Ayer to burnish the image of diamonds in the United States, where the practice of giving diamond engagement rings had been unevenly gaining traction for years, but where the diamonds sold were increasingly small and low-quality.
> Meanwhile, the price of diamonds was falling around the world. The folks at Ayer set out to persuade young men that diamonds (and only diamonds) were synonymous with romance, and that the measure of a man’s love (and even his personal and professional success) was directly proportional to the size and quality of the diamond he purchased. Young women, in turn, had to be convinced that courtship concluded, invariably, in a diamond.
For most people those 40k(or a lot more than that depending on where you are) that go into a wedding would be better served with a dinner at a nice restaurant and a down payment for an appartment/house.
40k sounds insane. I will spend around 2k for suit+shoes and around 5k for a restaurant dinner for 30 people. My fiancé spend around 2k for dress and accessories. And we didn't go cheap on anything
I don't know if it's just another example of my complete immunity towards advertising and marketing in all of it's forms, but one of the requirements I set early on when I started to think seriously about settling down was "she can't give any value, at all, to useless things like an idiotic ring with a dumb whisperer's rock on it". I found my girl thank God. Not being an american neither having lived in the US at any point in my life, it always amazed me that your society accepted as common knowledge that "you must spend X months of your salary on a dumb whisperer's rock to prove to your woman that you value her. The DeBeers corporation sure did a good job on you guys.
Companies are staffed by hundreds of people whose entire job, day and and day out, is to influence how you think about their products. You are not immune to advertising, and thinking that you are is naive. If your goal is reduce how influenced you are by people who sell things, understanding how they influence you and why is a better strategy.
While we are likely aligned with regards to advertising, I would like you to consider a counter argument.
The rock is a rock, but its exaorbitant price serves as a threshold for potential mate selection. We may consider it crass, but animal kingdom is full of examples of females considering males based on specific criteria.
Yes, it's perfectly expected for females (on average) to give a lot of value to "useless" demonstrations of fitness when selecting a mate. The peacock exists.
But it's also perfectly expected for a male, if he's aware of these innate traits, when selecting a female partner, if he's looking for more important things other than looks and physical attractiveness, to give more "points" to different traits. In my case, intelligence was factor number 1. If she reaaally needs that stupid ring, she's out. In the end I got myself a PhD girlfriend, that is way smarter than me, and with whom I can have conversations way into my 80s. Mission accomplished. Thank you DeBeers for creating a standardized test to put potential wives through.
We like to tell ourselves intelligence is a factor. But really male attraction preferences are based on physical looks.
Personality is a close second but males are very simple in this department too. Men just want someone chill and nice and not crazy.
Intelligence and career come in next as mostly not considered at all. The young hot girl working at Starbucks does better than a older jaded PhD girl. Especially if that PhD girl is superficially fat. Good conversation isn't a factor here.
This is how most men operate. There are clearly exceptions. But more than exceptions there are men who lie to themselves and claim their base nature is above that.
Additionally I will say that intelligence doesn't wipe away a womens instinct. They still covet some sort of tribute from a romantic standpoint. Women can have high intelligence and still desire a ring. They can suppress this desire but this suppression isn't related to intelligence. Think about it, it doesn't take high IQ to understand what a blood diamond is.
Anyway sometimes in rare cases a man is highly desirable and extremely high value. If a man has a bunch of options among hot young women to choose from that is the only situation where intelligence plays a big role. Why not? Every woman is hot and nice and the only differentiator is intelligence. Go for it. That's probably your case. I imagine you have a bunch of hot super model esque girls pining for you and you picked the one who didn't want a ring and had a PhD. Good for you! Seriously. But note you are the exception not the rule.
I don’t think this is the case for most men I know. If you are just looking for “hot” you can date almost indefinitely these days. Marriage is a partnership and with the cost of living these days it might not be wise to choose “hot works at starbucks” over “smart and can contribute to the family”
The majority of men place looks as the primary factor. Even for marriage.
For millions of years women have contributed only child care and house work to the family unit. For millions of years it is only men and the capability to hunt, strategize, use their strength to build shelter and farm that was critical to the survival of the family unit. Feminism and equal occupations is only a very recent phenomenon.
