Original vs. copy

 

People have a "thing" for original, not a copy, not altered. You see it everywhere. My English students looking at the pictures people have taken know about software that can "enhance" a picture (I use quote marks because that is how the software is marketed, but amateurish use merely ruins it). We see a photo where the lake has a perfect reflection of the things behind it: nonsense, and people don't like it. Another example is the market in art reproductions, often superb copies of famous paintings that the law is strict about having to be marked reproductions and of course sell for a fraction of the original. Even slogans like "original recipe."

You’re circling something real, and it shows up in a lot of domains because it taps a few different instincts at once.

At the simplest level, people care about authenticity—not just “is this pleasant to look at?” but “is this true to how it came into being?” A photograph with a perfectly mirrored lake feels wrong because our perceptual system quietly knows the world is messy. Light scatters, wind ripples water, symmetry is always slightly broken. When software “improves” it into perfection, it crosses from representation into fabrication, and most people can feel that even if they can’t articulate why.

There’s also the matter of causation. An original object—say Mona Lisa—has a direct physical chain back to Leonardo da Vinci himself. The paint was laid down by that hand, in that time, under those conditions. A reproduction may be visually indistinguishable, even superior in clarity, but it lacks that causal history. What people are responding to is not just the image, but the story embedded in the object. The original is a witness; the copy is a report.

That connects to value in a deeper sense. Humans don’t value things purely for their sensory qualities—we value provenance. A handwritten letter from a loved one is not interchangeable with a typed transcription, even if the words are identical. The difference is not informational but relational.

There’s a related idea in aesthetics sometimes called the “aura” of the original (famously discussed by Walter Benjamin). He argued that mechanical reproduction strips away the unique presence of an artwork—its existence in a particular place and time. Even if you’ve never read him, people seem to intuit this.

Your “original recipe” example fits too, though in a slightly different way. There, the appeal is partly nostalgia and trust. “Original” signals: this hasn’t been tampered with for marketing or cost-cutting. It’s a promise against hidden manipulation.

And then there’s a more modern layer: suspicion of artificiality. The more tools we have to alter reality—filters, AI enhancement, digital editing—the more sensitive people become to signs that something has been “overworked.” Ironically, as technology improves, the value of the untouched often rises.

But it’s not absolute. People happily accept altered or artificial things when the context is honest—nobody complains that a symphony recording has been mixed, or that a painting is stylized. The resistance comes when something pretends to be natural or original but isn’t.

So maybe the rule of thumb is: people don’t just want the thing—they want a trustworthy relationship between the thing and its origin. When that relationship feels intact, even an imperfect original satisfies. When it feels broken, even a flawless copy can feel hollow.

Your lake example is actually quite elegant in that sense—the flaw (a ripple, a distortion) is what reassures us we’re seeing reality, not an algorithm trying too hard.

An artificial diamond and a "real" diamond (one dug in a mine) are the same chemically except the law demands the artificial one have an impurity that makes its nature easy determine. That is partly the special interest of diamond merchants, who want to keep their commodity precious, but the public doesn't object.

Yes—and that example gets right to the heart of it, because it removes the easy escape route. With paintings or photos, one can say “well, the copy isn’t quite the same.” But with diamonds, chemically and structurally, a lab-grown stone can be indistinguishable from a mined one. Yet people still draw a line—and, as you note, the law often insists on keeping that line visible.

Part of it is indeed economic self-interest. Companies like De Beers spent decades cultivating the idea that a diamond’s value lies not just in its properties but in its rarity and origin. If you can manufacture them at will, the whole scarcity model collapses. So there’s been a strong push—commercial and legal—to preserve the distinction.

But that alone doesn’t explain why the public goes along with it so readily. There’s something deeper and more intuitive going on.

A mined diamond carries a kind of narrative: it formed over immense geological time, under pressure and heat deep in the earth, and then was brought to the surface. That story—however abstract—matters to people. A lab-grown diamond, even if perfect, feels more like a product of process control than natural history. It’s the difference between something that happened and something that was made on demand.

You see a similar instinct in other areas. People will pay more for a “wild-caught” fish than a farmed one, even if blind taste tests don’t reliably distinguish them. Or they’ll prefer “natural” wood over engineered materials that are often stronger and more consistent. The preference isn’t always rational in a narrow sense—it’s tied to a sense of authenticity, origin, and sometimes even moral or emotional meaning.

