SoullessAutomaton comments on The Price of Life - Less Wrong

5 Post author: BenAlbahari 20 March 2010 09:40AM

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Comment author: Jonii 20 March 2010 01:18:20PM 6 points [-]

To me, the connotation of Wilde's quote was that it's a bad thing to be aware that everything has a price, and the truly valuable things, e.g. "the smile of a baby" (the cuteness of a bunny?) cannot be priced.

That could be implied by larger context, but the quote, as it stands, only expresses the idea that prices and values are separate things. It could be that there was some meaningful conversion chart, or it could be that there wasn't. If we take that there isn't any chart for some things, it still doesn't imply that the price was infinite, it just means that talking about price doesn't make any sense. Analogy would be measuring happiness in kilograms. Lack of conversion chart doesn't imply that happiness means infinite kilograms.

The disconnect between values and prices could be described as something like "It has a high price because many people value it", not the other way around. Values are why we do things, and losing sight of those, staring only at price tags without understanding why there are prices in the first place, that's what Wilde seems to describe cynicism to be.

Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 20 March 2010 10:37:35PM 0 points [-]

My interpretation was to read "value" as roughly meaning "subjective utility", which indeed does not, in general, have a meaningful exchange rate with money.