follow up thoughts assuming that _everything_ lives on a simple spectrum of least faked and most faked
(1) I posit that certain demographics are _aware_ of the 'fake's or 'widely-faked' things(material, immaterial, symbolic) which they willingly or unconsciously/historically/inadvertently subscribed/habituated/endowed into
(1a) how do we ascertain where ourselves (and others) are on that scale of awareness
(1b) of the groups who belong on the _less aware_ side of the awareness spectrum, what are the classes of fake things which they subscribe to that they will not concede to be fake at all
(2a) Is there a demographic that willingly/consciously/unconsciously wants to be deceived
(2b) What are the classes of things which they normally want to be deceived by?
Connection between wine connoisseurs and notion of high-status is generally accepted and the connection between status, self esteem and serotonin is well established [1-3]. There is one interesting study (which unfortunately i cant access) on rationality (or rather suppression of) during blind wine testing [4] which i presume iterates this point in context of wine
Solomon et al expounded Terror Management Theory[5] based on Becker's Denial of Death[6] which suggests one experimental measure for ascertaining degree of irrational attachment (or degree of irrationality); given a threat or reminder of death, humans will strongly assert whatever symbolic attachment (eg religion, race, choice of text editor, wine vs non wine loving, wine choice, truffle choice) they have and discriminate anyone who belongs to the 'other' due to the serotonin triggering nature of asserting the value of your attachment/identity. What i do want to see is a social/fMRI study of technological workers and 'fashion' ie irrational/subjective choices made in supposedly rational/objective domains (choice of text editors etc), related [7]
[1] Sylwester, Robert. "Serotonin, students, and self-esteem." The Education Digest 63.2 (1997): 16.
[2] Breuning, Loretta Graziano. Habits of a happy brain: retrain your brain to boost your serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, & endorphin levels. Simon and Schuster, 2015.
[3] Pyszczynski, Tom, et al. "Why do people need self-esteem? A theoretical and empirical review." Psychological bulletin 130.3 (2004): 435.
[4] Caltagirone, C., et al. "Rational versus emotional behavioral responses in wine tasting: a transcranial magnetic stimulation experiment." American association of wine economists annual conference. 2011.
[5] Greenberg, Jeff, Tom Pyszczynski, and Sheldon Solomon. "The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory." Public self and private self. Springer, New York, NY, 1986. 189-212.
[6] Becker, Ernest. The denial of death. Simon and Schuster, 1997.
[7] Breuning, Loretta. "The neurochemistry of science bias." Groupthink in Science. Springer, Cham, 2020. 3-14.