Yes, I grok you.

This is all true, I think. At the same time, I’m not sure that it undermines my point. What you say shows that we may not care when someone perceives a $5 wine as a $90 wine — de gustibus non est disputandum, after all — whereas we do care when the truth of an idea is misperceived.

Right . . . but I think the same sort of cognitive bias can cause our perceptions to change in either case. If I think a $5 wine is a $90 wine, then even though my taste experience might be “valid” in some sense, it’s still the case that my perceptions have changed simply because the label changed. So too, if I think a run-of-the-mill idea is insightful just because of the name attached to it, then my perceptions have been altered just because of the label.

Am I making any sense?

The value of an idea, by contrast, doesn’t increase simply because we find the idea more persuasive if it comes from one person rather than another. The difference is that in the case of wine and placebos, what we want are certain experiences (taste or absence of pain), whereas when it comes to ideas what we want is not the appearance of truth, but actual truth.

As for the example of the Ape and the Art-Dealer, all I think that shows is that the contemporary art scene is full of it.

Guess what happened…

None of the critics had a clue. They started using fancy words to describe how the artists were using advanced techniques to express inner angst and bla bla…

When one of the critics was praising a child’s painting for it’s creative use of contrast the man was told it was painted by a six-year-old(I think). He was slightly stumped and blushed a bit but then retorted “They should give the kid a gallery”. All the critics became silent once told half the paintings were actually done by a random group of children. Later a critic said jokingly “Art is for rich people who don’t know what to do with their money”.

The entire art industry is based on mostly hype and reputations.

Do you prefer the finest wines, vehicles and art? How do you define the finest? Whatever you may think, you will find this fascinating.SCIENTISTS AT CALTECH and Stanford recently published the results of a peculiar wine tasting. They provided people

Or maybe we should try to overlook the fact that particular people say particular things at particular places and times, and try to maintain evenhanded skepticism towards all assertions, ideas, and arguments.

That way we avoid devolving into cultists.

For example, one concept I’ve always found perverse is that of forgery of a work of art, assuming there is no copyright infringement (from here on, assume the ‘original master’ is long dead). There is an incentive to make paintings that look just like the work of famous painters and pass them off as being *by* the famous painter, because this false provenance will give a higher market value. (It could be a direct copy of a painting, or even just ‘in the style of’ a given painter – the former may bear a higher risk of detection, as two identical copies of a painting on the market will arouse suspicions.) If the true painter becomes known, the painting suddenly drops in market value, and we might say the owner of the forgery at the time has a right to sue for the loss. But should they sue the painter for making the forgery, or whoever leaked the information that it was a forgery? Arguably there is a good case for the latter, as it is the *knowledge* of the true origin of the painting that has destroyed its market value, not the origin itself. (By similar logic, in some jurisdictions truth and honesty are no defence against an accusation of defamation.)

What exactly are people paying for when they value works by ‘famous masters’ more highly, regardless of the level of quality or skill evident in the work itself – provenance, or merely the illusion of provenance?