Therefore when it comes to marriage men are biologically inclined to not look at "capability" or intelligence as a big factor. Evolutionarily speaking men are driven primarily by the fertility of the woman and personality as a second factor. Make no mistake, It is fair and just to give women equal rights but our biology is not equipped to fully account for this new reality.
This female dating match maker with years of experience illustrates the preferences for both men utterly clearly:
Additionally most men cannot date "indefinitely". Statistics show among dating apps women are exclusively dating a small pool of high value men. The majority of men do not get very many matches.
Most of this is evident to most men. There are a few cases where this isn't evident:
1. You are a woman. Women tend not to be aware. This is the most likely scenario.
2. You are a high value man. Therefore you have an abundance of choices. Your reality is therefore different from most men.
3. You are a man and an exception to the rule. You are low value but you still value intelligence over looks. This is the least likely scenario.
<< Additionally most men cannot date "indefinitely".
I followed the argument and was on the fence for most of it, but here I clearly disagree. This is one advantage for a male in a dating pool. He can absolutely date ( and sire children ) longer than women. I have an anecdote about it, but it is just that.
Now... women have a lot less time to find a suitable mate. Men can wait.. if they choose to do so.
Additionally, nowadays you will find on dating apps even women past 40 still have abundant matches. This is a modern phenomenon though. In the past what you said is largely true but with dating apps the game has leaned heavily in favor of women on all fronts.
What's happening is the age group is just shifting. If the woman is in her 20s her age group is 20 to 30, if she's in her 40s it shifts to 40 to 60. As the pool for younger men closes an older pool opens up. Dating apps is what enables this as women can now find matches outside of local networks.
I am aware that I have some attributes that made me very efective in the dating pool. I became single again in my early 30s, when the dating app boom was starting, circa 2014. I have always been in shape throughout my life, I am a house owner, and know how to write well and mantain a healthy conversation (I do not live in an english speaking country and it's not my native tongue).
Basically, the dating market available through dating apps is an infinite holodeck of available women, for men that have a reasonable enough sense of humor and specially, ARE NOT CREEPY AND NEVER, EVER, SEND A DICK PICK TO A WOMAN.
Really, it's that simple. Even when, eventually, a girl asks a guy for a "nude", NEVER, EVER, send one.
There's only two possibilities: it's either a real woman, and sending it or not will NOT make any difference in terms of the date going through or not, or the most probable possibility, it's a man on the other side of the conversation. No heterosexual man got extra points for sending nudes to a woman, ever.
After 2 and a half years of LITERALLY having dates every weekend, the revolving door of Starbucks 20 somethings becomes very boring. A non creepy man with middle class finances in his 30s can date anywhere from 18 to 40 year olds easily, and over time you start to realise that you prefer the company of the 35yo girls, but the looks of the 21s.
So I made a conscious decision to stop the machine at a certain point and settle down for a 26 year old girl 2 years away from defending her thesis. Now we're 6 years into a relationship and finally thinking about kids.
A man's instinct is to keep dating indefinitely for as long as he can, but believe me, EVERYTHING gets boring given enough time. I have no religion or any ideia about why we are on this world after all, but I believe that happiness is basically following our nature and doing what most fulfills our life from an experiences point of view.
I believe that a young man NEEDS to experience this phase of over polygamy, as well as I believe that having kids and passing your knowledge on to a new generation is an essential part of what being a human being is.
In the end, yes I was probably one of the few "high value men" that those apps tend to be so good at elevating. But once again I can tell you guys: I was never a great ladies man when it came to the traditional dating scene in the 90s and early 2000s. In person dating, on parties and the like, I was really average. On a dating app, it was really easy. Just don't be creepy.
And do not waste your early 30s guys. It's the most amazing time for a man to be on the dating scene, believe me. It's probably the closest a man can feel of what it's like to be a woman at the top of her powers, 18 to 25.
>Basically, the dating market available through dating apps is an infinite holodeck of available women, for men that have a reasonable enough sense of humor and specially, ARE NOT CREEPY AND NEVER, EVER, SEND A DICK PICK TO A WOMAN.
