Maybe one should adopt a universal standard yardstick for this kind of thing, though—so such questions can be answered meaningfully. For that we need something that everyone (or practically everyone) values. I figure maybe the love of a cute kitten could be used as a benchmark. Better yardstick proposals would be welcome, though.
It’d have to be a funny yardstick. Almost nothing we value scales linearly. I would start getting tired of kittens after about 4,250 of them had gone by.
What do you estimate the utility of Less Wrong to be?
Roughly 4,250 expected utilons.
Could you please convert to dust specks?
Well yes: the question was a bit ambiguous.
Maybe one should adopt a universal standard yardstick for this kind of thing, though—so such questions can be answered meaningfully. For that we need something that everyone (or practically everyone) values. I figure maybe the love of a cute kitten could be used as a benchmark. Better yardstick proposals would be welcome, though.
If only there existed some medium of easy comparison, such that we could easily compare the values placed on common goods and services...
Exactly: the elephant in my post ;-)
I don’t think elephants are a very practical yardstick. For a start, they’re of varying size. I mean, apparently they can fit in posts now!
Way to Other-ize dog people.
It’d have to be a funny yardstick. Almost nothing we value scales linearly. I would start getting tired of kittens after about 4,250 of them had gone by.
Velocity runs into diminishing returns too near the speed of light—but it is still useful to try and measure it—and a yardstick can help with that.
That’s all?
:-(
Keep in mind that that’s only up to an affine transformation ;).
All? All? That buys you a few hundred tech shares, or The Ultimate answer to Life, the Universe and Everything Universe Takeovers and a Half! :-)
That’s 425 tech shares/trades, or four and a quarter Universe takeovers! :-)