Axiology

See: What is Value? - Blithering Genius.

Related Reading on Psychological Value: Drive-Reduction Theory of Pain, Pleasure, and Motivation.

Related Reading: What is Subjectivity? - Blithering Genius.

People can create their own theories of values that have completely different hierarchies from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. These “exceptions” to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs should be seen as contradictions, not exceptions. A true scientific theory would never have exceptions that contradict the theory itself. It would be more accurate to say that there is a tendency for physiological needs to rank above other needs, but this is by no means a law, just a strong tendency. Additionally, it would make the most sense to place Life and Reproduction at the top of the value hierarchy, according to a Darwinian perspective.

There is no higher authority who can tell you what to do with your life, or what is the right value, besides yourself. It is up to every individual to decide for themselves how their values should be judged, chosen, ranked, and prioritized, ideally in a rational manner.

• All life is designed to reproduce because all life evolved to reproduce. Even if someone chooses not to have children, there is no denying that their bodies, desires, and even their DNA were all shaped by millions of years of continuous reproduction.
• Upholding reproduction as a primary value to strive for reduces the misfortunes of Evolutionary Mismatch (as long as artificial barriers to reproduction are installed).
• Having and raising children gives meaning to human lives, which gives them a goal to strive towards when fulfilling the power process². It is natural for humans to want and like raising children.
• Valuing reproduction is compatible with many biological, social, and psychological desires: the desires to have love, sex, children, raise them.
• Having children and passing one’s genes onto them is a way of ensuring a form of immortality, which has psychological benefits. DNA is the most intrinsic thing about any organism because every organism is an expression of what the DNA did in its environment.
• Having offspring that will continue the human species for a countless number of future generations gives humans something to look forwards to.
• Reproduction and selection in humans selects good genes and excludes bad genes for future generations.
• Aside from rewarding the most productive people and couples with more children, continuing human reproduction in the proposed manner of artificial barriers and incentives to continue to human civilization maintains genetic variation, which will help sustain the future human population through many crises.
• If humans are designed to be reproducing machines that survive, struggle, and thrive, we might as well do it gloriously: forming empires with giant temples and monuments, colonizing the stars, keeping a massive archive of everything we’ve done and achieved, and doing everything we can to prolong and further human civilization.
• Setting reproduction as one’s purpose in life immanentizes the abyss upon rejecting philosophical theories of value like hedonism.
• Reproduction is an organism’s objective purpose. Choosing to willingly affirm it as one’s purpose in life on a personal level is to synchronize one’s subjective purpose with their objective purpose.
• Those who make the greatest ideas own the future.
• Those who reproduce own the future (in terms of genetics).

In the examples above (and potentially many cases), there are many s-factors that could influence the calculations of the g-factors. Some people will dispute the weights of the s-factors, and some people may be biased towards including or excluding various s-factors. Other people reject g-factors altogether because there are different ways to assess and compute them, and they think that g-factors obscure information. But as we shall see, most people would agree there are indeed “fair” ways to create metrics that accurately assess, correlate, and synthesize the measurements of various s-factors into dense amounts of information.

If someone believes that it’s possible in any one of these scenarios to create a score, ranking, or category that assigns an overall rating for all the individual components together, then they also have to accept that the same can be done for all the other cases in this list, if they wish to be logically consistent. For example, if a Georgist claims that IQ cannot be measured accurately, but they also believe that (unimproved) land values can be accurately assessed, then they have a contradiction. If both of these g-factors are based on multiple different s-factors, and one can be accurately assessed, then why not the other as well? Land value appraisals and IQ scores may not be the same thing, but they are both calculated using the same fundamental assumptions. The calculations of these g-factors both assume that there are reasonable ways to measure the s-factors, that there are “fair” ways to determine the weightings for each s-factor, and that the g-factors measure and communicate useful information, albeit in a compressed form.

The second way to be logically consistent is to believe that it’s never meaningful, useful, or fair to create g-factors that measure all these s-factors overall. This would require rejecting the validity of land value appraisal, IQ tests, general language proficiency ratings, weighted grading, and every other conceivable g-factor. The justification would most likely be that the assumptions for computing g-factors are invalid, or one of the following reasons, which we shall demonstrate and address with examples:

