Thank you for going into detail, and this makes perfect sense. (I sort of assumed that this is what you meant but I'm trying to get out of the habit of assuming if I don't have to.)

> I do not subscribe to the Platonic view.

This relates directly to the above then, huh. In other words, there cannot be a Platonic notion of 'value' as value only has meaning as a private symbol to a specific brain. Am I grokking this?

> She didn't participate in fucking activity, not yet at any rate. Why did you ?

I think I see what you mean. I can (and do) assign provisional value to things based on the observed properties of that thing and whether I've, personally, found those properties to be valuable in prior experience.

> If you're gonna go down that path, might as well being an engineer right now, why wait for it.

'Measurement' may have been a misnomer. I meant 'value-finding' within a market of humans.

> This is a weak line of inquiry, not least because the respondent has at the ready the tools of this our republic to butcher you with : "to, specifically, pa&ptCrhuR". What now ?

I suppose you're right. Consider that line of inquiry thoroughly butchered!

Let's start with an analogy.

A child is born at some arbitrary moment in time. At some other, later point in the life of that child, someone else, palpably not the child in question, decides it's old enough to go in a car. This decision is not explained to the child, but manifested to it : as far as the child knows, the car just appears in his life, and takes him places.

The car, however, is not an instrument for "taking you places", such as to the sweet warm bosom of a loving woman. The car is an instrument for moving either down a straight line, or down a circular section of certain radius, in any combination the person seated behind the switch (also called "wheel") analogicaly chooses.

Your brain is exactly like the car : at some point in your life not-you decided your brain now works inside of you ; but your brain is not an instrument of seeking truth. It is an instrument of seeking the perpetuation of your genes -- some things that have relatively little to do with you.

For which reason, the concept of value, and your private symbol of value, have anything in common only coincidentally. It's true that some people flatter themselves with better rapport to coincidences than the average ; it's also true most people can systematically improve their apparent rapport to coincidence. Nevertheless, the fact that the car can be made to take you places arbitrarily often doesn't ever, no matter what happens, no matter how long an interval ellapses, make it something else. The car stays what it is, and forever will. Have you ever met one of those drivers proud to never have been in an accident ? How much of it did you think it was their doing ?

> First, there's the concept of value.

I do not subscribe to the Platonic view.

> For something to have value it must first participate in human activity.

It this were so, what about mining ?

What about, moreover, the simple fact no doubt already familiar to your senses whereby the very hot women you've never fucked before make larger blips on your radar than the even hotter women you fuck whenever you feel like ?

Walk with me down the street, if you will, and through my eyes see this hottie. Turn to whichever slut in your escort you feel like and say "go talk to her". Watch the hottie who'd been walking a step behind you for a mile or ten thousand sway her ass towards the hottie approaching, and wonder why the fuck you thought "hottie" about the latter. Why did you ? She didn't participate in fucking activity, not yet at any rate. Why did you ?

> Furthermore, for something to have value it necessarily means that a ~specific set~ of humans (a finite set where each member can be enumerated and identified) have determined this through ~measurement~ of some kind.

If you're gonna go down that path, might as well being an engineer right now, why wait for it.

> Thus, with the above in mind, the very idea that something can be either a benefit or a cost 'to society as a whole' seems quite absurd; a benefit/cost to who specifically?

This is a weak line of inquiry, not least because the respondent has at the ready the tools of this our republic to butcher you with : "to, specifically, pa&ptCrhuR". What now ?