The Invisible Trap: Evidence You're Living the Wrong Life (& Don't Know It) | Professor C Thi Nguyen

Key Takeaway

Stop living by someone else's scorecard. Before making decisions, ask yourself: "Am I optimizing for what I truly value, or for what's easy to measure and justify to strangers?" The metrics we chase—follower counts, salary figures, test scores—often represent values sterilized for distant strangers, not our authentic priorities. Create space daily to reconnect with unmeasurable values: the quality of your relationships, your capacity for joy, your ability to forgive. These can't be quantified, but they're often what matters most.

Episode Overview

Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen discusses his book "The Score That Takes Over," exploring how we fall victim to "value capture"—adopting simplified, quantified metrics that replace our rich, nuanced values. He examines how metrics in education, health, social media, and dating warp our behavior, making us optimize for what's measurable rather than what truly matters, and offers insights on reclaiming authentic values in a quantified world.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Invisible Trap: Evidence You're Living the Wrong Life (& Don't Know It) | Professor C Thi Nguyen from Feel Better, Live More. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Your new book, The Score, [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] is probably one of my favorite books that I've read for years. It is so, so thought-provoking. thought-provoking. thought-provoking. One of the central cases you make in the book is that many of us experience problems in our lives our lives our lives because we're living by someone else's scorecard instead of our own. You call this value capture in the book. So, I'm wondering if we could start there. Can you explain what it is? Okay. Okay. Okay. So, value capture is any case where your values are rich or subtle or they're developing in that direction and then you get put in a social setting or an institutional setting or with a technology that presents you with a simplified, usually quantified, version of your value and then the simplified version takes over.

So, like, I mean, I I I went on Twitter to connect to people and to find interesting information and to like have these fascinating conversations with people and that started happening and then I went viral, like, low-grade viral twice and then I became just interested in upping my like counts and follower counts and that became the became the became the kind of dominant core reasoning. I mean, I think a lot of people know that it's not good when your incentives are too simplified where like the world is giving you money [snorts] or rewards to follow some kind of hyper-simplified metric, but I think the thing I'm really interested in is the next stage of when that that that transfers to your soul.

Like, when the thing that you care about most becomes uh when your deepest value becomes expressed expressed expressed in terms of the metric because then I think you inherit uh the the the limitations limitations limitations of institutional data tracking, right? Every limit we have about the kinds of numbers that are easy to collect in large-scale bureaucracies suddenly starts to inhabit your way of thinking about the world, about navigating your own life. own life. own life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's this thing you talk about throughout the book, this idea that data is not neutral.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The metrics themselves are not neutral. And where I've been thinking about this a lot is particularly because as we record this conversation, the Winter Olympics are going on. Yep. Yep. Yep. So, yesterday evening with my kids, I was watching the snowboarding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And And And it was the women's snowboarding final. The standard was off the charts, but what was really, really interesting is they're doing all these kinds of tricks, and I'm thinking, well, how can you compare you compare you compare one snowboarder with another snowboarder?

You can, and of course they've got certain metrics which they're using, they're using, they're using, but it doesn't necessarily reflect the totality of that person's skill or their flow or their interpretation of the slope. Do you know what I mean? Yes. Exactly what you mean. And I think what's going on is that in many cases, the drive for objectivity, and I mean something like really specific by objectivity. We have to spend like a lot of time talking talking about that term means cuz a lot of people use that term kind of unreflectively or unthinkingly.

I think the drive for objectivity often gets us to to to change the topic, to change the topic of what we're measuring and what we're trying to do. So, I think sporting competitions are really good place to think about this. So, for me, one of the crucial things about a scoring system is that it makes explicit the standards that you're going to measure success by. And the reason it does so is often to get people onto the same page. So, uh I started realizing this. So, I I the first book I wrote about games, I had this assumption, this assumption, this assumption, um um um and that assumption was that every game had a scoring system.

And And And I got there because I think So, I love a lot of games, but I particularly love board games. And then when I was working on my first book on the nature of games, my primary model was a certain kind of board game. And in board games, board games tell you exactly what's going to count as points. They're going to like the board games I play, like they say like, you know, collect cows, that's worth two points. Collect sheep, each three sheep is worth three points.

So, you know exactly what they'll measure and you know how to add them up together. And then I realized at some point that not every game has this kind of official scoring system. Um So, skateboarding in its natural state is from I need to not be a poser here. I am not a skateboarder. I do a bunch of other things. I climb, I play with yo-yos, I don't skateboard. This is all secondhand knowledge. Um Skateboarding, there are a lot of goals and success conditions in skateboarding.

You can skate to be athletic explosive, you can do incredibly hard tricks. Or you can skate for flow, you can skate for style, you can skate for expressiveness. And if you're going to the skate park and competing, you can compete in lots of those dimensions. You can go with your friends, you can go skating, and you can be be be You can do it in two ways. One, you can just go skating and not have a pre-specified goal and just do stuff, and it might just emerge that some of you are more stylish or cool or beautiful or explosive.

Or you can even decide, you can decide that we're going to compete for the coolest trick. But you don't need to specify exactly the way that you're going to measure cool. And cool. And cool. And you can have different people like if 10 people go skating together and they come out with different beliefs about who did the best job. Like I think you were the most flowing and elegant. And somebody else thinks that it was me. I was the one that like did something really surprising and original.

That's okay. Like you don't There's no loss of value in that. What that's That's the thing that we did the thing that wanted to do. Um Um Um but then skateboarding moves to uh more official cases like ESPN X and the Olympics. And Olympics. And Olympics. And you start to generate this need to generate a single official verdict to pull out a winner. And what happens then usually is that the activity changes focus. So, focus moves away from like style or flow or beauty and focus moves towards height, number of flips, right?

Things that are more easily countable. And that kind of shift I think is emblematic of an entire an entire an entire uh social tendency that I think we're all caught up in the grips of. Oh my god. Do you want to know the the weird example that got cut from the book? book? book? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I want to see. Okay. Okay. Okay. Uh Uh Uh this is an example I'm obsessed with and uh uh uh some members of my publishing team thought it was too weird to put in the book and I cut it out, but you know, I I think about it all the time.

So, um Think about this. Um while I was reading and I was researching this book, I stumbled across the literature from a bunch of anthropologists and sociologists that studied pickup artist culture. culture. culture. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, you know pickup artists? People that compete for sexual success. And I think it's kind of obvious in a sense cuz even the pickup artist culture term for a sexual encounter is scoring, right? And if you think about what they're competing for, competing for, competing for, number of phone numbers you get in a night, number of sexual encounters in a night, number uh speed, the fastest speed from meeting someone to a sexual encounter.

encounter. encounter. And then it becomes like kind of clear like what they don't compete for. They're not competing for happy relationships. I think that's pretty obvious. But uh one of the things I discovered when I was reading this stuff, the sociologist Eric Hendricks who studied pickup artist culture for a while, said pickup artists don't even compete for pleasure. They're not even trying for pleasure. Um, one of the things that you find as a common thread in pickup artist culture is that you're supposed to get beyond caring about pleasure cuz that will interfere in your quest for higher numbers and more victory.

And I find this like incredibly emblematic and incredibly tragic because tragic because tragic because I mean, I mean, I mean, I thought when I started reading about pickup artist culture that I would find out that pickup artists were evil and manipulative, but at least they were having fun and enjoying themselves. And I found out something else, which is they're not even enjoying themselves. They're miserable. Many of them are miserable in the quest for higher scores. And I think the examples are really revealing because what what what Why would you not compete for pleasure?

It's cuz pleasure is not publicly countable. Like there's no way to verify who had more pleasure. You make the claim, right? The things that that um, pickup artists are competing for are precisely the things that are easy for everyone to objectively measure in the public setting and then adjudicate in an unquestionable way. I think it's a great example because the underlying principles within that example example example Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. can actually be applied to pretty much everything in life. Uh, our self-worth, our happiness, our health.

health. health. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. On an individual level, one thing I've realized over the past years and have spoken about spoken about spoken about with regularity on this podcast is this idea of measurables versus unmeasurables. unmeasurables. unmeasurables. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And And And where this idea becomes really important to me is because I look around society and I see many, many people, particularly in the middle of life, you know, 30s, 40s, 50s, where they have done the things that they thought they were meant to do, yet they still feel lost.

lost. lost. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe depressed, unhappy. I mean, I spoke to Joshua Fields Melbourne from The Minimalists a few weeks ago and he's got that classic story where in his 30s he had everything, the corporate job, the big house, a house full of loads of loads of stuff, but he wasn't happy. And there's many reasons for that, but I think a lot of the time it it simply comes down to what is measurable versus what is unmeasurable. So, in my life, I do have a lot of the societal ticks of success, right?

