I hate the way this saying is commonly used today. I think a literal interpretation is untrue, but many people feel that a literal interpretation is true. For instance, humans get better at speaking whatever language they are surrounded with, even though that is not being actively measured by some metric. It is probably being measured by some implicit cycle in the human brain, but that is not the kind of explicit measurement that people would demand based on this saying. Some other examples that you can improve without an explicit measurement:
- Camera stability (you can usually "see" it immediately, without an engineering metric)
- Large changes in customer satisfaction (for fine tuning you probably need a metric, but for large changes, it will be obvious)
- Kindness
I'm not saying that measurement is purposeless. Just that it is not always necessary. Not everything needs to be measured. Also, why do generally smart people buy this platitude, when others will obviously not be taken as law? I don't see engineering orgs living by "closed mouths don't get fed", or "tidy desk, tidy mind", or "if momma ain't happy ain't nobody happy". But somehow "You can't improve what you don't measure" became law.
I realize this is only tangential. I guess I've been saving this rant for a while.
I agree with what you're saying; in the most extreme scenario you end up with the McNamara fallacy, and it's bizarrely common on e.g. HN. But I also think the platitude is appropriate in this case – I probably eat a decent amount of fibre, but is it enough? I don't really know. I'd need to measure it (and it's very possible I could be vastly under- or overestimating some things about my diet).
Actually I don't even think the platitude is appropriate in this case, although perhaps this is due to differences in acceptable performance. Do you really need to measure the health impact directly on your body to be satisfied that you are doing something right? I think you can take studies that say "X mg of fiber a day improves outcomes", eat slightly more than X mg of fiber, and likely get 90% of the benefit as compared to the "ideal" amount of fiber, all without a personalized measuremnet. Even if you did have a measurement, there would be confounding factors like "how much did you exercise?" / "how stressed were you?" / "is your body 'just getting old'?"
I hate the way this saying is commonly used today. I think a literal interpretation is untrue, but many people feel that a literal interpretation is true. For instance, humans get better at speaking whatever language they are surrounded with, even though that is not being actively measured by some metric. It is probably being measured by some implicit cycle in the human brain, but that is not the kind of explicit measurement that people would demand based on this saying. Some other examples that you can improve without an explicit measurement:
- Camera stability (you can usually "see" it immediately, without an engineering metric)
- Large changes in customer satisfaction (for fine tuning you probably need a metric, but for large changes, it will be obvious)
- Kindness
I'm not saying that measurement is purposeless. Just that it is not always necessary. Not everything needs to be measured. Also, why do generally smart people buy this platitude, when others will obviously not be taken as law? I don't see engineering orgs living by "closed mouths don't get fed", or "tidy desk, tidy mind", or "if momma ain't happy ain't nobody happy". But somehow "You can't improve what you don't measure" became law.
I realize this is only tangential. I guess I've been saving this rant for a while.