Your tips are irrelevant. The majority of men dont fit your criteria. How dumb do you have to be to send a dick pic? Very few men are that stupid. In fact this isn't even criteria women are judging you based on. If Chris Hemsworth sent a girl a dick pic, he won't be judged as a creeper.
Why? Because he's good looking, high status, over 6ft, rich and women would gobble up his penis no questions asked. There is never really a wrong thing to do or say to a woman, your worth is almost entirely derived from superficial features. Women just call the guy who sent them a dick pic a creeper because that guy had no chance in the first place. They reject and degrade men who make a move but aren't in their league. That's where the entire concept comes from. Women are kind of cruel this way.
Let me spell out the reality. The overwhelming majority of men do not have an endless supply of women to date. Maybe you do, but to be that way you are most likely white, over 6ft, very fit and very rich. Game is a factor here but from your tips you just dished out you basically have none.
You're born lucky and your circumstance is good. The advice of don't send dick pics is absolute garbage because it's blindingly obvious. Do you really think your the only genius who's figured out "don't be creepy"? Come on man. It sounds like you don't need any game and you're succeeding based on circumstance there's nothing insightful you have to offer.
If you had met the type of guys I know, that are "ugly" in every definition of the word, and are not rich by any means, but are always drowning in poonang, you would not be saying what you are saying. I consider myself average looking, and I have a tendency to get fat very easily. Because of that I've been training martial arts for pretty much all my life since puberty. I realized very early that just by virtue of keeping myself in shape, I started from zero instead of from a negative point. We, as men, have the luxury of not depending (almost) exclusively on our looks to attract women. It helps but is easily forgivable, way easier than for us men to accept a fat woman for instance.
I dated, literally, dozens of women during my years of dating app cruising, and ALL of them would emphatically explain that the main reason that they accepted to go out with me, was that I NEVER ASKED for, nor sent/asked permission for sending nude pics to them. IT REALLY is a deal breaker and a huge advantage on this market, to know these simple rules.
Don't be fat. Don't be unemployed. Pay for the dinner. Do not put sex in the conversation. It's so easy to not creep women out, there's really no secret to it. If you're fat, it's your prerogative to close your mouth. If you're (too) poor, work hard, learn how to save money and it's easy to get to your 30s on a decent enough life situation. I live in a freaking 3rd world country and was able to do it, on a place where a current year iPhone costs the same as 2 years minimum wage salary.
I can't stand men that make excuses in the style of yours, sorry dude. Evolutionary psychology is true, I saw your other comments. And exactly because of that, you should know that it's way easier for a man that started on the bottom tier of the dating rankings to pull himself up by his own decisions, than to a woman. If a woman is born "ugly", it's game over. She's probably going to be a bottom feeder on the dating market. I feel REALLY sorry for ugly women when I meet one, I have a sister that is in this situation and it is not a good life.
>If you had met the type of guys I know, that are "ugly" in every definition of the word, and are not rich by any means, but are always drowning in poonang, you would not be saying what you are saying. I consider myself average looking, and I have a tendency to get fat very easily.
Bro. When did I say looks is the only factor of attraction for women? Your imagination is running wild and cooking up things I didn't say. LOOKS matter for men, For women they're judgement on attraction is MUCH more multi-faceted. They judge, status, they judge personality, they judge wealth, they judge career, they judge race, they judge humor, and they judge Looks. Looks is one dimension of multiple variables.
BUT here's the thing, looks HELP. It's a factor but men can get around that factor. If you have looks, you can do a lot worse in other categories. This isn't the point. The point is that women are HIGHLY selective. Even though women are multifaceted in their approach their bar is extremely high. Men are one dimensional in attraction but they have a lot of leeway and make a lot of exceptions.
That's why you see the data in dating apps. 80% of Women are pining for the top 20% of men and men are only matching with the bottom 80% of men. That's it, facts.
>I dated, literally, dozens of women during my years of dating app cruising, and ALL of them would emphatically explain that the main reason that they accepted to go out with me, was that I NEVER ASKED for, nor sent/asked permission for sending nude pics to them. IT REALLY is a deal breaker and a huge advantage on this market, to know these simple rules.