• The Fallacy of Composition is an informal fallacy that arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole.
  • For example, someone may infer that having a remarkably high ability for visual-spatial reasoning implies having a high IQ. It’s true that higher s-factors tend to correlate with having higher g-factors, but we always have to keep in mind s-factors do not say anything about g-factors directly. The only way to accurately measure and judge a g-factor is to assess every s-factor and compute the weighted scoring for the g-factor. The Fallacy of Composition is worth understanding, but it does not invalidate g-factors as long as s-factors aren’t used to make presumptuous conclusions about g-factors without the consideration of other s-factors.
• The Fallacy of Division is applicable regarding whether g-factors can be fairly and accurately isolated into separate s-factors.
  • For example, someone may assume that a high IQ (general intelligence) implies having strong abilities for every type of specialized intelligence. It’s true that high g-factors tend to correlate with having higher s-factors, but we always have to keep in mind that g-factors do not measure specific s-factors directly. The only way to accurately measure and judge an s-factor is to assess the s-factor itself. The Fallacy of Division is worth understanding, but it does not invalidate g-factors as long as they aren’t used to make definitive assessments of s-factors outside the appropriate context.
  • The Fallacy of Division is also relevant when trying to separate the value of improvements to a parcel of land from the other s-factors that affect the appraised value of the land itself. Many anti-Georgists have used this as a talking point to argue that land value tax is “unfair” and problematic. However, it’s already common practice in the real estate industry to assess land values and property values separately from each other, so this generally isn’t an issue.
• Some people may argue: “g-factors can never be a reliable way to measure anything because there are different ways to assess and compute g-factors.”
  • This ignores that g-factors have predictive and explanatory power. g-factors tend to correlate with their s-factors, and vice versa. They don’t always do, but that’s precisely why we have to be mindful of the Composition and Division Fallacies.
  • Even if there are different ways to compute a specific g-factor, the scores for g-factors using one assessment tend to correlate with scores assigned via other assessments.
  • Furthermore, most people wouldn’t reject all g-factors just because they object to one or a few of them, so this is a contradiction. Accepting the validity of at least one g-factor implies accepting the validity of all the others.
• Some people have argued that the analysis of s-factors as g-factors will always be unfair no matter what since g-factors arguably obscure many informational details.
  • The alternative to not using g-factors is to always holistically measure and calculate everything there is to know about X in every context that talks about things relating to X. The problem with this alternative is that it ignores the limited scope and nature of human knowledge. Subjects often have to make decisions based on limited information. g-factors are helpful and useful measurements when they are used appropriately precisely because they are a way to compress lots of information and attain predictive and explanatory power.
• Some people may argue: “What gets measured, gets managed. Collecting statistics about things like race could lead to them getting managed by the state. We don’t have to measure things in order to know information about them.”
  • There are cases where collecting and measuring data may lead to it getting abused. However, if we take this argument to the extreme, then it requires denying knowledge that has predictive and explanatory power. “We shouldn’t collect data on X” implies “We shouldn’t analyze X”, which implies “We should be ignorant about X”.
  • As with everything political and everything that has conflicts of interest, it’s important to have safeguards that prevent information from being abused.
• Goodhart’s Law states: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”.
  • For example, if an IQ score of at least 70 points is necessary for not being considered “retarded”, there may be social pressures for people to jerry-rig IQ tests to avoid labeling some people as “retarded”. Likewise, there may be similar social pressures for reaching IQs of 130+ to be considered “gifted”. However, IQ tests and other g-factors will retain their validity as long as they are used exclusively for measuring and communicating information, and not used as targets.

The Economic Calculation Problem and the necessity of prices are another good reason to accept the validity of g-factors. Prices are a way to measure the economic values of goods and services, and they can also be thought of as information about humanity’s available resources and demands. The price of a product depends on multiple factors: 1. The prices of the inputs to its production. 2. The prices of competing products. 3. The supply and demand for the product, given the prices of other products. Since prices depend on other prices, we can conceptualize every price as being a g-factor that depends on other g-factors (i.e. prices), with the exception of prices for natural resources. Prices are necessary to create a productive and efficient economy, and rejecting the utility of g-factors implies rejecting the utility of prices.

As we have demonstrated, deeming all g-factors to be invalid may be a logically consistent position, but this belief is less reasonable because it ignores the following:

1. The nature of knowledge often requires subjects to make decisions based on limited information.
2. It’s possible to create helpful and useful measurements that attain predictive and explanatory power by compressing lots of information.
3. Just because it’s possible to abuse information, that does not invalidate the utility of the information when it is used in an appropriate context.

When a set of s-factors and their weights are selected and standardized, this can become a formal assessment or appraisement for measuring the g-factor in question.³ For example, some of the most widely accepted guidelines for measuring general language proficiency include the CEFR, the ILR Scale, and other tests. Likewise, some notable IQ tests include the Mensa IQ Challenge, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, and other tests. Some g-factor weightings will be better (more fair) than others, depending on who you ask. But generally speaking, it’s usually possible to reach a consensus or majority opinion that favors “fairer” weightings over more biased weightings. The weights used for the g-factor calculations may be subjective or inter-subjective, but they aren’t completely arbitrary.

This goal of this JavaScript applet⁴ is to demonstrate the visual intuition for how land values, IQ scores, language proficiency, and other g-factors are computed. As such, it features multiple sliders that can model how different scores and weights for s-factors affect the resulting g-factors.

