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Value
3 min read · 641 words
Value is the property an inhabitant assigns to something — the reading of how much the thing is worth, distinct from any objective measurement, and shaped by conditions the inhabitant may not consciously register.
The hardware was tuned to assess value in conditions of scarcity. The operator who could quickly assess whether a resource was worth pursuing, whether a relationship was worth investing in, whether an opportunity was worth the risk, operated better than the system that could not. The modern inhabitant inherits the assessment circuitry, with the circuitry now running in conditions of abundance that distort some of the original calibration. The reading of what something is worth often reflects the system’s responses to the conditions of acquisition more than the actual operational value of the thing itself.
EQUATING VALUE WITH COST
The expensive thing is read as more valuable than the inexpensive thing. The rare thing is read as more valuable than the available thing. The difficult-to-obtain thing is read as more valuable than the readily-obtained thing.
The assessment circuitry runs on these heuristics, and the heuristics produced reasonable results in the ancestral environment. The modern environment includes operators engineering scarcity, manipulating cost signals, and using rarity as marketing — and the assessment, running the old heuristics, often reads these engineered conditions as evidence of value the underlying thing does not actually possess.
DISMISSING SUBJECTIVE VALUE AS ILLUSION
The opposite failure mode.
Value is genuinely subjective in many domains. The same object has different value to different inhabitants based on their actual conditions and uses. The framing that all value should be objective ignores that inhabitants differ in what they actually need, want, and can use. The honest examination of what value the inhabitant personally derives from something is more useful than continual reference to general or external value claims.
EXAMINING THE BASIS
Is the assessment running from actual operational use the thing provides, or from the conditions of acquisition, the social signaling, the status attribution, the rarity?
The honest assessment often surfaces that value the inhabitant was attributing to a thing was largely about the conditions surrounding it rather than the thing itself.
THE SCARCITY THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
If this were available abundantly and cheaply, would it still be valuable to this inhabitant?
The question produces clarifying answers. Some things would remain valuable in those conditions because their operational use is real. Some things would lose most of their value because the value was largely conferred by the conditions rather than by the thing. The discrimination matters because the second category is where the inhabitant has been spending capacity for returns that won’t actually be received.
UNDERVALUING WHAT IS ABUNDANT, EASY, OR FAMILIAR
The relationships that are abundant in the inhabitant’s life and are not receiving the attention they would warrant if they were scarcer. The capacities the inhabitant has that are not being attended to because they have always been there. The conditions that support the inhabitant’s life that go unregistered because they are continuous.
The reading that values rarity over abundance produces inhabitants who continuously overlook what is actually most valuable in their lives — and pursue what is scarce regardless of whether what is scarce is also what they need.
VALUE SHAPES THE LIFE
The inhabitant who values status pursues status and produces a life shaped around it. The inhabitant who values presence pursues presence and produces a different life.
The values do the work that conscious deciding could not do alone. The honest examination of what the inhabitant actually values — revealed by what behavior actually pursues — is one of the more useful operations available. The pursuit is the value, regardless of what the inhabitant would name as the value if asked.
The assessment is real. The inhabitant who examines its basis operates with better calibration.