stockfish claims that the starting position without the g1 knight is -4.5 for white

chess engine evaluation points seem to have come to mean something more than the value of pieces. i guess it makes sense that a powerful engine can usually see ways for the player with a material advantage to leverage that into more advantage, but it really makes me question the commonly cited relative piece values. if being a knight up often gives you an extra 50% immaterial advantage, does that not apply to a pawn? why is a knight said to be only worth 3? in either case it seems something is wrong

there may not be any better baseline available, but i find it misleading to refer to points as 'pawns'

similar to mind and body, a piece cannot be isolated from the surrounding position

interestingly, missing the e-pawn gives -1.0 and missing the f-pawn gives -1.7

it might be fun to look at the rating given to every starting position missing a single piece. i wonder if stockfish has an api to do that