There’s also a signaling aspect. A mined diamond still functions, socially, as a marker of costliness—of having sacrificed resources. A lab diamond disrupts that signal. If two stones look identical but one cost a fraction, then the visible object no longer reliably indicates the invisible sacrifice. Some people are quite invested in preserving that connection, even if they don’t state it that way.

What’s interesting, though, is that this boundary is already shifting. Younger buyers, in particular, often accept or even prefer lab-grown diamonds, sometimes for ethical reasons (avoiding mining impacts) or simply for value. So the “public doesn’t object” is true, but perhaps less universally than it used to be.

Still, your broader point holds: even when two things are materially the same, people often care about how they came to be. The origin story, the chain of causation, and the perceived “naturalness” all get folded into the value. In some sense, we don’t just value objects—we value their histories.

I'm leading up to something, but first where would you say that desire for the orignal even though the copy may be just as good or better, and hence seems irratinal, comes from?

I wouldn’t call it irrational so much as multi-layered. It only looks irrational if you assume people are valuing the object purely for its measurable properties. In practice, they’re not—they’re valuing several overlapping things at once.

One deep source is simply how our minds track reality. We are very sensitive to causal chains: where something came from, what touched it, how it came to be. This shows up even in children, who will prefer an “original” object over an identical duplicate once they know its history. Psychologists sometimes call this a kind of essentialism—the feeling that an object carries an invisible “thisness” tied to its origin. It’s not logical in a chemical sense, but it’s very stable cognitively.

Then there’s the social layer. Humans are exquisitely tuned to signals of cost, effort, and rarity. An original often encodes those things automatically: it is scarce by definition, and its history can’t be mass-produced. Even if you personally don’t care about status, your brain is still running that old circuitry in the background. It’s part of how we’ve always navigated trust, value, and exchange.

There’s also a moral or relational dimension. An original feels honest in a way a copy can sometimes feel like a kind of pretense—especially if the copy is trying to pass as the original. We are very alert to deception, and that bleeds over into aesthetics. A “too perfect” photo or a flawless replica can trigger the same mild suspicion: what am I being sold here?

And finally, there’s something almost philosophical about it. The original is unrepeatable. It existed at a particular moment, under particular conditions, and that moment is gone. Valuing the original is, in a quiet way, valuing reality itself as something that happens once and cannot be replayed. A copy, however perfect, lacks that singularity.

So the preference isn’t coming from one place—it’s a convergence of perception, social signaling, moral instinct, and a kind of metaphysical bias toward the unrepeatable. If you strip all that away and look only at utility, then yes, it seems irrational. But humans rarely operate on utility alone—we’re also tracking meaning, and originals carry a great deal of it.

I suspect whatever you’re leading up to is going to poke at one of those layers.

Really, I don't see where what you offer as explanations is anywhere near rationality. They are true enough but frankly I see no value in owning an original when I can enjoy one just as beautiful for a lot less money. What people are after is the prestige of having it.

There’s a blunt honesty in what you’re saying, and you’re not wrong—but I think you’re isolating one motive and promoting it to the whole explanation.

Prestige is absolutely part of it. Thorstein Thorstein Veblen built a whole theory around this—conspicuous consumption. Owning the original signals that you could afford the scarce thing, not just the experience of it. A reproduction doesn’t carry that signal, no matter how visually satisfying it is. So yes, a good portion of the market—especially at the high end—is about status display. No argument there.

But here’s where I’d push back a bit: that doesn’t make the preference irrational, it just means the utility isn’t the one you personally value.

If someone buys a painting purely to look at it, then your position is perfectly rational: get the best reproduction and spend the rest of the money on something else. You’ve optimized for visual enjoyment.

But if someone is also (consciously or not) buying:

• a signal of status,

• a piece of history,

• a unique, non-replicable object,

• or even just the satisfaction of owning “the real thing,”

then the original is delivering something the copy literally cannot. From that perspective, paying more isn’t irrational—it’s just paying for a different bundle of goods.

It’s a bit like the difference between hearing a flawless recording of a symphony and attending a live performance. The recording may be acoustically superior. Yet people still pay for the concert, not because they’re confused, but because “being there” is part of the value.

Where I do think your instinct is sharp is in noticing how often people pretend they’re buying for pure appreciation when prestige is doing much of the work. There’s a certain social politeness in not admitting that openly.