The things that you can measure. But it was a few years ago I realized that stuff is probably not the totality of what makes me happy. It contributes, I think it would be naive for me to think that it didn't have any say at all, but I realized, particularly as I get older, that the gold in my life comes from the unmeasurables, right? So, the quality of the relationship I have with my wife, my wife, my wife, the quality of the relationship I have with my children, how much time I have each week to spend on my hobbies and my passions, but passions, but passions, but you can't easily measure that.

Even if I think about my marriage, right? I could say to you, because cuz the you know, there's this whole thing throughout the book about metrics, and you've got to be careful what metrics you use in life, cuz those metrics are shaping shaping shaping whether you're aware of it or not. So, I could give you a metric and say, "Hey T, I've been married now for 18 years." And you go, "Oh, great, congratulations." Now, congratulations." Now, congratulations." Now, that metric doesn't even tell you that much.

It it tells you yes, I've been with the same woman now for 18 years and we're married, we're married, we're married, but it doesn't tell you about the quality of my relationship, how close I am. Do you know what I mean? It it it I I don't know, maybe what you maybe have a different take it. You know, I I have exactly the take. I just just just there's a huge thing I want to say, but let me start by saying while you're giving that example, I just noticed something maybe striking, which is I think people are really content to say the length of a marriage, like that number, number, number, obviously isn't the important thing.

It's the quality of that marriage. And then let's go over to another setting. It's often very hard in the medical setting, in the health setting, setting, setting, to fight against measures of the length of a life, right? Like I think a lot of I think one of the things we definitely to talk about at some point today is is is lifespan lifespan lifespan as a a primary health metric. And I I I I think it's like much more difficult for people to accept the view that that that there are things that you might want to trade off against longer lifespan, that that measurable seizes too much public attention.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about it. So, I think my audience would be super interested in this. this. this. I mean, the Here's Here's one way to put it. I'm interested in cases in which the easy measurable auto wins a conversation. And I'm not I'm often not saying that I'm not saying that the measurable thing is unimportant. So, one of the key cases for me is lifespan. I mean, that's very easy to measure. And then you see these fights where lifespan wins against any other consideration.

So, consider So, consider So, consider uh trying to figure out uh national health policy and medical recommendations for eating saturated fats and eating rich cheeses. And you might say that look, here's a clearly measurable correlation. You eat more of this, your lifespan goes down. down. down. Then there's stuff on the other side. There's deliciousness. There's culinary joy. There's tradition. There's like just just just the pure raw joy of a rich properly cared for Camembert. But if you try to bring those into a conversation with someone that's wielding the number that says like, "But this will also make [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] average lifespans go down." The other stuff loses like automatically.

There's not There's not even a In most of the uh fights I watch in the public in public health policy, that stuff can't even be put on the table. You sound kind of like a lunatic if you try to put that stuff on the table. And I think the reason is because there's not a clear way to measure it. Obviously. I I think this is a great example, right? The things we bias in medicine are the things that we can measure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We can measure blood sugar, cholesterol, weight, blood pressure.

And of course, these measurable things have value. But we can't measure joy, love, passion, the quality of your relationships, right? relationships, right? relationships, right? But actually, if you look at the data, arguably the number one factor that that will determine your health, happiness, and longevity is the quality of your relationships. So this goes back to what I was saying before about the measurables versus the unmeasurables. I'm at the point of life today, which is I think why this book has resonated so deeply with me, because I think about the stuff all the time.

I think about on in my personal life, life, life, wrongly, it's the unmeasurables that are going to give you your happiness and your contentedness. I know that. I know that full well that it's the things I can't easily measure that give me that joy. But as a medical doctor, the same thing applies, right? I put a video out on YouTube a few months ago that went It went pretty viral, to be honest with you. And I was literally talking about this in medicine, saying how we don't measure or we can't measure the things I've just mentioned or we can't measure your ability to forgive, right?

There's a lot of research showing a strong relationship between people who are unable to forgive and people who hold on to resentment with the development of a whole variety of different chronic diseases. That was That was an association. It's a correlation, just to be really clear. Right. Right. Right. But, Fred Luskin, for example, a professor from Stanford, has shown that in A-type people, if you can teach them how to forgive and let go, let go, let go, you can lower their blood pressure. Right? You You can do that.

He has documented that. documented that. documented that. But, I can tell you you go to most doctors and they will not know this. I'm not having a go at them when I say that. But, it's it comes down to metrics that we can easily measure and metrics that we can't. And so, whether it's skateboarding, snowboarding in the Olympics, the picker passes you mentioned, the metric biases, you You're immediately biased by the metric that you're looking at, aren't you? you? you? Yeah, I mean, okay, I completely agree.

The only small pushback I want to give is there's a little part of me that is frustrated with frustrated with frustrated with attempting attempting attempting to put a cash value on forgiveness. I think even when you're saying like, well, I can Here's my justification for why it's important to be a forgiving person, that'll make your blood pressure go down. That's still from the point of view that's like, this stuff only matters if we can tie it down to something measurable. And I want to say like, even that even that claim has bought into the view where the only things that we are legitimately allowed to put into an official adult conversation are the things that have cash value.

cash value. cash value. Yeah. I love that. And the message I get throughout this book is that you know, the fish who spent their whole life swimming in water doesn't know what water is. Right? I feel that's the case with many of us as humans. We're We're swimming in the sea of metrics that have been decided by someone else. someone else. someone else. And And And until you become aware, like once you become aware it's hard to [clears throat] go back. You sort of like, "Wait a minute.

Where did I get this idea from that I need to do this in order to be successful?" Right? And me, probably part of me on this show because people are tuning in because they want to improve their health and their lives, their lives, their lives, I've been conditioned somewhat to have to justify. When I talk about I don't have to justify talking about blood pressure. People get that. But I sort of feel I've fallen into the trap that you're talking about for me to give forgiveness validity.

Right? Because people who learn how to forgive when they previously couldn't, they'll just know how great that feels, how light and free you feel. Right? That should be enough in and of itself. But I feel I need to justify through the lens of, "Oh, did you know that this professor at Stanford has done this study? And he's shown Exactly. I mean, I have I have my own version of this to confess. So, as you know, while I was writing this book, I became super into yo-yo.

I was studying other cases where some beautiful, delightful, weird activity activity activity had a competition scene and then suddenly changed. And so I started yo-yoing and I just found it wonderful and absorptive and playful and just the sheer joy of the momentum of thing was wonderful. And this is a book justifying justifying justifying saying that that is enough, right? That playfulness, that just the sheer rich joy of being an interesting doing is enough. enough. enough. And I, when I was at dinner parties and people would be like, "Oh, what are you doing?" I'm like, "I'm yo-yoing." And they're like, "Why are you doing that?" And I would say things like, "Well, it really relaxes me, so it helps me write more and it destresses me, so I can write more." And I think even then, that's that's how deeply we've ingested the mindset that in the middle of writing a book about how we should accept that play is the end of the line, that this is the most important thing, I found myself needing to justify I mean, ironically, I found myself needing to justify my new found love of a formal play by saying it helped me get back to work and write more pages in my book justifying the value of play.

Yeah, we have to we feel that we have to justify the unmeasurable because the unmeasurable doesn't have intrinsic value in and of itself, which is utter garbage. utter garbage. utter garbage. Okay, this is perfect because I think part of the theory I have about measurement is that what measurement is doing is it's a pre-made system of easy justification. It's no surprise, this thing we're talking about, that's no surprise cuz what metrics are are things designed to quickly and easily justify ourselves in public. And this is I mean, so I think the thing that I've bought been on and I'm I'm super excited because I feel like you're you're touching on the raw bleeding heart of the thing I care the most about and it's the hardest to say.

I mean, I think a lot of us know, oh, the measurement doesn't capture everything. There's more, there's more we feel there's more. Um but I wanted to know why. So, I had all these experiences over and over again where I would be pushing back against a form of some kind of easy measurement. So, one of the origin stories of writing this book was a friend of mine, um um um Adrian Curry, he's a philosopher of science. A bunch of years ago, before the current rage of range of AI, he was like, "T, I need you to come to this conference.

Uh it's a creativity and AI conference." And it was a bunch of computer scientists and philosophers who were making a first gen of creative art making AI, like way before the current gen. I he was calling me in as a philosopher of art and I was like, "I don't know anything about AI. He said, you have to come, I you have to come, I need you here. So, I show up and I'm in this room and there are all these people building AI and they say they're optimizing for good art.

And I finally, like, carefully raise my hand from the back and I say like, uh how are you measuring good art? How are you operationalizing it? What what's your training data? And they said, well, we're just using the Netflix database on engagement hours. And I lost it. I like cursed from the back of the room and I said like, that is not good art. And then they said, well, show us another large-scale accessible database with a better measure for good art and we'll use that instead.

And I thought in that moment, moment, moment, there isn't one. And it's not an accident. I mean, I think a lot of the times when you point out a bad metric, you're like, this metric sucks, which people do all the time. People's response is, sure, okay. That's that's all right, but we'll just find a better metric. And I was interested in whether there's a part of life that systematically defied metrics, that systematically defied datafication, that systematically defied measurement. And And And I think I found the answer.

