By “progress” I mean the usual thing, e.g. “forward or onward movement toward a destination.” I never use it in the body of the post though, so hopefully it’s not too bad if it is unclear.
By “the value of the world of today”—“the value of the world of tomorrow” I mean: the value of the change between the world of today and the world of tomorrow. How much would you pay to cause that change to happen, right now?
It’s not literally an option on the table, but that’s nearly always the case when you ask “how valuable is X?” It’s just one part of a larger set of consequences of a decision. For example, I could say “what is the value of increasing the world’s population by 1%?” and that would be meaningful (or not meaningful) in exactly the same way. Any change that increases the population by 1% will also have other impacts, but it is helpful to break the change down as a sequence of changes (e.g. boosting the population, changing demographics, etc.)
I seem to have some chronic difficulty explaining this :) There are similar problems when I try in person. I assume it’s something odd or wrong about how I think about this issue in particular.
By “progress” I mean the usual thing, e.g. “forward or onward movement toward a destination.” I never use it in the body of the post though, so hopefully it’s not too bad if it is unclear.
By “the value of the world of today”—“the value of the world of tomorrow” I mean: the value of the change between the world of today and the world of tomorrow. How much would you pay to cause that change to happen, right now?
It’s not literally an option on the table, but that’s nearly always the case when you ask “how valuable is X?” It’s just one part of a larger set of consequences of a decision. For example, I could say “what is the value of increasing the world’s population by 1%?” and that would be meaningful (or not meaningful) in exactly the same way. Any change that increases the population by 1% will also have other impacts, but it is helpful to break the change down as a sequence of changes (e.g. boosting the population, changing demographics, etc.)
I seem to have some chronic difficulty explaining this :) There are similar problems when I try in person. I assume it’s something odd or wrong about how I think about this issue in particular.
I think Vladimir and I have similar confusions but he seems to be describing them more clearly so I’ll let him handle this conversation.