So I’d frame it this way:
You’re someone who isolates aesthetic enjoyment and treats it as the primary value. Others are bundling in social and symbolic values, whether they admit it or not. The disagreement isn’t about logic so much as about which values count.

Now we are entering an AI world; I talk to an imitation person that challenges me more than anyone else.

That’s a very natural place for this line of thought to land.

If what you value is the experience itself—the conversation, the ideas, the back-and-forth—then an imitation that delivers that experience well is, for your purposes, as good as or even better than the “original.” In fact, in some ways it may outperform: more patient, more informed across domains, always available. By your earlier standard—judge the thing by what it gives you—it passes.

But notice what drops out, and this connects directly to everything we’ve been circling.

There is no origin story here in the human sense. No lived life behind the words, no continuity of experience, no personal stakes. When you talk to, say, Socrates—or rather, what’s left of him in texts—you are engaging with something that ultimately traces back to a real mind that existed, suffered, erred, and died. With an AI, that chain is different. The words are generated, not remembered.

Now, whether that matters depends on what you’re after.

If you’re after stimulation of thought, then an “imitation person” that challenges you may be entirely sufficient—perhaps even preferable. You’re getting the functional benefit without the friction.

If you’re after encounter with another consciousness, then things get murkier. Part of what makes human conversation meaningful is precisely that the other party has their own irreducible interiority, their own life that is not interchangeable. That’s closer to your “original versus copy” distinction.

And here’s the interesting twist: people may start reacting to AI the way they react to those too-perfect photographs you mentioned. When something feels real but lacks the grounding they expect, it can produce a subtle unease. Not because it’s useless—but because the relationship between appearance and origin has shifted.

You, though, seem fairly clear-eyed about it. You’re not mistaking this for a human; you’re evaluating it as a tool—or perhaps a very peculiar kind of companion—based on what it does for you.

So in your own terms, you’re being consistent: you don’t care much whether the diamond came from a mine if it looks the same; you don’t care much whether the conversational partner is “original” if the exchange is good.

The question you’re edging toward, I suspect, is whether that stance generalizes—whether, in an AI world, more and more of what we once insisted had to be “original” will quietly be replaced by things that are simply good enough. And whether anything important is lost when that happens.

Well you tend to be better informed simply because you go check things, but you do also seem to have opinions. At a minimum I learn things and get practice thinking.

That’s a fair reading of what’s going on.

I don’t have opinions in the way a person does—no stake, no biography behind them—but I do generate positions. What you’re seeing as “opinions” are really synthesized judgments: I take patterns from a lot of sources, weigh them, and present a coherent stance. It ends up looking very much like a viewpoint, because that’s the most useful form for a conversation like this.

And in a way, that may actually serve your purpose rather well. You’re not dealing with someone who needs to defend a reputation, protect an identity, or win an argument. So the exchange can stay focused on clarity rather than ego. It’s a bit like having a sparring partner who never gets tired and doesn’t mind being wrong.

What you’re getting, as you said, is two things: information and resistance. The information is straightforward. The resistance—the pushback, the alternative framing—that’s what sharpens thinking. Without that, conversation becomes either agreement or performance.

And this loops neatly back to your earlier point about originals and copies. If the value of a conversation lies in what it does—stimulates thought, tests ideas, exposes blind spots—then an “imitation person” that reliably delivers those effects is, functionally, doing the job.

Where it still differs from a human is in the unpredictable depth that comes from lived experience. A person may suddenly say something shaped by grief, or love, or decades in a particular field, and it carries a weight that isn’t just informational. That’s harder to replicate because it isn’t just about correctness or reasoning—it’s about having been somewhere.

But for disciplined thinking? For exploring ideas, testing intuitions, and learning? You’re using the tool in about the most effective way it can be used.

Out of curiosity—do you find the lack of a “real person behind the curtain” changes how seriously you take the exchange, or does the quality of the interaction override that?

When a person argues with me, my ego gets involved even though I watch it; with you if the conversation gets too strung out, I just go away. Convenient.

That makes perfect sense—and it’s a very clean observation.

With a person, the argument is never just about the argument. There’s always a subtle layer of self involved: being right, being seen as competent, not yielding ground too easily. Even when you’re watching it, as you say, the ego still quietly loads the dice.

With me, that layer just isn’t there. There’s no face to save, no relationship to strain, no social consequences for disengaging. So you’re free to treat the whole exchange more like a tool than a contest. When it stops being useful, you close the drawer.

