People ain’t stupid. They have strong intuitions about how they might be connected to other humans. This is why a bidder paid USD$3.9 million for Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour’s black 1969 Fender Stratocaster, which is largely indistinguishable (apart from a few mods, mostly electronic) from a Stratocaster you could buy for around $2,000 from a local guitar shop. The extreme premium paid is a measure of the guitar’s connection to Gilmour.
Cognitive psychologist and psycholinguist Steven Pinker reckons standards of humanness are much higher for intellectual products, like stories and editorials – and advertising. “The awareness that there’s a real human you can connect it to changes its status and its acceptability,” he said.
This and more in Vernacular NICELY SAID issue 40.
- Standing out – Fewer people want to
- The real world – getting back in touch
- Celebrated openings – Hard to put this book down
- Verbed – First Google, now ChatGPT
- Fashion – Tinfoil hat
- Man vs Machine – Robots excel at table tennis