| It is spring at last and I feel like going out and playing in the
-SNOW? Yup good old north-eastern United States was covered in snow this weekend as
we contemplated the arrival of spring. Pretty grim I must say, especially after
being out in the west coast last week. The snow is of course not a bad thing for
everyone. Some people, for example those that operate snow plows are probably pretty
happy about this weekend's flurry of work. This contextual relativism leads nicely into what I would like to write about this week. Many a StarChamber meeting has been decorated with discussions about value. For example, we might discuss the question, what value does an individual add to a company? or maybe we will be more abstract about it and discuss whether it is defined to ask the question, what value does this object possess. The conversations usually proceed towards abstraction and the heart of the issue emerges as the following question, does anything have intrinsic value? Roughly speaking there are two camps on the issue. There is Paracelsus on one side who believes that value is not an absolute property of an object or person. Before continuing I must clarify that my view on Paracelsus' view and opinions is less than perfect; I would invite him, if I have misrepresented his position, to correct me. On the other camp there is the Minister of Central Dogma (how, you ask, could anyone argue with someone with that title -we don't) and myself. We believe that people and objects do have inherent value. And not just inherent value but in fact a measurable amount of it. Here again I would like to invite the Minister of Central Dogma to correct me if I am wrong. Recently I have come across a definition for value that I think better describes my position. But first let me tell you what others' (maybe Paracelsus') position is all about. The idea is that an object or person has not inherent value but instead has certain amount of value which it possess because a market assigns it that value. The mechanism by which a market adjudicates value to an object (or person) is by creating demand for it. A very capitalistic view which I happen to agree with; mostly. In my recent thinking I have come across the following proposal. Start by reversing the roles of the market and the object. Say the object has some inherent value to start with and that the market recognizes this value and therefore produces demand for it. Seems plausible to me, but does this inversion of roles change anything? I think it does and this is why. In the first scenario the market assigns value to an object by causing demand for it. This means that if we wanted to measure the amount of value of the object we would be forced to talk to a representative sample of the market constituents and measure their opinions about the value they estimate or feel the object has, and then we would have to combine these sentiments in some appropriate manner. This measurement is a difficult one to make for sure. How much value do we give some someone telling is that the object is cool; and how much to the the opinion that the product sucks. Or how about in relation to a person's value in a given task or situation, How do we measure the opinion that someone is a bonehead? Clearly this is difficult to do. The fact that it is difficult, however, has no bearing on the validity of the argument that objects have no inherent value. There is no prescribed rule that says we should be able to measure value, or any other attribute for that matter. However, the use an object has, or the performance that a company achieves is something we can measure and do measure daily. Microsoft is beating Netscape in gains of market share for the internet browser market, for example, or Microsoft's stock price is 80, or what have you. So why then should we not expect to be able to measure individuals' value. Objects do have inherent value but it is not absolute, it depends on the circumstances (the system) that surrounds the object. For example, if you are a genius that can do arithmetical operations without a calculator then the value of a calculator is small to you but if you are bonehead and can't do arithmetic in your head then a calculator is pretty valuable. A physical concept that formalizes and clarifies this idea is that of work. A force does work on a system if the force acts in the direction of some distance. However if the force acts in a direction perpendicular to the distance thought which it travels then it does no work. This may seem counter intuitive if you have not studied physics. Here is an example. If you carry a bucket of water for 5 miles you get tired and think that you have done a fair amount of work. But since the force you apply to carry the bucket acts in a direction perpendicular to the surface of the earth and you walk on the surface of the earth, a physicist would say that you have done no work. You may complain about this but it is true. Why do I tell you all this? Well I think that a way to find out the inherent value of things could be formalized by using these ideas. Basically, if a system (maybe the environment, or a company, or a task) is moving in a particular direction and an individuals' contribution or skills points in the same direction then that individual is adding positive value (has inherent value). If on the other hand a persons' skills and or interests lie in a direction perpendicular to that of a companies' direction then there is no value added. If we use this idea in the context of an objects' usefulness we can draw the same type of picture. Say a task such as writing an article for the web is the goal of the task. There are many tools available to accomplish this task. One could be to use a favorite editor and write HTML directly. Another approach could be to use an HTML editor like for example Front Page. I am using Front Page to write this article so I have made my choice. How did I do this? I evaluate the alignment between the direction of the task/goal (to write an article for the WEB) and the direction in which the available tools' point. I choose the one that aligns more closely because it is the one that has more value. Easy. A useful mathematical tool that allows us to formalize this idea is readily available. It is called the scalar product or "dot product". The dot product between two vectors (or directions) is equal to 1 if the two directions coincide and it is 0 if the directions are perpendicular (or orthogonal) to each other, however if the vectors point in opposite directions then the dot product is equal to -1. This seems useful. If say Microsoft's goal is to make money and I determine that they can do this by providing a product such as Front Page and I likewise determine that my interests and skills lie in alignment with what is needed to produce Front Page then I am a potential value added to Microsoft. Potential because it depends on my not being a slacker and actually going to work, but lets assume that is the case. These ideas make sense provided that companies, people, environments, tasks, etc. have a direction, or in other words a goal. If we argue that there is no goal(s) then these ideas all come crashing down and I would then agree with Paracelsus that objects and people have no inherent value. However, it is clear that companies have goals, and that tasks have goals, etc. Take biological systems on earth for example, they have the goal to survive. So in a way we can think of evolution as a river flowing in some direction and the biological systems that live on the planet are the generations which have successfully aligned their skill sets (adaptation) with the system. If they had performed this alignment then they would have perished. Another interesting thing to notice is that the direction of a system can change with time. Sometimes the change can be drastic. For example, dinosaurs, it is believed, where faced with rapidly a rapidly changing environment they could not adapt to quickly enough and hence perished. But these ideas do not stop with systems here on earth. I think these ideas can be abstracted and generalized even more than this. Take the universe entirely. Are we to believe that this system is goal-less? And if it is why does it then have well defined laws? Why if there is no goal is there not a complete lack of structure. I agree that in a completely chaotic universe there would be no inherent value in anything at all, but in a universe with well defined structures and predictable behaviors it must be the case that there is some goal, and that is all it takes to have objects with inherent value.
zaP |