Uh and the answer comes from a bunch of places. It comes to me mostly from a field called science and technology studies, which is a field that starts in philosophy of science and then explodes into this broad field full of historians and anthropologists and sociologists. Um and the answer comes in a few places, but I think the first thing to put on the table, right where our conversation is, is an idea from Theodore Porter. So, Theodore Porter is a historian of quantification culture. He has this book, Trust in Numbers, which is one of the, you know, like, matrix-type veil rips from my eyes moments.

So, So, So, he's trying to understand uh why bureaucrats and politicians compulsively reach for quantified justification justification justification even when even when even when we know that the metrics are bad, that they're not capturing what's really important. His answer is that there's two kinds of ways of knowing about the world, qualitative and quantitative, and they're good at different things, different things, different things, and the problem is when we compulsively reach for the quantitative, even when it's not the appropriate vehicle for knowing or thinking about the world.

So, he says, "Okay, qualitative justification, qualitative justification, qualitative justification, qualitative communication, using words, is open-ended and dynamic, and rich and subtle and context-sensitive, but it travels badly between people of different with different contexts, because it requires a lot of shared background information. So, uh my example, since I'm an academic, my example is always like when I write responses to my student papers, they're rich, we can use all the language from the particular class, I can move in multiple dimensions, I can compare their rigor to their creativity, to their subtlety, to their originality, to their like ethical thoughtfulness, and I I first of all, I don't have to push those into one measure.

I can just be like, "Look, this is really creative, but your writing isn't as clear." And I can just leave that there. And I can also use all the richness of our shared time together. Like, we develop a lot of language together in the classroom, and I can use that sensibility about what makes a good argument or why thinking is worthwhile. But that, I mean, surely A, someone from the business school is not going to understand all those terms, and I'm not going to understand their evaluations for their students, and it won't aggregate.

There's no way to quickly compress that stuff for someone in human resources or hiring, right? A student who receives a thousand of those evaluations, there's no fast way to digest that qualitative stuff. So, the solution to this, at the institutional level, says Porter, is to create quantified data. And what And what And what quantification is, says Porter, is the intentional creation of a context-invariant context-invariant context-invariant chunk chunk chunk that we keep stable. So, we specify something, we remove everything that requires a lot of high context to understand, and then we've made something that he says can travel.

Um so, like uh a letter grade. I think letter grades are different in the UK and in the US, but for us, you know, an A is a A is great, B is medium, C is mediocre. And if everyone holds about that meaning, that meaning, that meaning, then the information can really travel. As and Bs can move anywhere, people understand what they mean, and they aggregate incredibly well because we've removed all this multi-dimensionality. Are you Sorry to interrupt. Just just to check I've got this. So, you're saying with your students, for example, that you teach um one-on-one in your small groups, you have a variety of different ways to feedback to them.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's multiple dimensions that you're looking at, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But But But the system requires you at the end of the course the course the course Right. Right. Right. to give them a single metric, like an A, B, C, D, E. And the point of that metric is to travel. It's so that when they apply for a job, Right. Right. Right. the person who's hiring them or interviewing them knows, "Oh, when they sat that university course, they were an A student or they were a B student." To give them an idea.

Right. Right. Right. But of course depending on what that job requires, it could be that a C student who isn't particularly good at scientific rigor, but was exceptionally good at creativity, creativity, creativity, maybe they're the perfect person for that job, but the grade doesn't reflect that. And you had quite a funny story in the book where I think at one point you said to your students, "I'm going to give you all A grades, so you can take You don't need to worry about that. Let's get into the real kind of meat of the topic." Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But that didn't work either, did it? Nope. Nope. Nope. Can you just tell that story? So so of all, did I get you Did I Was my interpretation correct what you were trying to say? And then if you could just tell us that story. Yeah, I mean it was mostly correct, but I I I just want to caution you on something. So I think it's not just that I can rate my students on multiple multiple dimensions and then grades collapse that to one dimension.

dimension. dimension. It's that I can use language and terms that don't even exist on a spectrum. Like not everything exists on a graded spectrum. Not everything exists on a ranked [snorts] spectrum. The thing that I I want to resist is thinking that what's behind what's behind what's behind We give someone an A and that's a point on one on one on one ranking scale, but in reality there's five rank scales. It's not that. It's like not all communication exists on a ranked scale. I mean, the thing that Porter's trying to say is that quantified data quantified data quantified data is is is a summarized chunk built to travel and the way you make it ready to travel is you strip off everything that would give you a lot of friction when it moves between layers.

And then you have this slimmed-down smooth thing that travels easily. And what gives people friction is things that require context. So it's not just multi-multidimensionality. multi-multidimensionality. multi-multidimensionality. It's the richness of context required to interpret interpret interpret a particular communication in a particular context. That's what has to leave the thing. When point Porter says this remarkable thing. He says, "Because what information is is a particular way of understanding the world world world that's been sterilized to be readily understood by a distant stranger with no shared context.

And one way to put the problem of value capture is that you're ruling yourself in terms that have been sterilized for consumption by distant strangers. You're ruling yourself limited only to the language that has had all context stripped out specifically so it can be quickly summarized and aggregated. It feels like this is happening more and more in the world where you almost have to fight so hard against the system to actually actually actually hold true to what it is you stand for. I mean, we've mentioned value capture this rigid attachment to an external system of value and you can kind of see that everywhere.

You can see it in medicine and health care and the book you you make the case in journalism you can see it. I think you make a really nice case in in in um um um law schools. I think we said law schools used to used to used to have different missions. They used to stand for different things. But when you sort of collapse and go well, what's the grade? Or or what's that assessment? That then you you've lost all that nuance. You're just you're looking at a just a ranking table of you know what percent of people get this grade and what percent want to get a job at a top firm or whatever it might be which is so unidimensional, isn't it?

Yeah, but I also want to push back cuz I think think think I want to now I want to speak up for metrics because I actually think that makes the situation more horrifying. As many if you know, when glucose is relatively stable, you feel better day-to-day with steady energy, mood, and focus. But over time, unstable and elevated glucose can also impair your metabolic health and increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. disease. disease. Globally, more than 760 million adults are thought to have prediabetes, many without symptoms or a diagnosis.

And the problem is that our health care system often waits until you get sick before taking action. When we should take a proactive approach to prevent problems before they start. Now, many of us don't have access to our own glucose data, and therefore don't have clear feedback on how our everyday choices impact our glucose. That's where Lingo by Abbott comes in. Lingo is a biosensor and app that helps you see how food, movement, and lifestyle choices affect your glucose in real time, so you can notice patterns and build healthier habits in the moment.

moment. moment. With Lingo, you can get to know your glucose to build healthy habits for today and tomorrow. For listeners in the US and the UK, Lingo by Abbott is offering an exclusive 10% off a 4-week plan. Just scan the QR code on screen or visit hellolingo.com/livemore for more information. Terms and conditions do apply. There's an easy position that tempts people, I think, at this point, which is all metrics are bad, they're all information loss. Let's get rid of them. Let's be alive, rich people, constantly alive to the wonder.

That doesn't work, either, because we need metrics. I think this is the true pain, because um um um because because because we need highly compressible highly travelable, easily understood data chunks to organize ourselves at vast scale. This is I mean, this is how science works, right? Science works by the collection of data. Data works Science at its best involves different people collecting to the same buckets, so that they can amass mass piles of data and do analysis on that data, right? And also, like, we do need large-scale There are many contexts in which large-scale information transfer is is is and highly portable information is really valuable.

So, I think the college rankings example is a really good one because it shows us the tension between the two faces. So, that example for me is a great example of value capture. So, there's a really good study good study good study of what happened what college rankings do to educational culture in a book called Engines of Anxiety. It's a book about Wendy Espeland and Michael Sauder who are sociologists and they studied what happened when US News & World Report started ranking law schools. The first thing they say is that exactly what what you noted, right?

Like so, um law schools before the rankings used to have many dimensions of many dimensions of value. Like some were more interested in in in getting their students high-paying corporate jobs, some were more interested in social and community outreach missions, some were more interested in um theoretical and legal scholarship and research work. And they would represent these things in qualitative ways. Um and the coming of the rankings imposed one particular judgment, right? So, the law school rankings are mostly based on incoming class GPA, incoming class LSAT score, and outgoing class employment rate at the 9-month mark.

So, that's a that's a that's a that that imposes a very rigid sense of value and it also narrows down on measurables. Um so, one of the things that they say that I found really striking was that before the rankings the process of figuring out a law school um which law school a student wanted to go to would trigger a process of internal deliberation. A prospective law school student would ask themselves, "What do I care about more? Theoretical work? Corporate work? Social justice work?" And that value crossroads would lead them into a process of reflection about what they actually cared about.