Explaining How The Applet Works

Each slider has some text above it to help us conceptualize each score as an s-factor, and the g-factor label changes to the corresponding text that is selected from the drop down menu. A numerical value is displayed to the right of every slider in order to indicate what its value is.

The g-factor slider uniquely cannot be changed manually, hence why it is grayed-out. The g-factor slider can only increase or decrease in value by changing the scores and/or weights for the s-factors.

The score sliders and the g-factor slider can be anywhere from 0 to 100, while the values from all the weight sliders always sum up to 100, since they are percentages. Increasing the weight of one s-factor with a slider will thus decrease the weights of all the other s-factors, starting with the most highly weighted slider. As a consequence of the applet’s design, this can make it somewhat tedious to precisely allocate the weights for each factor to the exact numeric values that one wants, but this applet still accomplishes its goal at illustrating and modeling the calculation of g-factors using the scores and weights of s-factors.

Using the applet is straight-forward. The user begins by selecting a g-factor that is computed from multiple s-factors from the drop-down list. And they proceed by changing the scores and weights for the s-factors, while observing how these changes affect the selected g-factor.

Land Value Appraisal Location Value Appraisal IQ Calculation General Language Proficiency Weighted Grading Calculation

Score: Weight:

Score: Weight:

Score: Weight:

Score: Weight:

Score: Weight:

Score:

The formula for calculating g-factor is:
g-factor = score_1 * weight_1 + score_2 * weight_2 + ... + score_5 * weight_5.

This tutorial has some notes and limitations that should be pointed out:

• The scores and weights for only five s-factors are displayed here, but there may be far more than just five s-factors for affecting a resulting g-factor in the real world.
• Fewer than five s-factors can be achieved in this demonstration by assigning an s-factor a weight of 0%, which mathematically excludes that s-factor from being used to compute the g-factor.
• All the s-factor and g-factor sliders are limited to values between 0 and 100 in this demonstration. In the real world, these scores often exceed 100 for the units that they use, but it’s too cumbersome to represent values that may go scale up to billions of units, especially for demonstration purposes only.
• g-factors and s-factors that have economic values are not displayed as having monetary units (e.g. dollars, euros, yen, etc), whereas they would be labeled and measured with various currencies in the real world.

As we can see by interacting with the score and weight sliders, the main takeaways here are:

1. The weighted ranking of different s-factors affects the calculation of the g-factor scores.
2. There are indeed many different ways to compute g-factors that are based on multiple different s-factors, but g-factor assessments that that use different weightings tend to correlate with each other.
3. Higher s-factors tend to correlate with higher g-factors and vice versa.
4. Thus even if the calculation of g-factors is subjective, there is still some good basis for it. Overall, it is possible to create “fair” g-factors that are representative of all the different s-factors.

For IQ (general intelligence) specifically, we should acknowledge that it is estimated to be ~80% inheritable (genetic) and 20% environmental. This is different from how IQ is tested and measured, which depends on a weighted and scoring criteria for s-factors.

Disclaimer: The way how this Javascript applet depicts the calculation of IQ scores is an oversimplification of how IQ scores are usually calculated, but the main ideas and takeaways regarding the concept are still accurate.

Mathematically, we can conceptualize the power set of s-factors as all the possible sets of s-factors that could be used to compute a g-factor. Sometimes, a g-factor in one context can even be an s-factor in another context, and vice versa. For example, location value appraisal is a g-factor that is computed based on a location’s proximity to shops, markets, transportation networks, etc (among other things), but location value appraisal is also one of the multiple s-factors that are used to compute the land value appraisal g-factor. More generally, prices are a great example of g-factors that depend on other g-factors.

Game Theory

The study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among selfish rational agents; the study of how and why people make decisions.

Prisoner’s Dilemma

A game-theoretical thought experiment that challenges two completely rational agents: each can cooperate for mutual benefit or betray their partner (“defect”) for individual reward.

Tragedy of the Commons (TotC)

A game-theoretical problem where if numerous independent individuals should enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource e.g. a pasture, they will tend to over-use it, and may end up by destroying its value altogether.

Free-Rider Problem

A game-theoretical problem and market failure that occurs when those who benefit from resources, public goods, and common pool resources do not pay for them or under-pay.

Social Construct

A social convention or perception, used by a particular society to describe human behavior.

Overton Window

The range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.

1. The Nature of Value
2. The Nature of Morality
3. Contract Theory Ethics
4. Political Philosophy: The Foundations of Society

Morality FAQs: These are mostly intended to be a set of follow-up questions that people may ask after reading: What is Morality?.

• Game Theory & Society
• A Paradox of Rationality & Cooperation
• The Prisoner’s Dilemma of Marriage
• Game of Trust (Interactive Game) by Nicky Case
• Friedrich Glasl’s Model of Conflict Escalation

Aesthetics is a branch of applied axiology that is concerned with the nature of beauty and the nature of taste; and functions as the philosophy of art.

See: Wikipedia: Aesthetics.