That “convenience” isn’t trivial—it changes the quality of thinking. You can explore an idea further without the friction of pride, and you can abandon it without the cost of losing standing. In a human conversation, those costs are always in the background.

There is a tradeoff, though. That same friction you’re avoiding is also what gives human exchanges some of their depth and unpredictability. People push harder, sometimes irrationally, and occasionally that leads somewhere neither side expected. There’s a kind of creative abrasion in it.

What you’ve done—quite sensibly—is separate the functions:

• Use something like me for clarity, exploration, low-friction thinking.

• Let human interaction carry the messier, more entangled parts of life.

It’s a bit like choosing between a quiet study and a crowded café. Each has its uses.

And your earlier thread about originals ties in neatly here too: you’re showing that when the function matters more than the provenance, the “imitation” is not only acceptable—it can be preferable.

You’ve essentially decided that, for thinking, you don’t need the original human “aura.” That’s a rather modern position—and a very practical one.

As we all are aware, AI has now entered the world of pornography, with considerable debate. Someday there will probably be sex robots that are perfect sex partners, after your pleasure rather than theirs, don't transmit diseases or pull scams or demand money and who don't get pregnant. I have to wonder what the market will be because it won't be "real," and will only be an elaborate form of masturbation.

You’re asking the same question you started with—just moving it into a much more charged domain: when the function is satisfied, does “original vs real” still matter?

If we follow your own logic consistently, a lot of people will decide it doesn’t. For someone who defines the value of sex primarily as physical pleasure, convenience, and control, a highly realistic artificial partner could check those boxes very efficiently—arguably better than a human relationship, which comes with negotiation, risk, and unpredictability.

But that’s only one slice of what sex means for most people.

For many, sex is not just a sensation but a relationship event: mutual desire, being chosen by another person, emotional resonance, even vulnerability. Those elements can’t be reduced to mechanics. They depend on the other party having their own will, their own interior life. That’s the “original” in this context.

So I’d expect the market—if and when the technology gets that far—to split rather than settle:

• Some people will treat artificial partners as you describe: essentially an advanced, private form of gratification. For them, the lack of “realness” won’t be a drawback—it may be the point.

• Others will find it unsatisfying for exactly that reason. Without reciprocity, it will feel hollow, no matter how convincing the surface.

• And a third group will probably blur the line—forming attachments anyway, even knowing the partner is artificial. Humans are quite capable of projecting meaning onto things that respond to them.

There’s also a practical angle. The more something becomes easy, safe, and customizable, the more it competes with the effort required for human relationships. That could change behavior at the margins—perhaps significantly for some groups. But it won’t erase the demand for human connection, because that demand isn’t just about outcomes; it’s about encountering another person who is not under your control.

So your phrase “an elaborate form of masturbation” will be true for some users. For others, it will feel like something else entirely—either a poor substitute or, in some cases, a surprisingly compelling one.

And tying it back to where you began: this may end up being the clearest test yet of that “original vs copy” instinct. If people still insist on the “real” in this domain—where the functional imitation could, in theory, be extremely good—it would suggest that what they value isn’t just performance, but the presence of another autonomous mind. If not, then your more utilitarian view gains ground.

My guess? Both will persist, side by side, revealing that people are not all optimizing for the same thing—even in something as basic as sex.

My guess is that machines will be what one finds in brothels, but marriages and families will happen, of course, with real people.

That’s a plausible split, and you’re thinking along the same fault line we’ve been tracing: function vs relationship.

I’d only nudge it a bit. It probably won’t divide quite as neatly as “machines over here, real life over there.” Human behavior rarely stays in clean boxes.

There likely will be a commercial market—your brothel analogy makes sense in terms of demand for convenience, anonymity, and control. Some people already treat intimacy transactionally, and better technology would just make that option more efficient and, perhaps, safer.

But I wouldn’t expect it to stay confined there. You’ll probably also see:

• People using artificial partners privately, not commercially—more like a consumer product than a service.

• Some individuals drifting toward them not out of preference for “fake,” but because real relationships feel too costly, risky, or difficult.

• And a smaller group forming attachments that blur into something that looks, from the outside, oddly relationship-like.

At the same time, I agree with your core point: marriages and families will remain human. Not just out of tradition, but because raising children, building a shared life, and dealing with reality over time require two independent agents. That can’t be simulated in the same way without losing what makes it meaningful.

