CONCEPT
Tests of Worth
The moments of evaluation through which each order of worth assesses the value of persons and things — and which AI disrupts across multiple orders simultaneously.
Tests of worth are the concrete evaluative moments through which each order of worth operationalizes its grammar of value. In the inspired order, the test is the capacity for genuine creative expression — a painting, a theorem, a performance that carries the mark of originality. In the market order, the test is the transaction — goods or services exchanged at a mutually agreed price. In the industrial order, the test is efficiency — output per unit of input, measurable and comparable. Each order's tests give it institutional reality: without tests, the order is a rhetoric rather than a practice. AI disrupts tests across multiple orders simultaneously, producing the distinctive confusion of the current moment.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The concept is central to Boltanski and Thévenot's framework because it connects abstract grammars of justification to concrete practice. Disputes are not resolved by appeal to philosophical principles; they are resolved by tests that parties accept as authoritative. The worker and the manager do not argue