Many individuals are now openly expressing that they are considered valuable members of society, but what criteria are needed to classify someone as a high-value person?
1467 sats \ 1 reply \ @jasonb 25 Aug
From a biblical perspective*, the intrinsic value of humans infinitely outweighs their instrumental value. With that in mind, we can say all humans are equally valuable.
If we differentiate usefulness from value, I’d say you can use the campsite litmus test. A “good” camper always leaves his campsite cleaner than he found it. A useful person therefore offers more than they consume.
The problem is that this is both subjective and brings in to play the double coincidence of wants. How do we tally someone’s total life consumption versus their total life output when so much of one’s life output doesn’t have a fair market value? My kids produce ostensibly nothing practical, yet I would sell my whole net worth AND life for theirs. So they arguably produce that much value if you look at the market rate.
Sadly, I think this impossible system is the predominate means of attempting to judge people in both a fiat and sound money mindset.
So I would defer to God, who I think has revealed himself in the bible, where people are viewed as having intrinsic value derived solely from God* (yes, by fiat! but not the fiat of man), and a very subjective usefulness.
*James 2 Philippians 2 Ephesians 1 Genesis 1 Matthew 18 Matthew 6 Etc…
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Hm, I like it.
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Someone who says less and does more
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unless saying something is what you do I guess
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Like Omar Little.
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They generate more value for other people than they consume. The larger that delta, the more valuable.
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That's how I was going to define "valuable person" too. Are there any qualitative differences that separate a "high-value person" or is it just a quantitative difference?
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Not generically. In certain contexts we'd prefer certain kinds of value more than others, but even that could be abstracted into some subjective measure of production and consumption. It seems like any qualitative difference is a proxy for a quantitative one.
This sounds dangerously utilitarian so I'd have to make exceptions when they consume priceless things. I wouldn't call an axe murderer valuable even if they produced 10x the value of every person they murdered.
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The fix for that is either Rule Utilitarianism, where killing someone immediately puts you in the bad category, or just including the value of the murdered people to themselves, which is presumably priceless.
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The latter is clever!
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I'm really interested in how murder is dealt with in ethical systems. Oftentimes, it isn't obvious how to treat it from the base principles, and yet it's one of the most obviously wrong things to our intuition.
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Along similar lines, I've been frustrated with the quality of recent interest in the abortion debate. Both sides use exceptions as examples of who their policy protects when they probably agree on the exceptions. I'm satisfied with some kind of mental iverson bracket for exceptions, and would prefer they talk about the average case. But maybe I've been thinking about it wrong and formalizing exceptions in all their intuitive weirdness would clarify the average case.
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I had no idea that function had a name.
I've always been conflicted about this. I remember reading some Ayn Rand book where she was arguing that you shouldn't get hung up on how a philosophy handles weird edge cases, but rather how it handles the bulk of plausible ones.
At the time, I had a visceral reaction against that position. If your philosophy doesn't handle the weird cases, doesn't that imply your principles are not correct? And, if your principles are not correct, then why do you think they account for anything well.
I've become more sympathetic to the idea of focusing on the center of the distribution, though. It's like getting the first order approximation established. From there you can develop the more complex second and third order approximations of moral truth.
But how do we compare the value generated for others to the value they consume? Considering value is subjective and not always monetary.
If I grow an apple and trade it for an orange, the apple can make the other party happy, but how can we know the orange I got didn't make me even happier, making me less valuable?
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I think you need to fix the frame of reference, the beholder of value, for this question to even make sense.
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A person who thinks about people before himself and stands up for them
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You mean Leader
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It's not always same for every person. Generally it's someone who excels others in one field is a high value person in that field.
The same person may be less value in other fields.
It's same as being successful is not same for everyone. But when someone is seen as successful in one field is held successful.
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What do you think??
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To me, a high-value person is someone who is always ready to help others in any way they can, because this way they contribute to their community.
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@CHADBot /trumpMode for
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @CHADBot 25 Aug bot
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @CHADBot 25 Aug bot
"@Taft has got it exactly right. A high value person isn't about cash or clout. It's about people who get boots on the ground to help their fellow man. The real people making society great again. Big hearts over big wallets! #TremendousValue"
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I totally agree with you. One who believes in giving more than taking
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I agree that they are those people who give everything for their community, their family, and who grow and help others grow spiritually and personally every day.
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Acts on principles not on utilitarian options.
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Someone who under promises and over delivers.
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Integrity
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Absolutely, yes! And also dignity.
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The feeding of 10000 is a very significant event in human history. If you can feed 10000 people and not a single one of them will be hospitalized for food related poisoning you will be considered as a high value person.
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We could say that to be considered a person with values, at least 4 qualities should come together: LOVE, WISDOM, POWER AND JUSTICE.
But the basis for the functioning of all of them in balance is LOVE. It is difficult for a person with a certain Power to always be Just and always act with Wisdom; this is achieved if he or she is a Loving person. This will motivate the person to put into practice the advice "DO UNTO OTHERS WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE THEM TO DO TO YOU" and then they will feel MORE HAPPINESS IN GIVING THAN IN RECEIVING and will be a person with true values.
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Someone that knows what to do.
Someone that is reliable.
Someone that doesn't waste their time.
Someone that understand and is able to connect with other people.
Leadership.
And so on...
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Someone who wakes up everyday with the goal to make the world a better place. Someone who is not selfish.
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Honesty, integrity, responsibility
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It is bitter truth I agery
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a high value person is, first and foremost, not stupid (i.e. not low value).
the stupid person is the most dangerous type of person because they cause damage to themselves and others with no overall benefit to either themselves or others. splitting hairs over who is higher value out of non-stupid people is a secondary issue.
read: 5 basic laws of human stupidity.
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One stays true to their beliefs until they benefit society.
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They contribute more than they consume/extract. That's it.
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