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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Or...we have a sense of value for the time and energy put into a piece of art. Not just the physical labor, but the time and energy it takes to create it in the mind, or the time it takes to acquire the life experience that makes the art piece more valuable.

An original masterpiece doesn't just represent the time and energy it took the artist to physically create it, but includes any of the time and energy it took to gain the experiences that the piece reflects. A duplicate only reflects the time and energy needed to copy the physical final product.

This would explain why if an artist stares at a canvas for weeks, months or even years, ultimately putting nothing more than a few brush strokes on it, the painting can become worth a fortune (so long as the back story of its creation was well-known). If someone duplicated such a painting, it would be practically worthless, because it would reflect no more than a few minutes of work.

Art acquisition is probably one of the more blatant forms of signaling, and much of it has to do with showing off a particular type of education as well as (obviously) excessive wealth. But maybe it is more fundamentally a signal of your ability to gain other people's time, skills and energy. In that case, we should be naturally drawn to originals, which inherently represent much more time, skill and energy than any duplicate.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

This is a very solid point IMHO.

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