And the moment the rankings showed up, what they record is that students stopped doing this. They They did the research, by the way, by looking at internet archives of like forums of discussions between prospective law students, and they say that the moment the US News & World Report starts ranking ranking ranking uh law schools, students immediately take their take their take their goal to be to get into the best law school, where best is just set by those rankings. So, they stop value deliberating. This is This is the example that led me to really So, one of the formulations from the book that one of the of the of the things I end up saying is that the problem of value capture is that you're outsourcing your values, and you're outsourcing your values to an external You might be outsourcing your values to Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, right?

Whoever is setting the measure. In this case, you're outsourcing the value of your education to the US News & World Report that sets the terms of measurement, right? But, and here's the big butt. The US News & World Report also had a good reason to do this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um The reason Their stated reason was that before them, every school could talk about itself in glowing terms. Um maybe its value mission was genuine, or maybe it was BS. Maybe they were fulfilling, or maybe they weren't.

And um um um if you were in the know, if you had the connections to people embedded in law culture, you could get the inside scoop. But, you know, they were trying to help people like me. You know, I am a immigrant's kid. My kid My parents know nothing about the the landscape. And so, what they were trying to do was making that information easily digested and accessible. accessible. accessible. And they were trying to digest a large number of considerations that you might take as important to make information accessible to me.

That's That's what portability is. Portability is accessibility. And so, what you get is actually [clears throat] the big vision is that there's this massive trade-off between making that information highly digestible and accessible so that everyone can have it and simplifying it and removing dimensionality from it in order to make it accessible. it accessible. it accessible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the real the real the really terrifying part for me in some sense, if it turned out that metrics were just evil, the mustache-twirling villain of the story, and we could just move beyond them things would be I can imagine a utopia.

But what Porter teaches me is something more painful, which is that there's a thing we need that we have to have which we have to pay an enormous cost for. for. for. And that's like that that that's that's an essential feature of our life together that in order to communicate with each other at scale, we need these hyper-simplified, highly portable things, and that's that is the glue that binds us together, and it's a very costly glue. costly glue. costly glue. Yeah. I love that, and you know, I'm I'm not trying to like you say the metrics are really good or bad, it's just understanding what that metric is good for.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Being aware of that, and also understanding what it's not good for. So, let's take the I don't know, I guess schools, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh not everyone gets to choose what school their children go to. You I I understand that. understand that. understand that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think with schools, what I've come to conclusion that that it's not that there's no such thing as a good school, of course there is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But But But for me if you have the choice it's more about what is the right school for my child.

Right. Right. Right. Right? It's subtly different. Right. Right. Right. That the school can look great on paper. You go, "Oh, you know, people here, they get these grades, and they go to this university, whatever it might be." Yeah, but is it the right school for the qualities that my child has? Right. Right. Right. And again, I as I say, not everyone has the choice, but it's an example that we can use. There's just a couple of things you said there which I find interesting. You Of course, metrics have a value.

But, there's also that hidden cost. You mentioned politicians, and I guess through the lens of health, you know, when an election comes around, one of the big things in this country will be the National Health Service. Yes. Yes. Yes. And no doubt, each party each party each party will choose the metrics that are most favorable to them. So, they may choose, for example, how many people when they come to the A&E or the ER get seen within 4 hours. Yep. Yep. Yep. Right? Right? Right? And have we made that better since the last party was in?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, you The problem is is you can cheat that metric a million different ways, right? You can just churn people in, give them, you know, what extreme is give them really poor care, but cheat the system so that actually no one waited for more than 4 hours, right? So, by the metric that you're getting told, oh, wow, this party came in and actually no one's having to wait more than 4 hours anymore. But, what if the cost of that is that everyone's getting poor quality care?

I mean, that's quite an extreme example, but I feel it's super relevant. The other thing you said, which I I really want to talk to you about, you about, you about, is the scientific method. Right. Right. Right. So, yeah, the scientific data would generally try and tell you on average, this is the best diet. On average, this is the right approach to take. But, even if If look into those individual studies, you'd go, "Well, yeah, but not everyone thrived on that diet." diet." diet." You know, that was just the average.

So, this is the difference for me between population medicine population medicine population medicine and precision personalized medicine, right? And so, one of my favorite parts of the book was the chapter on mechanical values. So, let me just explain what mechanical value is. And then I want to talk about principles, right? Because I really resonate with this section, which is one of the reasons why I thought I always have had these I wouldn't say difficult conversations with my publishers over the years. Not difficult at all, but I've always said I can't prescribe people a plan because I don't know who they are.

What I can write about are principles, not protocols, protocols, protocols, right? right? right? This principle holds true, but you need to adapt that principle in the context of your life. So, talk to me about mechanical values, then we can maybe talk about principles. Hold hold on. Before we do mechanical values, you said a bunch of stuff. I really want to Let's back up cuz I We have to talk about mechanical values, but there's You said so much interesting stuff. So, the There are two things I really want to talk about in what you said.

Um Um Um One thing One thing One thing to think is what are metrics good at picking up and what are they bad at picking up? And I think we already get a stor- a story from Porter. What they're good at picking up is things that are invariant between people that everyone can detect, that don't take particular sensitivity or context to detect. This is why uh uh uh we aim at lifespan over happiness. And I I want I want I want to notice something really important here.

People talk like happiness or joy is is is intangible or impossible to track or like some evanescent magic, it's really obvious. obvious. obvious. You know when you're happy, and you know when you're depressed. It's like one of the most obvious things in the world. It is radiantly at the forefront. And it actually I think takes a long process of socialization for us to be willing to ignore that stuff in favor of the measurable. the measurable. the measurable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, what what makes the measurable the measurable is not how loud it is, right?

right? right? Happiness is really loud. Despair is really loud. It's also not I mean, people One of the funny things is when I when I give the cheese example, for a long time I'd talk about like length of life versus joy in food. And people would be like, "Well, you can't just you know, you can't really weight those intangibles." And I would accept that language, and then I thought, "Wait, cheese is intangible? What is more tangible than eating a god damn mouthful of brie?" And what is right?

What what we've come to think is that word come to us so easily cuz we've replaced replaced replaced our sense of reality. We've replaced like concrete things with what's easy to abstract. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, the thing that makes something countable is it's kind of invariant across context and easy noticeability across context, which tells us exactly what metrics are bad at picking up, which is anything that is highly variable, highly context dependent, including for example your particular personality. I think your example is exactly right about picking which kid to go to which school because when we use a metric like the US like a college ranking, ranking, ranking, we're applying we're applying we're applying measures measures measures that have been put there because they're approximations of what everybody thinks.

They've been de-particularized. de-particularized. de-particularized. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hayek famously said uh a central policy can never target any particular person, It can only target the average person. Right? I think that's that's very close to what you're saying. So, that's that's one big thing I was thinking with from what you're saying. The other big thing is I think the idea that every metric is interested. And I think this is a This is a What do you mean interested? So, this is an enormous thing I learned from a bunch of these scholars I'm talking about in science and technology studies.

And that one of the big views from that from that from that world is that people think that technologies and systems like systems of representation like metrics, they think they're neutral. They think they're objective. They think People tend to think that metrics are objective. And what the people from science and technology studies have taught me is that is that is that different technologies different technologies different technologies and different ways of representing the world world world are deeply value-laden and deeply represent a specific perspective and a specific value system on the world.

So, um um um the the the the easiest example for me is to back away from data for a moment and think about maps, right? There's a way in which a map just looks like here's the world. But every map is a selection procedure, right? What maps do maps do maps do not as an accident, but as an intrinsic part of their function is they leave out most of the world, right? A map that includes every detail in the world is useless. It's the world. What maps do is highlight certain things and delete other things.

That highlighting is a choice, right? It represents some interest and it deletes others. Okay, if I think about the map of the world world world Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. well, it's it's prioritizing borders of countries. countries. countries. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. It's prioritizing big cities. Right. Right. Right. It might prioritize high mountains. Right. Right. Right. But But But yeah, and it and it kind of feeds this idea of metrics like all metrics do something, but they don't do other things. things. things. Yes, exactly. The Dennis Wood who wrote the book The Power of Maps has this moment that my students love, where he says like, "Why don't our maps show sound quality?" sound quality?" sound quality?" And he says that most of the maps we have represent two major interests.

They tell us where the property lines are and the political borders, and they tell us how to commute to places in cars. That's what they're really good at. And they don't tell us where the nice spots are that sound nice or feel nice and have rich ecosystems, right? So, I think it's really clear there to show that maps show an interest, right? Based on prior decisions about what they've collected and what So, what information is collected and displayed and which is hidden. And I think what I want to say is the same is true of metrics.