You're blind. You know when you ask a woman if money tell you it doesn't right? Lies. They're outright blind themselves. Never ask a woman for dating advice they tell you they want a sensitive man, they want someone who cares for them, they never tell you what they really want which is a 6 foot white chad extremely rich man who will dominate them and make them feel small and feminine. You let women tell you their delusions and you eat it up and become delusional yourself. This is what you are: Living in the clouds.
The data shows the average man only matches 2 out 8 swipes while the average woman matches 8/10. That means women aren't even matching with most men. MOST men don't have the OPPORTUNITY to launch out a dick pic. What that means is those two men getting matched are getting hundreds of matches. Basically they can do whatever the hell they want because they have what you termed indefinite supply. Think about it. If dick pics don't work why are certain men sending it?
I hate to break it to you, but any person of average intelligence can figure out dick pics don't work. If you're below average intelligence experience will eventually teach you dick pics don't work. Your advice is telling men to stop driving a car into a wall and then you walk away like your some kind of genius for that discovery. Let's just say you're not the brightest tool in the toolbox but that's besides the point. The point is that if there are still men sending dick pics it means for a certain segment of men it works. Like I said Chris hemsworth can send a dick pic to any woman and she will send him her current location and phone number and tell her to come pick her up in the middle of the night no creeper shit intended.
>Don't be fat. Don't be unemployed. Pay for the dinner. Do not put sex in the conversation.
rolls eyes the irony here is that fat is actually more acceptable for women. In terms of physicality women place the most desirability on height. "Don't be short" would be the perfect addition to your little list of useless tips. EVERYBODY knows about what you just said. Garbage.
The other thing, "Do not put sex in the conversation" just shows you have no game. Do you flirt? The art is to pick the time, pick that right place and work it into the conversation and get her horny. I'm guessing you play lame nice guy routines and get by purely off your looks. Lucky you, but you didn't earn shit and you certainly shouldn't be giving out advice given how little you know. The true players know the art of conversation and I've seen fat short guys get girls to break their rules and bed them on the first date. You aren't even close.
In fact your advice makes me wonder how long you can keep a woman.
>I can't stand men that make excuses in the style of yours
Bro, when the fuck did I make an excuse? I am simply spitting facts. I'm saying this is the current state of the world. I'm pointing out where your wrong and when things you say are patently false because you lack knowledge. The game is harder for men that's just reality in the same way the game is just harder for overweight women. It's reality. Stating facts is NOT an excuse. It's a statement about reality. Nowhere did I tell other men to give up, nor did I say I'm giving up, I'm just laying out the conditions of the field. Jesus. Now you're acting like your some expert guru.
>. If a woman is born "ugly", it's game over. She's probably going to be a bottom feeder on the dating market. I feel REALLY sorry for ugly women when I meet one, I have a sister that is in this situation and it is not a good life.
This is true. The game is unfortunately even harder for your sister depending on how ugly she is. It can very much be game over her if she's disfigured. Depending on how bad her situation is her only strategy is to lower her standards by a lot. Either way, this has NOTHING to do with what I'm saying.
You're acting like a dating coach, and I'm telling you, you don't know shit. You have no clue about what's going on with modern dating.
>Choose your destiny dude.
I'm in a fucking relationship. God. Wake up. It's just pure cringe watching you act like you know what you're talking about.
This a fascinating wiki entry. Thank you for making HN a more interesting place for all.
On a separate note, it seems the ornate courtship is offset with regular polygamy. I might be reading too much into it and try to extrapolate to human behavior, which is way more messy.
>The rock is a rock, but its exaorbitant price serves as a threshold for potential mate selection.
Indeed, but don't we already have much more practical things that serve the same purpose? For example a nice house/apartment or a car. Things we own, even what kind of furniture we have. All this communicates ones ability to provide for a family better than a rock. Gold itself is much better (preferably in bars or coins, not jewellery).
The problem with diamonds isn't that they are only a token of value. The problem is that they are extremely overvalued during the first purchase in jewellery. If one could buy an engagement ring for $10k then 10 years later sell it and make profit with regards to inflation (like it was a gold coin/bar) I would have no problem with it.