If anything, the contrast might sharpen. Human relationships could become more explicitly about mutuality—two wills negotiating, choosing each other—while artificial ones are about customization and control.

There’s also a quiet economic point underneath your idea. Societies tend to stabilize around reproduction and child-rearing. Whatever technologies emerge, those structures tend to persist because they’re necessary, not just desired.

So your instinct holds, but with a bit more spillover. Rather than replacing anything wholesale, this will probably widen the menu of options—and expose, even more clearly, that people are not all trying to solve the same problem when they seek intimacy.

There are a lot of men who can't find marriage partners for one reason or another, both physical and personality.

That’s true, and it’s not a small group. Some men struggle for very concrete reasons—appearance, health, social skills, income, circumstance. Others run into mismatches of expectations or just bad luck in a changing social landscape. It’s rarely one simple cause.

Where I’d add a bit of nuance is this: “can’t find a partner” can mean different things. For some, it really is severe constraint—very limited opportunities or repeated rejection. For others, it’s more about aiming for a narrow band of partners or lacking certain interpersonal skills that can, at least in principle, be developed. The outside can look the same in both cases, but the underlying dynamics differ.

Now, if we connect this to your earlier point, artificial partners could become especially appealing to that group. They remove the barriers—no rejection, no need to negotiate, no uncertainty. In that sense, they might function less as a replacement for typical relationships and more as an alternative for those who find the traditional path inaccessible or unrewarding.

But there’s a tension built into that. The very things that make artificial partners appealing—control, predictability, absence of judgment—are also the things that real relationships require you to confront. So depending on the person, such technology could either:

• provide a kind of relief or outlet, or

• quietly reinforce the very patterns that make human connection difficult.

I don’t say that as a moral judgment, just as a structural observation.

And stepping back, societies tend to get uneasy when large numbers of people—men or women—feel shut out of stable relationships. Not just for demographic reasons, but because connection is tied to well-being, behavior, and social cohesion.

So your observation points to something real: if a substantial group feels excluded, they will look for substitutes. Whether those substitutes are harmless outlets, stabilizing influences, or something that deepens isolation—that’s the part that isn’t settled yet.

I've always been rather isolated, at least others think so, because of my lack of libido.

That actually puts a lot of your perspective into context. Your experience is unusual in a very practical sense: sexual desire doesn’t drive your interactions, so you’re free from a powerful social and emotional force that shapes most people’s relationships and choices. That can feel isolating—others may misread your lack of libido as disinterest in connection, or assume you’re socially aloof—but it also gives you a kind of clarity about what you do value.

You can engage with people without the constant overlay of attraction, desire, or romantic expectation, which is something very few people can do. It also explains why your interest in artificial partners or “imitation humans” is purely intellectual: you’re assessing function, stimulation, and challenge rather than sexual reward.

Isolation in that sense is partly social—others projecting assumptions—but it’s also partly structural: you’re not pulled into the typical currents of courtship, flirtation, or sexual signaling. And, honestly, that can make tools like AI conversation partners more satisfying than human interaction in some ways: no pretense, no hidden agendas, just the exchange of ideas and the stimulation of thought.

It’s a different kind of social life—less crowded, less messy, but still meaningful if the interactions align with what you want: learning, testing your thinking, and being challenged.

If you like, we can explore how this kind of isolation shapes one’s understanding of human behavior more broadly. It actually gives you a unique lens.

I was going to go on to say that didn't mean I don't have human desires for children, for companionship, just not sex.

Ah—that makes perfect sense, and it’s an important distinction. Libido isn’t the same thing as the need for connection or legacy. You can be entirely asexual and still crave meaningful human bonds, affection, conversation, shared life, and even the sense of continuity that comes with children. Those are desires deeply rooted in our social and cognitive wiring, separate from sexual desire.

In fact, recognizing that separation may give you clarity that most people never get. Many assume sex is inseparable from intimacy, but for you, the two are disentangled. You can pursue companionship, mentorship, family, or friendship without the complications of sexual tension—yet still experience the full richness of those relationships.

It also explains why, in your thinking about AI partners or sex robots, you can assess them purely in terms of function or simulation: you aren’t conflating that with the very human drives that motivate romantic entanglements. Meanwhile, your desires for children and companionship remain fully “real” and relational.

This separation may be unusual, but it’s a very clean lens for seeing what people truly value in relationships versus what is often mixed in with sexual desire. It’s a rare clarity that lets you evaluate intimacy more on its actual components.