It's not that they're lying. Like, maps are showing things that are real. It's that any data system has all already represents prior decisions about what's worth what's worth what's worth noticing and measuring. So, Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star have this incredible book that I think you should read called Sorting Things Out. And they talk about They think one of the big roots of this is what's in the classificatory structure that underlies data collection. So, one of their core examples is they study the ICD-10, the the, you know, international manual that gives different codes to accidents um and mortal and uh cause of death.

And they point out that that that uh So, they look at the falls coding and they point out for urban falls, there are separate distinct codes for fall from a balcony, fall from playground equipment, fall from hospital equipment, fall from a commode, fall down an escalator, fall down There are different codes for all of this. And for urban falls, there's fall from a cliff and fall other. And that's it. Right? That system has very high granularity for urban accidents and very low granularity for rural accidents.

So, it I mean, it that system displays what it cares about and what it doesn't. I mean, here's here's another This is an example I I just just just has been staring me in the face forever that I that I that I hadn't realized until like a week ago cuz we were talking about this with my students. students. students. Intelligence tests Intelligence tests Intelligence tests automatically are intelligence tests right now highly weight logical, mathematical, and abstract skill. They don't rate emotional sensitivity at all. all. all.

Right? Like, doesn't this reveal something about the values embedded in the system that the thing that we call an intelligence test that is measuring someone's intellectual capacity has no nothing in it that tracks your ability to empathize or be aware of other people's emotions. people's emotions. people's emotions. Is it the Is this a quote Is it attributed to Einstein? If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. you'll believe it's stupid. Or something to that degree, right? Yeah, but let me let me level up that thought.

A, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, you'll think it's stupid. B, our intelligence tests are making one decision about how everyone should be judged and applying that univocally and unchangingly. So, it's like taking that decision that a particular decision that rates one thing one set of abilities very highly and very lowly and another very lowly and then building that into the kind of background air of the data we swim in. Yeah, but this is this is why come back to the school system for a minute.

Schools work really well for some kids Right. Right. Right. and really poorly for other kids, right? If you If you If you fit [snorts] that model of what the modern schooling system, certainly I can talk about in the UK or in the US, these these sort of Western countries, Western countries, Western countries, um um um you know, you may thrive at school because because because your skill set is aligned with what they deem to be important. And we all know the cases of children who are supremely talented, Right.

Right. Right. but the school measurements of success don't suit them. Yep. Yep. Yep. So, they leave school thinking they're stupid when it was never that they were stupid. It's just the wrong metric was used used used to assess them. Yeah, there So, there two There two things to say. I think this is exactly right. The first thing to say is that um So, we have like one of the big answers now. I think that we've been stumbling around for us. So, the answer isn't the metrics are bad.

The answer is that every metric represents a specific set of interest and highlights a specific set of features and expresses a particular value system. So, for example, the our intelligence measures express the value of logical and abstract thinking is important. Emotional artistic thinking is unimportant. That's embedded in that system. system. system. That I'm not saying that's bad. The first thing is to say is you just have to be careful about the tools you're using. If you think they're just neutral representations of the world, if you forget that they represent specific interests and already represent a prior focus of attention.

Maybe that's one way to put it. They're decisions about what to attend to attend to and what they're worth paying attention to and what's worth remembering and what's worth noticing built in to the infrastructure of our data collection systems. And they can be used well when you are aware of the of the biases and interests in each of your tools and you're willing to select the right tool for the job. But we forget that. We just pick tools thinking they're they're they're true representations of a neutral world and then all those I mean selections selections selections bleed into our decision system.

So, I think an example would be if you just walk around sorting people via the IQ test, then without even thinking about it, you are carrying that bias in favor of the logical and mathematical over the emotional into your decision-making process. And then, the second thing is the thing that you're talking about. So, if we build the way that Bowker and Star put it is that when a lot of these decisions enter, they say, "information infrastructure," infrastructure," infrastructure," they become background and they they become naturalized.

We start thinking that's the that's that's the way things are. So, instead of thinking, "Oh, we have this particular intelligence test that was built at a particular time to in which we wanted to boost STEM, and so we emphasize that, we think, "No, this is the way the world is. Smart people are good at math, dumb people, dumb people, dumb people, if you're not good at math, you're dumb." And so, that kind of that that's a subtle social process by which a particular particular particular set of values gets built into a large-scale system, and then if we're not cautious of that, we could intake that and suddenly be guided by value decisions made by some other person for some distant reasons that we don't even know is guiding us anymore.

And that's there's no question to me one of the major reasons so many people are struggling in their life and feel unhappy unhappy unhappy is because their values have been captured and more importantly, they're not aware that their values have been captured. captured. captured. This is a theme, T, that keeps coming up on the show with regularity because it's something I'm so passionate about because because because I think for much of my life, my values were captured. You know, you shared in in the book about, you know, being brought up in the US in a family of Asian immigrants.

Well, I I brought up in the UK, and my parents are immigrants from India, and so there's a certain trait that gets valued, which is academic excellence. And that's is great, but it also can come at a cost. And for me, the cost was that I thought that my self-worth as an individual was contingent on academic success. Pros and cons. Pros are you get a ton of academic success. Cons are you need that level of success to continue in order to feel good about yourself, which is highly problematic, but but but I would say the for me, the kind of hopeful points about this is that once you understand this, once you see through it, you're like, "Oh, wait a minute.

Where did these ideas and values come from? Are they the values by which I want to live my life? If not, can I start to change them?" I think you start to generate a snowball in the other direction. That's very much what I've done in my life, and I shared with you when you just popped into the house before we started recording that the trigger for me to start questioning everything was the death of my dad in 2013. 2013. 2013. Until that point, I I didn't have time.

I had no real reason to start questioning everything about my life. But that moment for the first time, it got me to stop looking externally looking externally looking externally and to start looking internally, right? And I think a lot of what we're talking about today about today about today and a lot of what your book is about is is really that challenge and that sort of tension between external and internal. The metric is something that can be easily seen externally. But But But often what truly matters to us as individuals is what we can experience on the inside.

I mean, life I was telling to son last night over dinner, I was trying to explain to him the philosophies in your book, right? And it was quite hard for me to try and simplify it. simplify it. simplify it. But I said, "Hey son, listen, you've got to understand that life is experienced on the inside." And it's an early thought I have that I'm sort of haven't quite [snorts] finished my kind of processing off. But I really think most of life or all of life on an individual level is is how we experience it.

And a lot of that cannot be seen by the outside. So, by its very nature, external metrics, they may be useful, they may be helpful in some scenarios. some scenarios. some scenarios. But none of them or very few of them help tell you how you're experiencing the world, how you're experiencing those metrics. I don't know if, you know, [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] rock climbing, you start the book talking about rock climbing. You also bring up yoga a couple of times throughout the book. And I kind of feel that those two examples really illustrate this point of external v internal.

Can you just share, if you will, share the story about rock climbing that you open the book with? Have you tried to meditate before? Perhaps you've heard about some of the benefits like reducing stress and increased focus. And you've given it a go and thought it's not the practice for you. you. you. Well, I believe that may well be because you have not tried the right approach. The Way is the only meditation app with a single long-term pathway. You're not forced to make loads of choices each day.

Instead, you're guided on an enjoyable and progressive journey that deepens your practice step by step. Since I partnered with The Way, I have had so much positive feedback. One listener said, "Dr. Chatterjee, I came to The Way through your podcast. I have tried other meditation apps in the past with limited success and like the idea of following a single guided path. I'm nearly 2 months in now and loving it. Henry's gentle and concise approach is very calming and the way is now a part of my morning routine.

You see, that's the sentiment that so many people report when they start meditating with the way. For listeners of my podcast, The Way is offering 30 free days to establish your own meditation practice. All you have to do is click on the QR code on screen or go to the wayoflife.com/livemore to get started. Yeah, rock climbing is it's super interesting to me cuz again, it's it's one of these things that I think is expressive of my profoundly mixed relationship with scoring systems because rock climbing saved my soul during graduate school and it did so via an explicit scoring system.

So, system. So, system. So, I was super depressed. Started climbing. Started climbing. Started climbing. And the interesting thing about climbing for me was I got the value of it wrong. Um and I think this is an important ingredient in this whole story. The value of climbing is actually really subtle. So, when I came into it, I came into it kind of in the frame of mind that we we were talking about the beginning. I was like, I need exercise. Exercise will help me lose weight and live longer.

That's what exercise is for. I need to do some climbing. climbing. climbing. Um what climbing taught me over the years is that climbing is valuable for its own sake. That climbing is an ecstasy. That there is a beauty and a poetry to moving well and I don't I mean, I'm mediocre, but climbing taught me that there is something so extraordinary in being able to be so sensitive to your body that you can adjust your center of gravity over half an inch and just pull in a little bit more with the lower part of your core and suddenly feet that were impossible to use become perfect to use.