Those don't work. The sacrifice must have zero utility.
It's unequivocally clear to a woman and to all other women who she shows the ring too that the ring was 100 percent a tribute to her and only to her and only for that purpose.
Like peacocking the peacocks feather has zero utility. It is purely a mating ritual.
A car or a house is not as clear because it has shared utility.
The keyword is "romance" any romantic gesture tends to have zero utility.
Buying a car or a house for a woman is not romantic at all. in terms of "romance" women tend to be looking for a clear and unequivocal display of devotion.
I'm married and neither of us has a ring of any kind. It is possible to find reasonable, non-materialistic, people, even in the US. The average mindset can be quite disappointing for sure -- but hey, we're aiming for above-average mates right?
(Pro-tip: If you find yourself surrounded by people with incredibly old school value systems and no desire to think for themselves, move to one of the bigger melting pot cities on the coasts. You'll find others like you already did.)
For me it was the opposite: move to the middle of nowhere because big city girls are materialistic and more often than not unscrupulous in my experience. It worked.
I'm an american but I found mine too. She gets the diamond thing, but I believe in real tradition and the power of some of these organic customs. A valuable gift upon engagement is a collateralized commitment. I told her I'd get her something valuable, not just expensive, because there's a difference. She gets it.
Well given the likely amount of inflation between when your mom got married and now it probably has appreciated. It hasn't kept pace with inflation though.
The way some diamonds (say a 2 carat round VSS1) refract light is pretty damn spectacular, no other rock or material can match it, so that may be a reason why some people want them.
There are a few other minerals that have both higher refractive index and higher dispersion than diamonds, so they could be used to make more spectacular gems than the diamonds.
However the cheaper of them (e.g. rutile, i.e. titanium dioxide) are not suitable for rings, because they have lower hardness so they would be scratched by dust.
Among those hard enough, moissanite could be used for more spectacular optical effects than diamond, though normally it is used in such a way as to mimic diamond, instead of trying to use its superior optical characteristics, to make it stand out.
You don't need research. It's common sense. You're human so it's easy to figure out. It's possible that our modern woke culture makes this harder analyze because it's very one sided in terms of gender. It's completely obvious why diamonds are coveted, but you'll still see a lot of attempts by to rationalize a different reason. What I'm about to describe is something that is completely obvious to everyone and something you likely already know but find hard to articulate:
Desire for diamonds is centered around women. It's part of human mating rituals.
A lot of women demand sacrifice or some sort of proof that the man loves her and is willing to sacrifice resources to take care of her. Romance is 100 percent what this is. It's always a man putting in a romantic gesture and a woman making a practical decision based on that gesture(s). Society often gets these roles reversed but in actuality: men are the romantic sex, women are the practical sex. I like to note here that a woman is not consciously thinking this is a practical choice, but rather her instincts drive her in this direction as much as a man's instincts drive him to make irrational tributes to her.
One form of this sacrifice comes in the form of material jewelery. First the sacrifice needs to be a literal "sacrifice" or basically useless in terms of utility. Second it needs to be "showable" meaning the woman can use the thing and "show" other people that a man sacrificed a huge amount of money just for her.
Diamonds fulfill the above request more than anything else. If a woman has a house it's not clear whether the house was a sacrifice just for her or for him as well, but if she has a diamond it is 100 percent clear it was for her and nothing else. This is why the zero utility aspect is important. It is the ultimate way to communicate the nature of the "sacrifice". It is not a coincidence why a bouquet flowers also fills this role of "tribute". Cut Flowers are both useless and ephemeral communicating the act of "sacrifice" unequivocally.
So that's where it comes from. Human mating rituals. Diamonds are pleasing to the eye but there plenty of cheap forms of gemstones that are pleasing to the eye too and you don't see women coveting that stuff. The rarity and mostly zero utility nature of a diamond ring makes it an object ideal for tribute.
It is a shame, but you can't deny human nature. Women want tribute from men and they want to put that tribute on display to show off their status. Men will as a result fight tooth and nail for the status and the ability to provide a high value woman with that tribute. Entire businesses will spawn and form around this human behavioral quirk and one of these industries is the diamond industry.
