To the extent this is a real phenomenon, it's because of competition and not measurement. Competitions that are judged qualitatively have the same effects, and measurements without competition (e.g. measuring the height and weight of babies) don't result in power accruing to the folks doing the measuring.
That said, people systematically overvalue anything with numbers attached due not understanding the epistemology of measurement and statistics. That's why managers at software companies are obsessed with pointing tickets, why scientists are obsessed with p-values, why the school system is obsessed with grades, etc. So if you want people to compete more fiercely over something, coming up with some numbers is a good way to make that happen. (At least for a while.)
It'd be nice to believe that this is just a temporary quirk of our current cultural values. But we may also have just topped out, at least for the foreseeable future, in terms of just how well people can really understand the world given a relatively fixed level of intelligence. Even though individuals are ostensibly becoming more transmodernist, it's difficult (as a layperson) to see how that or something like it could ever really could become the dominant philosophical paradigm behind our institutions.
Yes but don't too readily dismiss the notion that he who is tabulating will eventually tabulate into his own favor. Of course, this notion holds no water when looked at from a bureaucratic point of person but if we look at how BANKS are doing we might start wondering if this "overdraft fee" is really a beneficial thing for all or some. To use one concrete example for this camp.
Fair enough, and to the extent that the zeitgeist is sort of retroactively determined by whatever technological and political things are going on at the time, I wonder what new beliefs people will have about the state of the world in 50 or 100 years as the result of DLT.
On the surface the ability of banks to steal from folks seems like largely a different type of power than what the economist is talking about, which is the ability of metrics (and the people who define them) to shape human behavior. But maybe it just looks that way because it's difficult or impossible to really perceive the full extent of how living in a non-DLT world is affecting our behavior.
> But maybe it just looks that way because it's difficult or impossible to really perceive the full extent of how living in a non-DLT world is affecting our behavior.
We don't live in a 'non-DLT world though, DLT exists in this world right?
Sorry I agreed with your previous comment and then the mention of DLT lost me so I'm trying to understand the context I'm missing.
It exists as an idea, but we're still in the irruption phase and are decades from maturity. So it hasn't yet had much of a transformative effect on existing institutions, behaviors, relationships, etc.
Everyone should know three things:
1. You can measure anything
2. Measurements always have error
3. Measures aren't always aligned to what they are trying to measure, so even validated measures need critical thinking based on qualitative experience.
That said, people systematically overvalue anything with numbers attached due not understanding the epistemology of measurement and statistics. That's why managers at software companies are obsessed with pointing tickets, why scientists are obsessed with p-values, why the school system is obsessed with grades, etc. So if you want people to compete more fiercely over something, coming up with some numbers is a good way to make that happen. (At least for a while.)
It'd be nice to believe that this is just a temporary quirk of our current cultural values. But we may also have just topped out, at least for the foreseeable future, in terms of just how well people can really understand the world given a relatively fixed level of intelligence. Even though individuals are ostensibly becoming more transmodernist, it's difficult (as a layperson) to see how that or something like it could ever really could become the dominant philosophical paradigm behind our institutions.