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I am not much of a looker - perhaps a 6, but I tend to bat above my average.

However, in a conversation with colleagues today we were talking about domain creep, where having skill in one area has a halo effect on other skill areas, lending them credit where credit isn't due. We see this kind of proofing behavior for example with celebrities, where because someone is rich or famous for one thing, it means that they are qualified to be an authority on another. 

There are many aspects to this, where for example [tall people earn more,](https://www.livescience.com/5552-taller-people-earn-money.html) which explains why my salary is so low to the ground also. But it also enters into other areas, where there is a conflation of domain.

![image.png](https://images.hive.blog/DQmYmPVeHCWmUzEK1TFPMtfp6hNBK1MGtaCGUgK2gmmtBZ4/image.png)

When it comes to investing into crypto for example, for a very long time people have treated it as if it is in the technology domain. This has meant that when people have been curious about buying, they have asked the tech people they know, without realizing they have crossed boundaries into the domain of economics. While a person can hold both skillsets, they require understanding in different areas, where one doesn't necessarily inform the other. A person can have full understanding of how blockchains work, but very little insight into market potential. 

I mentioned that if for example, had I been a tech nerd espousing buying two years ago, they would likely have bought - but the people that they knew who were tech nerds, were at least openly, largely against it - because it is a meaningless asset, making it a scam. But, this view fails to recognize that pretty much all asset classes are meaningless scams, but this doesn't stop them from being valuable. People still buy gold on paper, believing they own gold. 

This domain creep is not only on the side of who we are influenced by, it tends to also creep into our own behaviors, where because we are good at something, we inflate our abilities in other areas. This can actually be a good thing if taken with a grain of salt, as it can help expand our awareness and skill to include new domains - but it can also be a negative, when we get overconfident to the point that we shutdown our attention under the assumption we know all we need. 

"Influencers" on social platforms are used to disseminate information to manipulate behavior in a certain direction, but the same thing happens in real life, where peers carry some weighting in our decision-making process. Is a pretty person funnier than a less attractive person? It seems that people favor some conditions over others, even though the content itself might be the same.

One example of this are those popular and very expensive "business forums" where people pay to hear influencers speak on various business topics. The goal of the celebrity is to get everyone feeling good, nodding and cheering with enthusiasm, which means presenting readily acceptable and generic material, that pretty much everyone in the room will support. If you think about knowledge as a competitive advantage, these are things that everyone already knows, with much of it being common sense. Yet, people pay so they can mingle with like minds who are also filled with generic information, for a social media post opportunity. Come Monday, very few will change their behaviors or processes at all.

We are often blinded by celebrity, as we associate fame and fortune with credibility and while this isn't necessarily a bad thing, often our support is misplaced. Also, often we are "greedy" in our beliefs, meaning we believe and act based on our desires, not necessarily reality. We laugh at the joke of the attractive person, because we want to be close to them - we buy the brands pushed by a celebrity, because we want to be like them. 

While information is just information, uptake or rejection is affected by the source of that information. This is about trust, and we are seemingly more likely to trust the face of a popular stranger, than those close to us, even if they are outside the domain they are informing on. Part of this could be that due to the public nature of the information, we make the assumption that it has been vetted, that it is accurate, that the person presenting has done their due diligence. I think often, they are doing the same thing, spreading what they have heard from someone they trust. 

But it is interesting how we are affected by the source and perhaps, more so than the information itself. At times, it is the person, the voice, the look, the delivery, the energy, the atmosphere that we make our purchase decision on, without actually paying much attention to what is being said, as we give meaning to meaningless attributes. 


No matter how good something looks, *the proof is in the pudding.*


Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]

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