That's the way the world works. Let me be clear though. If diamonds didn't exist... something else would fill this role of tribute. There will be an entire industry spawned around some other useless thing and women will highly covet that thing as tribute. It's not purely the fault of the diamond industry as many people seem to think. The diamond industry is simply filling a niche that if they didn't fill, would've been filled by something else.
Your comments reek of pseudosciency pop evolutionary biology bullshit. Human behavior is way more complicated than you would hope. Explanations like these that make intuitive sense but are not backed by any real science have been used to condone harmful behavior in the past. We can, and always end up doing better.
Also diamonds are not rare. Look into the history of the diamond industry. It didn't spawn because society needed to use something for "mating rituals", they advertised their way to become that.
>Your comments reek of pseudosciency pop evolutionary biology bullshit. Human behavior is way more complicated than you would hope.
It's not "pop" shit. It's from a field called evolutionary psychology. A very real field in academia.
By the nature of what's being studied evolutionary psychology is harder to statistically quantify things as they do in the hard science like physics and chemistry. What they do is they study commonalities between multiple cultures and come up with qualitative conclusions based off of the most likely inductive and logical explanation for those observed commonalities. This is quite common in the soft social sciences.
Tribute to women and other mating displays from males... aka "romance" is across the board found in many divergent cultures. It is even found in animals.
In animals generally the female species is the one being courted or romanced. This occurs because the female is the one that carries the child so she is the "gatekeeper".
It is real and there are authoritative sources that illustrate what I say. There are many sources where you can read about this stuff.
Here's one: The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology https://a.co/d/01Caa1v
>Also diamonds are not rare.
Rare enough such that diamonds can fill the role of a tribute object. Yes advertising does play a part but if diamonds were so abundant that they're only 10 bucks a pop women wouldn't care for one at all. Of course with the advent of synthetic diamonds the market value of diamonds is now largely artificial.
All of this, however, does not detract from my point. If it's.not diamonds, it'd be something else.
Interesting community, this HackerNews site... I'm not sure I agree with everything you said, but I think I agree with a lot of it. Not long ago a book titled "12 Rules to Live By" (peterson) was mentioned and spoke highly about so I've started reading it based on HN recommendations. I say "interesting community" because a lot of what you posted is in line with the first chapter in that book, yet here you are recieving downvotes.
It's because it clashes with liberal ideologies which is the dominant culture on HN, colleges and california. What I'm saying comes from a field called evolutionary psychology. I believe Jordan Peterson gets a lot of his knowledge from there. But also what I'm saying is stupendously obvious.
HN does have a scientific slant for sure but unbeknownst to it's very users they also have a extreme liberal bias among certain users as well.
I would say I have a roughly equal amount of upvotes and downvotes. At one point my post was up by 3 and now it's at 0.
Its Science and evolutionary psychology vs. extreme liberalism.
In extreme liberalism Basically all genders are equal and reasonable there can be no major differences or negative things said about either. Feelings are more important then reality as evolutionary psychology has a lot of negative things to say about the human experience that make genders unequal in even taboo places like "intelligence"
I've talked about this stuff before in other venues that are in person where people who disagree have to be mostly polite. What I have found is that men largely agree while women do not. Even though I'm basically calling men irrational creatures fighting like idiots for women's approval, men are generally more accepting of that negative label then women are of being called the "practical" sex. I thought women would be more accepting of that label given they've been stereotyped as "emotional" since the dawn of time. Being practical tends to be a compliment... But anyway...
This explains the 50-50 thing I'm seeing going on here with the votes. The line is probably divided between gender... Women and very liberal people tend to not agree while most Men do agree.
The luxurious value of a diamond comes from the fact that it is expensive.
Making a cheap diamond maybe useful for industrial applications, but for luxurious purposes (engagement rings & jewellery et al) it's counter productive.
fair enough if part of the bling is being dazzled by the price or prestige, but optically moissanite has a more brilliant refractive index than diamond
I got a natural diamond for my fiancé but with a twist: it's an old stone that the jeweler I choose recycled from old jewelry. Same for the gold, she's used old gold
Neither autographed memorabilia nor original paintings are regularly produced through the systematic exploitation and murder of entire populations, and neither autographed memorabilia nor original paintings had their value fabricated through a sales campaign which leveraged romantic conventions of western culture.
