Value and Potential Value: First Principles of Existence

The Hidden Bridge Between Physics and Human Worth

I'm fascinated by how the laws of physics might secretly govern of more complex aspects of our daily existance to broader scale thigns like humanity and life itself. Our universe runs on time, energy, and matter, with entropy and causality changing things up. How do those come into play on the different scales?

What I've come to see is that both realms-the physical and the human-share a fundamental drive: persistence. From the way atoms cling to their electrons, changing state primarily when 'excited' to how we humans fight to preserve our cultures and lives, everything seems to be saying the same thing: "I want to keep existing."

The Basis of Value 🛠️

We have things for a reason. We use them to help us for some purpose. They can help for a variety of purposes, from the most basic, like physiological needs, to the more complex, like helping us achieve our goals, as you'd see in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

🥪 Physiological needs: Food, water, shelter, sleep, wifi, etc...
🏠 Safety needs: Safety, security, stability, etc...
❤️ Love and Belonging needs: Social interaction, relationships, etc...
🌟 Esteem needs: Recognition, respect, etc...
🎯 Self-actualization needs: Personal growth, creativity, etc...

Different things are useful for different purposes. Sometimes the things are useful for multiple purposes. Sometimes, the things are useful for purpose that limited to being almost nothing at all. Something like a bobble head plastic elvis in a car dashboard, may only provid a bit of happiness for those who see it. It might signal interests and personality to others, but its total value may be primarily derived from the owner's experience of buying it in Hawaii.

In general, though, the more complex something is, the more diverse value it can provide. Take your computer. It can be used for a variety of purposes. You can use it to browse the web, write documents, make art, edit videos, play games, and more. The more complex something is, the more diverse value it can provide. A spoon? Well that's good for stirring soup or maybe playfully patting your loved one on the arm with it. It certainly won't be doing your taxes!

What Really Makes Something Valuable?

Strip away all the complexity, and what does value actually mean? I'd argue it's simply this: something has value when it helps sustain existence. Not just immediate survival, but the rich, ongoing experiment of life itself.

When I buy groceries, I'm not just exchanging paper for food-I'm trading for continued existence. When communities protect watersheds or pass down knowledge, they're investing in collective survival. Even art and music, seemingly "non-essential," feed the psychological existence that makes being human worthwhile.

Now, this matters way beyond philosophy class. It actually changes how we should think about everything. From personal spending to public policy.

Duration Matters: The Time-Value of Everything

I've noticed something peculiar about value: things that benefit us for longer periods tend to matter more. A one-time pleasure is nice, but knowledge that serves you for decades is transformative. An investment that helps one person is good, but one that helps generations is revolutionary.

Consider two innovations:

A viral social media app that captivates users for six months
A water purification technique accessible to everyone

Both might generate billions in economic activity, but which creates more actual value? The app provides fleeting entertainment before becoming digital dust. The water system sustains life for generations. Their market values might be identical, but their true values couldn't be more different.

Markets: Useful Tools, Terrible Masters

I'm not anti-market-person. I'm impressed how markets (can) efficiently allocate resources. But I've watched how easily they conflate price with value, often with disastrous results.

Take Tesla and Twitter/X. One company focuses on sustainable energy for humanity's future; the other sells attention and controversy. Which represents more potential value for our collective existence? Yet market valuations have, at times, suggested Twitter/X was worth more.

This isn't to dismiss profit-it's to recognize that markets measure only what can be captured privately in the near term. They're blind to value that's shared widely or realized far in the future. That's not a moral failing of markets; it's simply how they're designed.

Value Creation vs. Value Extraction

The most important distinction might be between creating value and extracting it. Many of our economic incentives reward the latter while pretending it's the former.

Creating value means leaving the world with more potential for sustained existence than you found it. Teaching someone to read creates value. Building infrastructure creates value. Developing medical treatments creates value.

Extracting value means capturing existing value without adding to it-or worse, reducing the total. Monopolistic pricing extracts value. Polluting for profit extracts value. Misleading marketing extracts value.

The tragedy is how often we reward extraction over creation.

Existence: The Only Fundamental Currency

When we drill down to first principles, one truth emerges above all: existence precedes everything else. Without existence, there can be no value, no meaning, no experience, no anything.

This is practical. Preserving and expanding the sphere of conscious existence is the bedrock upon which all other values must be built. Not just human existence, but the rich history of life that has made our existence.

What fascinates me is how this perspective cuts through so many false dichotomies. If continued existence is the fundamental value, then the supposed tensions between individual and collective, between short-term and long-term, largely dissolve. What truly serves one usually serves all.

This concept deserves its own exploration in depth (as you suggested, a separate blog post), but the implications are significant: our measure of success-as individuals, organizations, and civilizations-should ultimately be whether we've expanded the possibility space for continued conscious existence.

Creating Value Systems That Last

Physics teaches us that entropy always increases-order naturally dissolves into disorder. Yet life itself represents a temporary reversal of this trend, creating islands of increasing complexity and order.

Our human value systems face the same entropic pressures. Short-term thinking is easier than long-term planning. Consumption feels better than conservation. Individual benefit is more visible than collective good.

The real challenge? It goes way beyond just creating value. We need to build systems that keep generating value with minimal input. I call these "value flywheels."

Here are some examples:

Educational institutions that produce both knowledge and knowledge-creators
Environmental protections that preserve regenerative ecological systems
Cultural traditions that provide both meaning and meaning-makers
Economic systems that reward true value creation over extraction

These are the highest achievements of human civilization-not because they're profitable, but because they create conditions for ongoing flourishing.

The Ultimate Challenge: Create More Than You Consume

If I could distill this entire essay into one imperative, it would be this: create more value than you consume.

Look, this goes way beyond being a nice person. This is literally the mathematical requirement for not collapsing.

Systems that consistently consume more value than they create? They fall apart. Every time.

This applies to individuals, organizations, economies, and civilizations.

The good news is that humans are astonishingly good at value creation when properly motivated and organized. Our capacity for innovation, cooperation, and foresight gives us the potential to build systems that generate more value than they consume, potentially for eons to come.

The question isn't whether we can create such systems, but whether we will choose to.

What gives me hope is that once you view the world through this lens-seeing value as potential for continued existence-many of our seemingly intractable problems become more solvable. Not easy, but at least clear in principle.

And clarity about first principles is often where the most meaningful progress begins.

Value and Potential Value: The first principles of existance