I just lately described the contradictions inherent in my fitness-tracking watch. On the one hand, it had unlocked the enjoyment of operating for me, encouraging me to run additional and sooner and set targets I’d by no means dreamt of reaching. On the opposite, the watch might additionally push me into counter-productive behaviour, akin to operating by way of harm — and had a bent to show a nice run right into a quantified grind.
What an eye-opening delight, then, to choose up C Thi Nguyen’s e book The Rating. Nguyen is a thinker and, extra importantly, an fanatic for all kinds of playful exercise from rock-climbing to yo-yo methods to role-playing video games. He argues that the contradiction I discovered in my health watch is a part of a a lot larger story about the best way we’ve got allowed quantified metrics to seep into so many components of life.
The tyranny of targets is acquainted stuff to social scientists, even when it appears to be a supply of limitless disagreeable surprises for policymakers and company executives. Charles Goodhart, an economist, and Donald Campbell, a psychologist, every famously defined that completely first rate quantitative metrics turn out to be corrupted as soon as they’re pressed into service as targets.
Nguyen agrees, however desires to go additional. The issue is not only that we contort our behaviour to hit the goal within the service of some bureaucratic incentive; it’s that we stop to grasp that we’re contorting our behaviour in any respect. The metrics, that are inevitably reductive, start to seep into our personal judgment of what issues. Nguyen calls this worth seize: we abandon our wealthy and delicate private values in favour of the simplified, quantified values we’re being so conveniently provided.
Why does this occur? A easy reply is “due to computer systems”, however there may be extra to it than that. The rise of quantification isn’t the results of some tech-bro conspiracy. It’s been taking place for a very long time and for some good causes.
First, quantified evaluations — of a pupil essay, a surgeon’s security report or a bottle of wine — will be added up, averaged, analysed and in contrast throughout contexts. They turn out to be moveable: you possibly can evaluate one faculty class to a different, one hospital to a different, one wine producer to a different. All the pieces will be analysed from a distance.
Second, quantification is commonly the results of algorithmic guidelines. Take the inputs, crank the algorithmic deal with and out come the outputs. For those who’re a college president wanting your establishment to stand up the rankings, there are levers to drag: persuade extra candidates to use with the intention to be extra selective, spend cash on the library and assist your graduates discover jobs. These guidelines are accessible: you don’t want deep experience to use them or to interpret them.
Third, these algorithmic procedures are likely to make individuals interchangeable. Slightly than counting on the ineffable intuitions of a trainer or a health care provider or a coach, you’ve got an goal, constant course of: any certified individual can comply with the quantified course of and so all certified individuals are substitutes for one another.
Fourth, all these quantified metrics permit a centralised authority to co-ordinate and management what would in any other case be a large number of idiosyncratic choices.
Portability, accessibility, interchangeability and co-ordination are sometimes enormous benefits. It’s no exaggeration to counsel that trendy life, together with trendy science, trendy know-how, trendy politics and the fashionable economic system, will depend on these 4 key options of quantification.
However every of the 4 has a draw back. Whereas quantification permits us to make comparisons throughout totally different contexts, it additionally strips away these contexts. Guidelines-based choices are intelligible and accessible to non-experts, however they’re additionally inflexible, failing to adapt to the subtleties of circumstance. Making individuals interchangeable does away with unwelcome inconsistencies, but in addition robs decision-making of particular person judgment and sensitivity. And the draw back of co-ordination is the lack of autonomy.
There are good metrics and dangerous ones, in fact. Some are corrupt, counter-productive and riddled with perverse incentives. Others impose methodology on insanity, figuring out more practical medicines, extra productive manufacturing strategies or extra worthwhile trades.
Nonetheless, even the most effective metrics are inevitably reductive, stripping away context, discretion and judgment. These metrics additionally strip away variety, forcing everybody to agree on what’s finest, even once we ought to let a thousand flowers bloom. Within the pre-metric period, a college may need had a particular outlook, aiming to serve a specific sort of pupil in a specific manner. As soon as every college desires to stand up the rankings they might want to embrace no matter values the rankings enshrine. If the metrics are good ones, then high quality would possibly rise, however the vary of choices will shrink. If the metrics are dangerous ones, then each high quality and variety will endure.
There could also be little level in making an attempt to show the tide of quantification in enterprise and coverage, however we are able to at the very least attempt to stop it seeping into our souls. But why is it really easy to let the info rule the best way we sleep, the best way we transfer, the best way we eat and even the best way we work together our pals? Sure, digital gadgets have been designed to twiddle our dials. However the world can be a complicated place and we’re hungry for easy, accessible steering. Rely an excessive amount of on the metrics, nevertheless, and we danger outsourcing our judgment and changing it with skinny, globalised values that don’t actually replicate who we’re.
Like Nguyen, I like video games, and video games have guidelines and a rating. Why do they really feel so totally different from the gamified world during which we chase streaks on our language-learning apps, attempt to transfer the VO2 needle on our health watches and, at work, crank away at some company efficiency metric with one eye on promotion?
Maybe the key to an excellent sport or sport is that the targets are each tantalisingly difficult and completely unimportant: that’s true of my marathon, Nguyen’s rock-climbing, a sport of soccer or a sport of chess. What makes the sport enjoyable is that it’s so onerous to succeed — and that whether or not you succeed or fail, you possibly can at all times play one other sport.
In a enjoyable sport, the principles are a scaffolding for frolicsome mastery. And in a gamified life? The foundations could also be a scaffolding for productiveness — however all too typically, they’re a cage for us poor gamers.
Written for and first revealed within the Monetary Instances on 4 Feb 2026.
I’m operating the London Marathon in April in assist of an excellent trigger. For those who felt capable of contribute one thing, I’d be extraordinarily grateful.