With respect to your first point, we should all make sure the products we buy are ethically produced. But this has no bearing on the question of whether it's rational to assign higher prices to naturally produced diamonds. There are many other things that are unethically produced, that people pay high prices for, and where those prices are viewed as sensible (eg. oil, smart phones, opioids).
As for your second point, there is a large marketing component for most things that are bought and sold, including art and memorabilia. You say that for diamonds, the value is fabricated. But I believe the fabrication of value creates real consequences. It's not trivial to coordinate the action and common knowledge of an entire population. If you do it right, it creates a new Nash equilibrium. If someone then gifts you a "natural" diamond, it is irrational to sell it at the "synthetic" price. Your buyer might even be a diamond dealer who also believes the natural-synthetic thing is a marketing scam. The whole population can even know the whole situation is fabricated. But unless they can all coordinate and change the market price in unison, it doesn't make sense to deviate from the equilibrium.
> I am amazed by how inexpensive synthetic diamonds have become. Back in 2015 I paid for a natural stone. Prices then were nuts. You can get so much more weight, color, and clarity now.
I used to get synthetic cut rubies and sapphires (same mineral) from a bulk supplier. 12mm sapphires were about $12 each. Rubies were a lot cheaper than that.
I'm all for synthetic, cheaply produced diamonds replacing all others in these scam markets. For example, the re-sale loss often encountered from selling on those old diamonds you find lying around the house is often a 25% to 50% haircut [1]. It's not some old rusty Nissan for goodness sake, it's precisely the same thing you bought previously, with none of its apparent purpose diminished in any way.
You have the question backwards - don't ask why diamonds don't have resale value... rather, ask why people think they are valuable in the first place?
I'd think at this point it is common knowledge that they are not rare, and it is all marketing and market manipulation that keeps people spending a lot on them.
When buying diamonds, be aware that most consumer name brand frqnchises will scam you. To protect yourself, you need to things: (1) a price sheet like from Rapaport and (2) an understanding of this diamond grading works. The most common craziness I saw while diamond shopping in USA was low quality diamonds but with large carat counts being sold at huge markups. Another thing to look out for is cheaper certifications; some certifications are much stricter on grades than others. GIA is reliable, look for it. You also need to read the etching of the diamonds cert number on the physical diamond yourself; in one instance a friend had his diamond swapped by the dealer, and proved it thru the physical etching.
This April Fools joke got me back in 2013, and my family have never let me forget it! I should have checked the article date...
Thankfully our microwave started working again once it cooled off and all that was hurt was my pride.
There's a rather interesting film I watched called 'Nothing Lasts Forever (2022)', which talks about the two types of manufactured diamonds - high pressure high temperature and CVD diamonds - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16317380/. It talks a bit about natural and manufactured diamonds being mixed together.
It sounds like it's pretty difficult to tell the difference between natural and HPHT manufactured diamond, without spectrometers etc.
I found this re. CVD diamonds though "You can identify CVD diamonds fairly simply. They have a unique strain pattern that doesn’t resemble that of natural diamonds and strong red fluorescence. In addition, they lack the typical "Cape Line" at 415 nm on their absorption spectrum. Instead, they present a strong line at 737 nm." - https://www.gemsociety.org/article/identification-of-synthet...
Element Six [1] makes all sorts of synthetic diamonds for industrial and analytical applications. Some are actually quite cheap, although there’s some irony perhaps in that they’re a DeBeers subsidiary.
We use these diamonds in my lab for experiments with nitrogen vacancy centers, which are an interesting platform for solid state qubits.
The article is a prank. You won't make a diamond without a sealed chamber filled with a well crafted atmosphere. (Just a question, but does the end-result look anything like a diamond to you?)
Also, if you want to try any "dry" recipe in a microwave, put a glass with some water near it. Otherwise you risk damaging something.
If I'm not mistaken a Youtube channel called "Night Hawk in Light" made a series of videos some years ago about creating various types of gems using a microwave, like rubis and diamonds. Amazing channel overall.
