I do think that an infant is not worth much except their sentimental value to their family.
All meaning is in our heads. That doesn’t make that meaning any less real. If someone places a lot of meaning on their infant dying, then the infant had a lot of value. If you want to put a dollar value on it, then you can ask the family how much they would pay to bring their child back to life. I would expect most people would pay a lot.
True, but the value is to them. (And what they pay to save the infant has a major signaling component. From what I see of my grandparents who lived in a much more traditional era (Iran’s modernization is more recent.), they did not value young children that much, and recognized the reality that they could just have another child relatively cheaply.) That value will be discounted heavily in my utility function, as it does not contribute either directly to me or to the core needs of my society. (Kind of reminds me of Malthusianism; Humanity right now could probably live a lot less bullshitty if it had controlled its population more intelligently.)
Yes, and not just in this case. Value is always to some individual: There is no value outside of someone’s brain. When we say “value to society”, that’s shorthand for “the aggregation of the value inside every individual’s head”.
Money measures some of the value inside people’s heads: You pay $20 for a shirt, and I can tell that you value the shirt by at least $20. When I go for a walk, I’m not paying anyone, but that doesn’t mean the value is $0.
All meaning is in our heads. That doesn’t make that meaning any less real. If someone places a lot of meaning on their infant dying, then the infant had a lot of value. If you want to put a dollar value on it, then you can ask the family how much they would pay to bring their child back to life. I would expect most people would pay a lot.
True, but the value is to them. (And what they pay to save the infant has a major signaling component. From what I see of my grandparents who lived in a much more traditional era (Iran’s modernization is more recent.), they did not value young children that much, and recognized the reality that they could just have another child relatively cheaply.) That value will be discounted heavily in my utility function, as it does not contribute either directly to me or to the core needs of my society. (Kind of reminds me of Malthusianism; Humanity right now could probably live a lot less bullshitty if it had controlled its population more intelligently.)
Yes, and not just in this case. Value is always to some individual: There is no value outside of someone’s brain. When we say “value to society”, that’s shorthand for “the aggregation of the value inside every individual’s head”.
Money measures some of the value inside people’s heads: You pay $20 for a shirt, and I can tell that you value the shirt by at least $20. When I go for a walk, I’m not paying anyone, but that doesn’t mean the value is $0.