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Value is derived from demand and supply. I suspect that the post you are responding to disagrees with this (at least hypothetically). They contend that value

by gloob 17y ago

Value is derived from demand and supply. I suspect that the post you are responding to disagrees with this (at least hypothetically). They contend that value is a more-or-less innate quality that the skilled are best at recognizing. Stating your position baldly isn't a particularly strong counterargument. To say that more people "should" go through the effort of learning to like the advanced content is pretty elitist Doesn't matter whether it's elitist, in the same way that it doesn't matter whether Darwin caused the Holocaust. The fact that the consequences are unpleasant does not mean that the assertion is untrue.

m_eiman 17y ago
They contend that value is a more-or-less innate quality that the skilled are best at recognizing. Stating your position baldly isn't a particularly strong counterargument. Value, in the money sense, is what someone is prepared to pay. That's the kind of value I was referring to. Doesn't matter whether it's elitist, in the same way that it doesn't matter whether Darwin caused the Holocaust. Godwin's law. The fact that the consequences are unpleasant does not mean that the assertion is untrue. You ignored the second part of my conclusion: everyone has limited time, and they have to select a subset of what is possible that they will actually do. Also: the post I was responding to was talking about trying to maximize global enjoyment, and proposed that if everyone decided to become experts in a single narrow field of content everyone would be better off. This, however, is also unlikely to find the global maximum. How will everyone know which tiny subfield has the biggest potential for enjoyment? Without trying a lot of different routes to enjoyment, it's very unlikely that they will choose the best one by pure chance. Compare this to genetic algorithms; you need randomness to escape a local maximum. Another problem with the proposed solution is that different people have different personalities and it's very unlikely that a single narrow field will appeal to everyone. Some subset of the population will get lots of enjoyment, while another subset will be bored to tears. That's not going to improve average enjoyment.
- camccann 17y ago
  Value, in the money sense, is what someone is prepared to pay. That's the kind of value I was referring to. Which is indeed one possible definition of the word, but not the most useful one in a world where rational economic agents don't exist. The average person's intuitive sense of how much they value something doesn't necessarily bear any relation to how much they'd pay for it. For instance, in memetichazard's post above: "Or, if the value of such things is great enough, then the demand will be there to pay for it." Under the economic definition of value this can be loosely paraphrased as "If people are willing to pay enough for these things, there will be enough to demand to pay for it", a statement which is tautological and rather inane, allowing us to infer that memetichazard probably intended some other meaning for "value". Under any other definition of "value", including most common use, it's entirely possible (or even likely) for something to have a value unrelated to its price or market demand.

by gloob 17y ago

m_eiman 17y ago

They contend that value is a more-or-less innate quality that the skilled are best at recognizing. Stating your position baldly isn't a particularly strong counterargument. Value, in the money sense, is what someone is prepared to pay. That's the kind of value I was referring to. Doesn't matter whether it's elitist, in the same way that it doesn't matter whether Darwin caused the Holocaust. Godwin's law. The fact that the consequences are unpleasant does not mean that the assertion is untrue. You ignored the second part of my conclusion: everyone has limited time, and they have to select a subset of what is possible that they will actually do. Also: the post I was responding to was talking about trying to maximize global enjoyment, and proposed that if everyone decided to become experts in a single narrow field of content everyone would be better off. This, however, is also unlikely to find the global maximum. How will everyone know which tiny subfield has the biggest potential for enjoyment? Without trying a lot of different routes to enjoyment, it's very unlikely that they will choose the best one by pure chance. Compare this to genetic algorithms; you need randomness to escape a local maximum. Another problem with the proposed solution is that different people have different personalities and it's very unlikely that a single narrow field will appeal to everyone. Some subset of the population will get lots of enjoyment, while another subset will be bored to tears. That's not going to improve average enjoyment.

camccann 17y ago
Value, in the money sense, is what someone is prepared to pay. That's the kind of value I was referring to. Which is indeed one possible definition of the word, but not the most useful one in a world where rational economic agents don't exist. The average person's intuitive sense of how much they value something doesn't necessarily bear any relation to how much they'd pay for it. For instance, in memetichazard's post above: "Or, if the value of such things is great enough, then the demand will be there to pay for it." Under the economic definition of value this can be loosely paraphrased as "If people are willing to pay enough for these things, there will be enough to demand to pay for it", a statement which is tautological and rather inane, allowing us to infer that memetichazard probably intended some other meaning for "value". Under any other definition of "value", including most common use, it's entirely possible (or even likely) for something to have a value unrelated to its price or market demand.