Since you left 'valuable' intentionally vague, I asked myself what the value of a piece of knowledge would be.
So I quickly came up with a simple model. Just take the integral of the value you get from this piece of knowledge over time, I thought. This helps you measure if a one-time payoff of knowledge A is better than the repeated payoff of knowledge B. Then I realized gauging value is more nuanced. How to model the value of things that are less tangible like insurance? The Heimlich maneuver may have a really high value in the case that my friend chokes, but very low value otherwise.
But this kind of knowledge is harder to focus on when we measure our knowledge by some simple value model. Surely you didn't expect an answer to "the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour" to be about what the best kind of insurance you should get?
Since you left 'valuable' intentionally vague, I asked myself what the value of a piece of knowledge would be.
So I quickly came up with a simple model. Just take the integral of the value you get from this piece of knowledge over time, I thought. This helps you measure if a one-time payoff of knowledge A is better than the repeated payoff of knowledge B. Then I realized gauging value is more nuanced. How to model the value of things that are less tangible like insurance? The Heimlich maneuver may have a really high value in the case that my friend chokes, but very low value otherwise.
But this kind of knowledge is harder to focus on when we measure our knowledge by some simple value model. Surely you didn't expect an answer to "the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour" to be about what the best kind of insurance you should get?