[achenet]

> There might be a sense in which bubbles are getting more ridiculous over time (e.g., NFT) but it would be hard to prove it in any objective sense.

Remember tulips? [0]

I think tulips were probably at least as ridiculous as NFTs.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

[rjmunro]

I think Freakonomics basically debunked the whole tulips thing. The real Tulip mania was much smaller but stories of it got exadgerated as they passed around the world. Actual business records of the claims in contemporary newspapers don't exist.

[nologic01]

There seems to be currency with debunking tulipmania but reading this [1] it seems people play more with the semantics, i.e., what kind of market behavior do you admit into the "manic class" as opposed to the "rational calculation class".

Expecting others to enter a bubble and trading accordingly can be a perfectly rational calculation following observations of behaviors in a given market context.

[1] https://theconversation.com/tulip-mania-the-classic-story-of...

[daemin]

I like the way Patrick Boyle explained it, about how gossip got blown out into bigger than life stories. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1dbtWZFsIk

[tim333]

Also the Dutch still have a large tulip business. Maybe they were overpriced for a bit but the tulips go on.

It could have been rational to spend a lot on a good one as you could then cultivate it a grow lots of that type.

[nologic01]

Would be cool to have some sort of well defined "bubble-mania-meter" but it is unfortunately quite subjective.

The role of scarcity is something interesting to consider as input. Scarcity (perceived or actual) is more natural with tulips or anything that is a tangible, real object.

NFT's tortured way of creating "digital scarcity" sets them, imho, apart from other bubbles. Given how much of modern life revolves around digital they are probably the forerunner of much worse to come.

[LudwigNagasena]

Scarcity of paintings is almost completely artificial and their value rests on so-called provenance just as it does with NFTs.

[nologic01]

> almost completely

strange but true, scarcity comes in different sizes. Is the infinity of NFT's the same as that of paintings? How many types of infinite junk are there? Or is this infinite itself?

[tim333]

There is also an infinity of paintings. Pay me enough and I'll get a pot of paint and crank out as many as you like.

[nologic01]

Sorry to bring you the bad news, but your lifetime is (likely) finite and each brush stroke takes away a bit of that precious finite time.

In contrast, while digitally reproduced crap is also fundamentally finite, it can be replicated gazillion upon gazillion times more without any effort or sacrifice.

This is the so-called zero-marginal cost of (re)production [1]. Some people think its a blessing, some people think its a curse.

With AI algorithms it gets even worse. You don't only have infinite copies of the original, you also have infinite variations of the original.

Interesting times.

[1] https://books.google.nl/books/about/The_Zero_Marginal_Cost_S...

[BobaFloutist]

I guess that depends on whether or not you consider the distinction between the Mona Lisa and a print of the Mona Lisa almost completely artificial.