It taught me that there was a wonder to like physical detail and precision for its own sake and the way it did it was with a scoring system because because because I mean I used to hike a lot but I checked out when I hiked. I was just like I'm just going to go up this thing and I would go up the thing and I would be thinking about other things or like thinking about philosophy or talking to my friend and I would tune out. Hiking was in some sense too easy to force me to pay attention to that my body and I also clambered over rocks kind of like casually but again I just took the easy route and climbing said the scoring system of climbing is difficulty based and there are climbs that are rated for difficulty and then the scoring system tells you to increase your difficulty level.

And that scoring system actually got me to pay attention to my body cuz the only way to get up to the next level next level next level was was was to pay more refined attention to my body. It also amplified uh my mental wandering. So uh there's this great moment from one of my favorite yoga writers Godfrey Devereux where he says um the point of yoga is meditation and it's a very good technique for meditating. He says cuz I tried seated meditation and it never worked cuz when my mind wandered I wouldn't notice cuz my mind had wandered but being in a hard yoga pose yoga pose yoga pose amplifies any mind wandering cuz if your mind wanders you wobble and that helps you notice.

And climbing is even more extreme in this sense cuz in climbing if you're climbing a hard climb and your mind wanders you fall 10 ft onto the pad, right? You cannot miss that. It's a very loud signal. And so that procedure, that scoring system and those constraints and the difficulty it pushed me to, helped me find the beauty of movement. movement. movement. But also, But also, But also, after about 6 years of climbing, the difficulty system stopped working well for me. I I mean, I A I'm was never that athletic, and B became like an academic and a parent, and I didn't have enough time, and it was just impossible for me to progress up the difficulty scale.

And so, for a while it became very frustrating, but I ended up doing was changing how I conceived the activity. I changed the scoring system, and I made it mostly one about climbing elegantly. Um and there are two things to notice. One, I think this is one of my I've had a lot of bad experience unhealthy experiences with scoring systems, but this is the one of the ones I'm proudest of, cuz I think I got the best relationship I could get with a scoring system, which is is is I heard what was in it.

I heard I heard I heard cuz what we've been saying is that scoring systems and metrics have values that are fixed into them. And sometimes, we've been talking about this as a bad thing, right? Like, "Oh, these are being imposed on me." But also, like you can learn from them. I think things like climbing, activities like activities like activities like skateboarding, right? Each of these has its own values that you might not tune into, and the scoring system is so clear that it helps you tune into them.

So, you can use them to find your way into new beautiful things that you had not experienced before. But then after a while, while, while, when I'd gotten the kind of brute area, when I was like, "Oh, I get this now." I was able to fine-tune it to myself. I was able to tailor to myself. I was able to adjust what I was trying to do to make it better for me. And I think one way to put it is that I think the scoring systems and metrics are kind of off-the-rack values.

off-the-rack values. off-the-rack values. But that's useful to have, right? But it's also useful to use as a starting point, point, point, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and depart from. and I think being able to learn from them, use their rigidity to get onto something, and then being able to depart from them and adjust them adjust them adjust them is a really valuable way to do it. And I think what's interesting about my my climbing example was or the original the original scoring system was very external. This external difficulty score, but I needed that to be able to get onto it cuz I didn't have the value inside me.

And once I did, I could kind of go off book book book and start aiming at something much subtler and more internal. I could guide myself with my own sense of elegance, but it took years of following the scoring system to get to be able to do that. that. that. Yeah, I I love that see. I I really love that. And in my last book, which is called Make Change at Last, the first chapter is called Trust Yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And in that chapter I make the case that we've outsourced our inner expertise to external experts.

Right? Right? Right? Yep. Yep. Yep. And I see this in health so much, right? Because Because Because I think one of the big reasons why people are so confused these days by all the conflicting information that exists online about health is is is A because there's a belief that there's one right way for everyone. So when two different experts are saying two different things, people are like, well, which expert should I believe? It's like, well, hold on a minute. Both experts might be right, but for different people.

different people. different people. Right. Right. Right. Right? So which one of those people are you? you? you? And so And so And so I think I think I think that's one aspect of it. I think the other aspect is that we've forgotten we've forgotten we've forgotten how to ask ourself about you know, how am I experiencing this? Is this still working for me? Right? So that scoring system in rock climbing climbing climbing from what I heard, it sounds as though it got you climbing, it got you pushing yourself so you start to progress, and really experience climbing in a slightly different way.

But then after a while you realize, actually now the scoring system starts to become problematic. Right, so it helped me for a while, but now I'm better off experiencing climbing in the way that I want to experience it. And, you know, I I think about even the term non-negotiables. Like, a very common thing that people like me will get asked when we go on other people's podcasts is, you know, what are your health non-negotiables, Dr. Chatterjee? Right? Right? Right? And I will say I don't have any.

Because Because Because a non-negotiable can work really well if you are stuck in your life, if you're not doing anything proactive for your well-being, well-being, well-being, and and and you're sitting around all day, you're not making progress, you have no forward momentum. Yeah, I think a non-negotiable, you know, a few things that you commit to doing every single day without fail, help to start moving you out of that space. space. space. But after a while they can become a trap. They can, you know, run the risk of perfectionism and beating yourself up where you don't feel like you're worthy as a human cuz you didn't do the meditation that you said you were going to do.

Right? So, things work things work things work until they no longer work. So, I think it's there's so many things I want to talk about. So, the first thing is is this such a clear glimpse of what of what of what metrics are for and what they're not. So, So, So, I'm going to push back a little against your thought about well, there are these different experts that are good and you just have to choose the one that's good for you. Cuz the other thing we have to put in this space that there are also fake experts.

So, a lot of the background for this book is actually one of the things I was most worried about was how non-experts pick the right expert when they don't know anything in the field, and a lot of the best uses of metrics are exactly they do what they say on the tin. They help you figure out who is completely a quack. quack. quack. And they are best at sorting on that kind of broad large scale, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I actually I actually I actually I agree.

If If you're If you're swimming in a sea of hundreds of thousands of experts now who are sharing information, of course of course of course some are going to have valuable information and some are not. But even within even within even within I I really think this does speak to the book, right? And the ideas within it. Even within well-credentialed experts who've been to the right university and done the right course, they don't always agree. Yep. Yep. Yep. Right? So Right? So Right? So just saying choose a well-credentialed expert has an inbuilt problem within it, which is you're assuming that every expert interprets the data in the same way and has the same view, but the world doesn't work like that.

And I I often say to people, "If you're waiting for a time when every single expert agrees, Right. Right. Right. you're going to be waiting a long time." So my my approach to people is to say, "You need a balance, right? I'm not saying ignore saying ignore saying ignore Right. Right. Right. external experts like me, but also learn to ask yourself, "Does this approach vibe with me? Does it fit my lifestyle, my culture, how I want to live?" Yeah, and I think the most important word you used was trust.

Um Um Um and especially self-trust. Yeah. And isn't the risk with a lot of the metrics that are given to us from the outside that they if we're not intentional about them, they start to erode our self-trust because we no longer trust ourselves, we trust the metric. Exactly. So I think there was a moment where I saw this very clearly. I was in a wine shop and a gentleman came in, very well dressed, and he was he he um he was like, "I I'd like to get to mind.

I I would prefer wine above 95 points." And the And the And the The wine shop owner was doing what they often do, which is trying to talk you out of that. They'd be like, "No, it's really like what What are you going to have it with? What do you like? Like, what do you want that day?" And the guy said, said, said, "Well, how am I supposed to know what I like?" like?" like?" And I thought, "What are you doing? What What is the activity even here if you're consuming a wine unable to tell if you like it, being guided only by I mean, it makes total sense to use an external score as maybe a starting point for what to buy, to find something that you might like.

It's a balance. But I think what had happened to to him is something that's happened to a lot of people in a galactic scale, exactly what you're talking about. He'd been so attentive to external signals that he had lost any ability to hear the I mean, I don't think it's even that quiet a voice. The voice of pleasure had gotten swamped in his brain. And I think this is exactly what happens. I think So, the philosopher Elijah Milgram, uh, who is a major inspiration to me, one of his ideas is that there's no single correct value to have or goal to have for your life.

Instead, you're trying to find an expression of a value or a goal that fits your personality and your context in the place you're in. And the way you do that is you try on values, and you see if they work for you. And the signal that they're working for you is that you're happy, you're engaged, you're flourishing. And the signal that they're not working for you is that you're miserable, you're bored, uh, and I think what's happened to many of us is instead of modifying how we think of the target in the light of this quiet inner voice, inner voice, inner voice, we're ignoring we're ignoring we're ignoring the inner voice in favor of the loud a loud metric.

And by the way, we have a story about why that's so easy to to do. It's because metrics are built to be easily comprehensible. That's part of our story. They've been built to for everyone to understand instantly and for everyone to be able to communicate to other people instantly. And I think one thing that's happened is that we have systematically become unwilling to listen or trust quiet inner signals, which makes us dependent on external sources to evaluate our life for us. And I think one of the reasons for that, in my experience, is is is because we don't spend that much time with ourselves anymore.

