waarderenals

Waarderenals is a term used in hypothetical discussions of value theory and artificial intelligence to describe a framework for evaluating options by mapping qualitative values to explicit criteria and the idea of assessing things "as" fulfilling those criteria. The term blends the Dutch woorden waarderen (to value) and als (as) and is used to illustrate how evaluative judgments can be articulated within decision processes.

Definition and concept: In a waarderenals approach, values are treated as first-class criteria that can be encoded, weighed, and queried. Each alternative is described in terms of how it is valued "as" meeting specific value categories, such as autonomy, fairness, well-being, or sustainability. The emphasis is on separating descriptive facts from evaluative judgments to improve transparency.

Origins and context: The concept appears in speculative or exploratory literature on value alignment, ethics of AI, and decision theory. It is not widely standardized and serves more as a conceptual tool to discuss how value judgments might be formalized without assuming a single universal value hierarchy.

Mechanics: Practically, waarderenals envisions encoding values as criteria with associated weights and thresholds. An agent—human or machine—then computes a value score for each action or option based on how well it satisfies each criterion and how those criteria are aggregated. This supports interpretability, traceability, and potential human oversight.

Applications and critique: The framework is discussed in ethical governance, risk assessment, and AI ethics debates as a way to decompose and justify value judgments. Critics point to unresolved questions about which values to include, how to weight them, and how to handle context-dependent or conflicting values.