That... seems odd to me. Doesn't that imply all projects are equally valuable to the world? Given this approach, it seems to make sense to always pick the least popular project because your influence there will be the greatest. Is that true?
You're partially correct. All projects are equally valuable to the world in the eyes of the Gridcoin network. Who would be the one deciding what project should get more and who should get less and on what grounds? Is searching for Asteroids less valuable than medical treatments, or new improved mathematical calculations less valuable than scanning signals from outer space?
You could pick the "least popular project" but since everyone could do that it wouldn't be the least popular pretty soon and Gridcoin has succeeded in the splendid art of redistributing the computational power that the project otherwise might not have gotten.
All whitelisted projects, you mean. Equality is a nice idea, but it's not entirely obtainable unless we tell ourselves certain stories. I agree it's quite difficult to measure the value of these projects because we as a species don't have systems for valuing life, existence, consciousness, etc. That said, I do think it's worthwhile to at least attempt to rank things according to some framework. Does it increase wellbeing of conscious creatures? Stuff like that.
Either way, I think it's a pretty awesome idea, and I'm having fun learning more about it. :)