I agree with the basic sentiment of the post, but not the framing. The problem is not that these things are literally unquantifiable, but that they are quantifiable in too many ways and dimensions to allow us to summarize them in a single canonical number, or even a vector of numbers, in a way that captures our intuition adequately. Judgement requires us to take all these dimensions into account when we act, but it is difficult, probably impossible, to formalize that process in a satisfactory way, especially considering that we are always learning from the feedback from our actions.
Virtue could be ineptly quantified in a large number of ways. Trying to take it as seriously as possible, one might aggregate all the things people care about. Just dealing with all that is nearly impossible, but arguing that the result is properly “calibrated” seems ridiculous.
Your question about units is very important. Dollars are economic units. They used to have a definition in terms of silver or gold, but no longer. It is a floating proxy. We could select one of the many dimensions as a numeraire, plus a “price list” showing how to convert the other units into the numeraire. This shows how hopeless the task is, even without considering marginal analysis.
I agree with the basic sentiment of the post, but not the framing. The problem is not that these things are literally unquantifiable, but that they are quantifiable in too many ways and dimensions to allow us to summarize them in a single canonical number, or even a vector of numbers, in a way that captures our intuition adequately. Judgement requires us to take all these dimensions into account when we act, but it is difficult, probably impossible, to formalize that process in a satisfactory way, especially considering that we are always learning from the feedback from our actions.
Can you explain how virtue might be quantifiable, even in theory? What are the units?
Virtue could be ineptly quantified in a large number of ways. Trying to take it as seriously as possible, one might aggregate all the things people care about. Just dealing with all that is nearly impossible, but arguing that the result is properly “calibrated” seems ridiculous.
Your question about units is very important. Dollars are economic units. They used to have a definition in terms of silver or gold, but no longer. It is a floating proxy. We could select one of the many dimensions as a numeraire, plus a “price list” showing how to convert the other units into the numeraire. This shows how hopeless the task is, even without considering marginal analysis.
E.g., conventional economists might consider a bad proxy better than no proxy. I think this is probably a mistake.
Not sure, though, well ever figure it out. Unless of course we can solve EVERYTHING which would then put us in the realm of the eternal?