Jim O'Shaughnessy Profile picture
Jul 18, 2019 19 tweets 6 min read Read on X
1/ Mimetic desire and the Art Market
In the movie “Titanic,” Kate Winslet plays the rebellious Rose DeWitt Bukater, a beautiful, vivacious, open-minded and forward-looking young woman from a “good” family that is faced with dwindling financial prospects. Her mother’s
2/ solution is to marry her off to the wicked and banal Cal Hockley, a mendacious but very rich young man. In the movie, Rose chooses to not marry Cal, but rather pursue a life of adventurous discovery, inspired by her brief love affair with penniless and doomed artist
3/ Jack Dawson. But this isn’t about what happened in the movie, other than to look at the intersection between Rose and the art she bought while abroad. She loaded up on Picasso, Monet and Degas, whom her philistine fiancé Cal said “wouldn’t amount to anything” in the world.
4/ Hindsight allows us to be in on the joke, as all three artists are now considered among the greatest masters to ever paint. But what would have happened if the boat didn’t sink and Rose went through with her marriage to the despicable Cal?
5/ Likely, Rose would have established a beautiful home and Salon in New York City in which to display her, for the time, unconventional art collection. She no doubt would have many parties where older and younger couples would attend. The older set might look on young Rose’s
6/ collection with some condensation, as they “knew” what good art was, and her modern scribblings didn’t qualify. But the younger set—especially other young women-- would be intrigued not only with Rose’s taste in art but in Rose herself, would have taken very careful notice.
7/ They would perhaps be envious of Rose’s beauty and talent and they would unconsciously desire those things for themselves. And their husbands wouldn’t stand in the way, for they too would like to emulate the “sparkling” life of Mr. and Mrs. Hockley.
8/ They would begin inquiries at New York-based dealers, who would then have to investigate these young, brash painters if they wanted to remain at the top of the dealer world. Trips to Europe would ensue,
9/ and the most forward-looking of the dealer would make deals to represent the new artists in the new world. Perhaps slowly at first, other young, forward-looking couples would start displaying their new purchases at their parties, increasing both the exposure
10/ to and desire for similar work from other socially ambitious families. All this new art in New York’s finest homes would spark critics to start writing about the artists and the collectors—some mocking, but many lauding, both the intelligence of the collectors and the
11/ artists. The art dealers would do their very best to ensure positive reviews as the money they were earning from the sales would become increasingly large. A mimetic “tipping point” would be reached were the sheer number of fancy people displaying the new art would cause
12/ something of an arms race among the socially ambitious people of the day. Critics would tip and begin providing very sound and seemingly well thought out “reasons” for why the artists were geniuses and the early collectors astute and refined people. Many people would say
13/ (with the deepest of hindsight bias) that it was “obvious” to anyone with any taste at all why these painters were the new Rembrandts and Titans and the cycle would become self-reinforcing. Museums would start buying and early collectors would add significant prestige
14/ to their family’s reputation by loaning and donating their works to the leading museums of not just New York City, but the entire world. Mimetic desire leading to mimetic behavior would have created a new paradigm without anyone—save perhaps the art dealers—doing anything
15/ in a conspiratorial manner. All some things take to change the world’s taste is often the unplanned enthusiasm of bright, forward-looking people. People who inspire others and cause them to want to emulate them.
16/ And this isn’t just reserved to fields like art—watch any trends that develop at first slowly but then suddenly become the object of everyone’s fascination. Mimetic behavior is responsible for a lot of what we imbue with value.
17/ And taken to an extreme, is also the constant background for bubbles and other events that seemingly appear out of nowhere. Understanding that we all, to a certain extent, are driven by mimetic behaviors will help you understand a lot more than the art market.
18/ And finally, understand that you yourself will almost *never* think you are being mimetically driven, as your brain will thoughtfully provide you—post hoc—with all sorts of reasonable and rational reasons for why you’re doing something.
19/ It’s one of the reasons I think that bubbles and crashes are features and not bugs of the human experience.

#BroadlyApplicable

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More from @jposhaughnessy

Jan 28
1/ From the ever provocative Jed McKenna via JEDVAITA website--"Dreamweaver"

"Dreams feel real while we're in them, right? It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange."
~Dom Cobb, Inception.
2/ "That incessant chatter going on in your head might not be mental pollution, as it seems. It might actually be how you constantly weave your dream state, yourself included, into existence.
3/ Obviously, or maybe not so obviously, your reality has no independent reality. It's all in your head, including your head.

That might be a nice thing about meditation - that you can close your eyes, turn off your brain, and spend some quality time away from the
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Apr 2, 2023
Arthur C. Clarke 🗣️

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

“It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.”
“I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself.”

“A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.”

“Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence”
“Excessive interest in pathological behavior was itself pathological”

“Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests.”

“He had a suspicion of plausible answers; they were so often wrong.”
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Mar 16, 2023
Henri Bergson 🗣️

“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.”

“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.”

“The universe is a machine for the making of Gods.”
“Time is invention and nothing else.”

“Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.”

“The Eyes See Only What The Mind Is Prepared To Comprehend.”
“Creation signifies, above all, emotion, and that not in literature or art alone. We all know the concentration and effort implied in scientific discovery. Genius has been defined as an infinite capacity for taking pains.”

“No two moments are identical in a conscious being”
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Mar 11, 2023
1/Implicate and explicate orders--A thread

“We are all linked by a fabric of unseen connections. This fabric is constantly changing and evolving. This field is directly structured and influenced by our behavior and by our understanding.”
~David Bohm
2/ David Bohm was a quantum physicist whose work focused on understanding the fundamental nature of reality. Bohm's concept of implicate and explicate orders is a way of understanding the relationship between the manifest world we experience and often
3/ think of as “reality” and the underlying system that gives rise to it.

The explicate order is the consensus reality that we share directly. We perceive the world of objects, space, and time with our senses. The explicate order is what we see and experience now,
Read 20 tweets
Feb 13, 2023
Robert A. Heinlein 🗣️

“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”

“Never try to outstubborn a cat.”
“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

“Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
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“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”
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Feb 11, 2023
1/ In the Arena

I've always loved Teddy Rosevelt's "Man (person) in the Arena," yet I've heard from many that they interpret it more along the lines of "Gladiator" than the way I read it.

I've always read it as a call to get in the game, not as a pugnacious combatant
2/ but rather as a creative contributor to life.

I think of it more as having the courage to expose yourself to the critics and naysayers by striving (with great enthusiasm) to contribute, even when (especially when) you fall flat on your face.
3/ It seems to be a feature, not a bug, of HumanOS to be wary of the judgment of others.

This probably has evolutionary origins, as when we were all living in tribes as hunter/gatherers, not fitting into the tribe often meant exile and death. Better then to fit IN, rather than
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