George ILIEV
(Photo: The Bean, Chicago, 2009)
Humans are attracted to shiny surfaces as an evolutionary adaptation that helps them easily locate habitats with clear stagnant water (Margaret Boden, Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science).
Could this evolutionary adaptation explain, at a higher conceptual level, the fact that the stock price of "flashy, funky and cool" companies such as Facebook is often overvalued at initial public offerings (IPO). Or could the "peacock tail" theory of sexual selection have a role in our preference for the colourful and the flashy? In any case, human investors seem to find it hard to resist anything that glitters, even if they consciously know it is not always gold.
