CONCEPT
Conversion Factors
The personal, social, and environmental conditions that determine whether a resource actually translates into a capability — the analytical mechanism that reveals why identical tools produce radically different human outcomes.
Conversion factors are the conditions — personal, social, and environmental — that determine whether a given resource translates into a capability the person can exercise. A bicycle is a resource; mobility is a capability. The conversion depends on whether the person can ride, whether roads exist, whether cultural conditions permit riding, whether physical condition allows it. The same resource produces radically different capability expansions in different contexts. Applied to AI, the concept reveals why a Claude Code subscription that transforms the life of a San Francisco engineer leaves the developer in Lagos encountering a thicket of conversion failures: unreliable power, limited bandwidth, economic precarity, absent financial infrastructure.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Sen distinguishes three broad categories of conversion factors. Personal conversion factors are internal to the individual — physical condition, cognitive preparation, skills, health. Social conversion factors belong to the society — legal institutions, cultural norms, gender relations, social hierarchies, public policies. Environmental conversion factors are aspects of the physical and infrastructural