We're constantly distracted. You know, we're consuming stuff. And if you're constantly consuming stuff from the outside, no matter how good it is, you're probably less able to hear what's going on on the inside. So, I believe for a lot of people, and this has certainly been my experience, is that stuff where you, you know, doing things regularly regularly regularly in solitude, you know, whether it's a walk where you're not listening to something or you're drinking a cup of coffee in complete silence, you know, it allows you to start tuning into, "Oh, wait a minute.

I'm, you know, something's going on here. Something that that that something my body's trying to tell me something. Trying to make me aware, but instead of listening, we distract. So, I think for some people at least, that has become an issue. I love what you said about values because and values are a kind of metric, right? But they're an internally generated metric as opposed to an externally generated one, which is why I think values are so powerful. I mean, you know, we haven't we spoken about games yet.

You know, the the you start with what's so good about games and what's so beautiful about games is that you have these these these rules and the rules of the game shape the behavior and shape what you care about. about. about. Right. Right. Right. But actually But actually But actually life's a game as well and the rules of the game that are given to us shape what we think we should care about. So if we think we should care about money and promotions and status we end up chasing that to find at 45, well, like what the hell's happened to my life?

Why do I feel unfulfilled? Because we've chased something that has been or we might have chased something that was given to us from the outside. But I think values are in many ways the polar opposite but in a great way that we get to choose our values. We get to try out these values and see, you know, how do I feel? As you said, when I when when I'm actually in accordance with these values, how do I feel when I don't? And over time perhaps we can tweak those values to kind of know who we are and live in harmony with that person.

I mean, yesterday Lindsey Vonn, the American downhill skier downhill skier downhill skier Olympic champion. Olympic champion. Olympic champion. And And And she decided after I think 5 years out of the sport to compete in the women's downhill. People going, this is crazy, you know, she's been out of sport for 5 years and then last year uh sorry, last week she ruptured her ACL anterior anterior cruciate ligament on her left knee. Yet was still deciding to compete and since she crashed my feed on X is just full of people either saying she's the stupidest woman in the world for competing or people saying what a brave athlete.

And all I can think of is how do any of us really know? Like we don't know who she is, how she values her life. And she's put out a statement this morning saying that she has no regrets. She knows who she is, she knew the risks. the risks. the risks. But actually this is how she wants to live. live. live. Right. And I thought there was something really powerful about that which we can all, I think, think about, which is do we know our own values, or have those values been given to us from the outside?

And if they've been given to you from the outside, like they were for me, me, me, for much of my life, can you start the process of trying to understand understand understand which ones you'd like to change? I mean, what's your take on that? I mean, I mean, I mean, metrics are prepackaged values. And And And one of the things that I find powerful powerful powerful about games about games about games is that they balance the explicitness of giving you a goal or a value with a freedom to modify it.

I think they really they really they really uh uh uh exemplify exemplify exemplify at their best the mode of life you're trying to describe because this is okay. This is the most philosophical on high geek description of the most common activity. Here's what you do when you play a game. A game gives you a prepackaged target. It gives you a scoring system. You do it for a while, and then you step back and you reflect and you ask yourself, was it fun? Was it a good time?

Was it enriching? Was it interesting? Was it an enjoyable social experience? And what you've actually done there is done a micro version of exactly, I think, the thing that you think is beautiful, which is first you plunge yourself into this alternate score thing that specifies exactly what you do. You try it on, and then you step back and ask yourself from example, from an ask yourself from an angle outside that scoring system in a way that I think is cute to listening to internal signals. Like just the basic question, was that fun?

Was that interesting? Is a cue to be open to weird hard to measure signals. And then you use that to make a decision about whether you want to play the game again, whether you want to play a different game, whether you want to modify that game. And I think that [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] as as as dumb as it might sound, I think that a life with games exemplifies a freedom and agency with respect to your values and activities. What it is and not every game is like this.

You can be pushed into bad games. It's not automatic. automatic. automatic. Is it a bad game or is it a game that's just not suited to you? Um I mean this is I I think I'm mostly I'm talking about games that are not suited to you. There are probably some bad games. I think like purpose-built addictive games are bad, but whatever. I I I think you're right. The The The the thing that the social technology of games do when we experience them in the right context is they trigger reflection.

And they trigger reflection by participating in and then stepping back from extremely explicit systems. They also let us leverage what's good about explicit systems, right? The whole point of game rules and game goals is they capture kinds of activities. That's what rock climbing is like for me. A lot of my favorite board games and a lot of my favorite I'm really interested in tabletop role-playing games right now have a very interestingly strict rule set and a point system that gets you to leap into a particular kind of activity.

So a lot of the my favorite role-playing games have scoring systems that tell you to do things like invent shared backstory or find tension in character drama. And having that as a quick, clear guide can help you find your way into new forms of Because the whole [clears throat] thing that that we're generating here, the background thought is that values are subtle. And I think I just realized there's a slightly different alignment in the way you're talking about things and the way I'm talking about things.

Uh Uh Uh I think you are, to use my own like, a little more purely existential in the old school, like Sartre-style existentialism. existentialism. existentialism. The views you've been expressing are like, your real values come from the inside, they're authentic to you, and the stuff from the outside is fake. And I don't think that. I actually think a lot of the most important values in life are very subtle and contained in the outside. I learned the beauty of jazz from other people. I learned the beauty of rap from other people.

I learned the beauty of rock climbing from other people. Those values are embedded in external activities. Think for me, the most important thing is that what is really valuable is often quite subtle, and that subtlety is driving both sides of this. The reason we want games and we want rules is cuz values are subtle and it takes a long time to be led into them. That's why it took me years exposed to the scoring system of rock climbing to see the beauty of movement. I needed that structure to get me over to see that subtlety.

And it's also why metrics won't metrics won't metrics won't perfectly capture it explicitly, right? That that subtlety is also exactly why um you'll never be able to get a metric that exactly captures a value. Which is And I think the way that games do it is they don't try to get you there perfectly. They give you a shove in the right direction. And that's That's what they're at the best for, right? They're a shove in the general direction, and then you eventually like get up and teeter on your own feet and find your way.

That's But we we need that help. We need both a combination of the assistance of external systems to help us find our way, and then the willingness to trust ourselves to navigate and hear the inner voice to catch on to what's subtle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But if we're stuck on the metric the entire time, entire time, entire time, we'll never we'll never start to hear the smaller signals that'll help us close in. close in. close in. Yeah, I'm not sure I necessarily think it's all internal and the external has no value.

I think for me it's more it's a combination of the two. We can as you say, let's say with jazz. Like I'm a huge music fan and you know, music has done something to me on the inside um for many, many years, right? So that yeah, sure. We can try and quantify with scientific data and say that this is what happens in the brain or we can just go, you know what? When I hear that track, I feel absolutely fantastic, right? Which should be good enough in and of itself, right?

But you need the external music to bring out that internal feeling. So I don't think it any of these things are black or white and that you can say it's just internal or just external. I do very much believe that you know, I'm interested in primarily health and happiness. And And And I do believe it's very hard for people to truly be healthy and happy in the long term long term long term if they haven't almost taken an internal inventory and figured out who they actually are.

Now, they might need to experiment, they might need to make some mistakes or I wouldn't even call them mistakes. You might need to experiment maybe with the wrong thing to learn actually, you know what? When I behave like that, that's not really who you know, who I want to be, right? You've got this thing in the book called the gap, the distance between what's measured and what actually matters, right? And I talk about that as well through a different lens, which is whenever there's a gap between your internal values internal values internal values and your external actions, I believe that's where all of your problems start in life because you create this kind of void within you.

There's not true alignment, and I think the closer you get to having your external actions matching your internal values, values, values, I think the happier you are, the more at peace you are, the less likely you are to engage in problematic behavior. So, I do think we talk about similar things, but but but probably look at things slightly differently, and we have a slightly different language for them. When you came into the house this morning, I was sharing with you how much I enjoy snooker. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And And And how in our front room we have a little table that table that table that sometimes I'll play with my kids, sometimes I'll play by myself, but I play play play for the inherent joy of playing. of playing. of playing. I can just be there by myself for 20 minutes, and minutes, and minutes, and to the external eye watching, it could be the most boring thing in the world, but to me, I'm trying to put little different bits of spin of spin of spin on the ball.

I'm trying to see where exactly can I leave the white ball at the end. Can I get it to kick off a little bit more to the left when it hits the cushion? Like my wife would be watching that, and she'd probably think I I don't want to speak for her, but it let's put it this way, it's not her thing. thing. thing. Hey, I think that's the best way to put it, right? And I think that's okay, right? Because I would argue that Okay, this is my bias, but I would say if you don't enjoy watching snooker, one of the reasons might be it's cuz you don't understand the game.

