This sort of thinking seems bad:
me.INTRINSIC_WORTH = 99999999; No matter what I do, this fixed property will remain constant.
This sort of thinking seems socially frowned upon, but accurate:
a.impactOnSociety(time) > b.impactOnSociety(time)
a.qualityOfCharacter > b.qualityOfCharacter // determined by things like altruism, grit, courage, self awareness...
Similar points could be made by replacing a/b with [group of people]. I think it's terrible to say something like:
This race is inherently better than that race. I refuse to change my mind, regardless of the evidence brought before me.
But to me, it doesn't seem wrong to say something like:
Based on what I've seen, I think that the median member of Group A has a higher qualityOfCharacter than the median member of Group B. I don't think there's anything inherently better about Group A. It's just based on what I've observed. If presented with enough evidence, I will change my mind.
Credit and accountability seem like good things to me, and so I want to live in a world where people/groups receive credit for good qualities, and are held accountable for bad qualities.
I'm not sure though. I could see that there are unintended consequences of such a world. For example, such "score keeping" could lead to contentiousness. And perhaps it's just something that we as a society (to generalize) can't handle, and thus shouldn't keep score.
Define qualityOfCharacter and impactOnSociety.
I mean someone else might score you very low on qualityOfCharacter because your family has totally failed to provide a sacrificial infant for the yearly solstice ceremony. (Failure to support important social traditions)
Another might rate your qualityOfCharacter as very low because you reported a neighbor to the police for selling weed on the street corner. (betrayal of member of ingroup to a member of the outgroup)
Another might rate your impactOnSociety as terrible because you eat meat and thus help increase the suffering of creatures around you.
Though if you can come up with a definition of impactOnSociety() that almost everyone from a wide range of backgrounds can agree on then you're probably half way to a utility function for a friendly AI.