The Eliezer scale, found on this post, is the following:

  1. We’re going to build the next Facebook!
  2. We’re going to found the next Apple!
  3. Our product will create sweeping political change! This will produce a major economic revolution in at least one country! (Seasteading would be change on this level if it worked; creating a new country successfully is around the same level of change as this.)
  4. Our product is the next nuclear weapon. You wouldn’t want that in the wrong hands, would you?
  5. This is going to be the equivalent of the invention of electricity if it works out.
  6. We’re going to make an IQ-enhancing drug and produce basic change in the human condition.
  7. We’re going to build serious Drexler-class molecular nanotechnology.
  8. We’re going to upload a human brain into a computer.
  9. We’re going to build a recursively self-improving Artificial Intelligence.
  10. We think we’ve figured out how to hack into the computer our universe is running on.

Unfortunately, most existing startups and startup ideas would fall between 0 and 1; the main reason, I would guess, being that short-term, low-hanging types of products tend to be simple improvements of existing ones.

Also, higher rated ideas on this scale tend to require fundamental research and overall harder reasoning, including increased risk.

What I would like to do, is simply ask the question: are you happy with where your project/product/research ends up on this scale ? I think we should, as a species, value more highly items that rank high on this list. (And besides, finding a glitch in the universe would be pretty cool).