If you really understood, and I played a lot of games, and I would I will still say to play snooker well on a full-size table, I think it's one of the most difficult games on the planet. I really do. do. do. It is exquisite, the skill these players have, have, have, and they are doing things with the cue ball that to the untrained eye you have no idea. You just think, "Oh, they're just hitting balls." If you play, you're like, "Oh my god, the way they caress the cue ball to come back to that position to make the next pot look easy is a thing of beauty." beauty." beauty." Right.

Right. Right. So, So, So, a lot to unpack there, but you you were I think when you came you said there were things you wanted to talk to me about about snooker and hobbies and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and what's so great about them? I think that's that story encapsulates so much about uh uh uh why I think games are so important to think about and understand and to uh cherish. And I think there's um um um there's two levels in which games and your relationship to snooker for me are uh are kind of the opposite of the metrics to spare that we've been talking about.

Um Um Um So, So, So, a lot of this uh a lot of this came for me. So, the the the book that you read is my second book. It's also my first popular book. My first book was an academic book about the nature of games and trying to understand what made games valuable and um So, actually the first book I wrote basically out of irritation. Like, that was my starting motive. Like, I played games my entire life. Sports, video games. And I I'd been teaching a course about uh philosophy of art.

And I wanted to do a case study about whether video games were art. So, my read a bunch of things with my students and I got really frustrated cuz all of these people tried to defend video games by pointing out how they were like movies. Like, they had cool cutscenes, they had good graphics, they had good dialogue. And I was angry. Uh cuz I thought it left out the thing that was most important to me about games, which was like the action part. The part where you exercise skill and we're like lost in your skill or like absorbed in both like just pure skill or absorbed in like interesting decisions or like ecstatically rich choice spaces or just being hyper creative like I think one of the most interesting parts of games is indie tabletop role-playing and in there the rules get players to be emergently creative together and invent stories together and I love all this stuff and it was missing.

So I was trying to figure it out and I got I mean the it's funny cuz I feel like I'm telling everything in the reverse order from how it originally happened. Uh there's this moment where uh I found this game designer I love Reiner Knizia. He's a European board game designer. And he said uh in a lecture at the Game Developers Conference the most important thing in my game design toolbox is the scoring system cuz it tells the players what to care about. It sets their desires in the game and I was so struck by this.

What I ended up thinking was what what a game does does does is it specifies desires and then it specifies limitations and abilities. It says use this cue ball. You you can't move the cue ball around with your hand. You got to use the stick, [clears throat] right? Uh you can't move the ball with your hands in soccer. You got to kick it, right? Um uh it does these things and then by doing so it plunges you into a very specific kind of activity. It plunges you into you into you into the hyper calculating like little tiny deflections of movement or hyper calculating exactly what toe angle will be able to use a rock climbing hold or hyper calculating 15 moves ahead in chess about like what all the possible logical moves in logical space are.

rules to you need you need the obstacles to to to inspire the creativity, right? Don't you? You you know, without the rules it just wouldn't work. The definition to Bernard Suits as a philosopher that philosopher that philosopher that has been one of the biggest inspirations for me and he had this definition of games I find incredibly useful. He says, "To play a game is to voluntarily take on unnecessary obstacles to create the possibility of struggling to overcome them." them." them." And what this I mean I put Well, that's brilliant.

You're creating obstacles so that you can experience can experience can experience the process of overcoming them. And you know cuz you don't need the obstacle, do you? Like I think you the example in the book is the marathon. You're like, you know, what what is a road marathon? It's like well, it's not the fastest place for me to be cuz you Right. Right. Right. you wouldn't do it that way, but that only counts if you do it the way in which it's prescribed by the organizers.

Suits says, I mean marathons are a great example. Suits says that um that you can see from the structure of I mean it's it's again it's one of these things that's so obvious. It's just lurking under the surface. Uh Uh Uh when you run a marathon, that's not the most efficient way to get to that point in space. Not only could you're supposed to run, you're not supposed to take a taxi, and you have to follow this course. You you can't take the most direct route.

A lot of the times the finish line and the start line are like 2 ft apart. You could have gotten there much faster. Um and what that teaches us I mean one way is that one way to put it is that Suits is saying is that games are inefficiencies on purpose, on purpose, on purpose, right? We're limiting ourselves and we're taking the most efficient way to do things do things do things out of the picture and then we're trying to be efficient within an unnecessary efficiency, which means that it must be that what we care about is not the outcome on its own.

We care about doing it a particular way. So, games games games love that. love that. love that. exemplify I mean we all we know all the the motto, you know, the journey is the destination, process over outcome. Games rub that in our face. What they force us to admit is that the thing that's valuable is a process of doing, of choosing, of acting, of being skillful, of goofing off, that it's in the process. And I think this is So, the first thing to say is I think the world of metrics ignores processes cuz those are very hard to count.

The beauty of the process is very hard to count. And it's very The world of metrics is very good at picking up outcomes and products because those are easy to count. And games are this weird, beautiful paradox on the outside because in games we use hyper-clear scoring systems to get at a very unclear, hard-to-measure, subtle, ineffable thing, which is the beauty of doing. of doing. of doing. Yeah, the difference between goal and a purpose. purpose. purpose. Yeah. Yeah. I A lot of this I learned from from from a mentor of mine who casually commented one day, Barbara Herman, professor.

She casually commented one day that we all had to remember the difference between a goal and a purpose. And I was like, "W- What's that?" And she said, "Well, if you have your friends over for cards, the goal is to win, and the purpose is to have fun." And I was just like, "Oh my god, of course, right? Like, a lot of the times we have this goal, and we pursue it intensely, and you can't get the purpose without the goal. You can't have fun just by trying to have fun.

You try You have fun by trying to win." win." win." But, But, But, um um um what you actually care about is not the goal. So, the name I have for this in the philosophy of game stuff is I call it striving play. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Achievement play is where you try to win cuz you care about winning, and striving play is where you try to win just to have have have the process, but you need to try. So, one way to put it is in normal life we take the means for the sake of the ends, and in striving play we take the ends for the sake of the means.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You you There's a There's a couple of great examples in the book of this where I think it's your friend's 10-year-old son. son. son. He's playing Monopoly with his dad, your mate. mate. mate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And your friend, the dad, thought, "Oh, yeah, I've lost, you know." But he was almost on the verge of losing for hours cuz every time his son would distract him and just sneak a bit of money into his pile because he wanted he didn't want the game to end.

He wanted it to continue. continue. continue. And then the other example, which, you know, we played a lot of chess as a family, although we haven't played as much recently. So this is a good reminder to get back into it. You say in chess that you want a long, intense game, but you only get there by trying to win as quickly as possible. I thought that's true. That Whenever I'm playing with my kids and if it is like this 45-50 minute game, it's great, but you don't get that by trying to make it a 45-50 minute game.

You you only get that by trying to win. Yeah, the most delicious thing in chess is a long, drawn-out struggle that's intense and perfect, but you only get that if both of you are trying to win as quickly as possible. Um the there's a concept behind here that I think you would love, the concept of a self-effacing end. It's one of the deepest things I've learned from philosophy. So a self- This is an idea from Aristotle. A self-effacing end is an end that cannot be pursued directly.

It's an end that to get to, you have to pursue something else. So he Oh, love that. Yeah, so his So um I think for me the easiest example is flow state or relaxation. I climb to relax. Here's a thing you cannot do, relax by trying to relax. If you sit there and think, "Relax," you will fail. So I relax by trying to get to the top of a rock. And the best way to relax is to forget that you're trying to relax and just get to try to get to the top of the rock.

Um a a a a very clever example from philosophy is another self-effacing end is the pleasures of love. It is very pleasurable to be in love with somebody, but you can't love somebody else for your own pleasure. That's not love. You won't get those pleasures. And Aristotle thought that happiness was a self-effacing end. He thought you couldn't go out directly chasing happiness. He thought you had to chase scientific discovery, artistic achievement, helping people. That was the way to be happy. That happiness as a kind of goal was too nebulous to effect.

effect. effect. Yeah, it it it just it's what you really want. But it's a side effect of some other goal. So games are like a sneaky way to get at self-effacing ends. And we kind of like I can openly say I climb in order to relax. I fish in order to meditate. In general, I can say that before I do it. But to get that effect when I'm doing it, I mostly have to forget that. I mostly have to just focus. focus. focus. Yeah, it's Yeah, it's Yeah, it's it kind of makes me to really think about how captured we all are by by by metrics.

And you know, I I I I touched on it already, but you know, sometimes I'll talk about the importance of hobbies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And doing things that you love, right? But what I usually say right? right? right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To justify To justify To justify Right. Right. Right. why would a medical doctor be talking to you about doing something that you love? I say that there is research data showing that people who regularly do things that they love Right. Right. Right. are more resilient to stress.

Right. Right. Right. I mean, what's wrong with just doing something because you enjoy it? Nothing. But something has happened where I feel the need to say Oh yeah, yeah, but you know what? There are these benefits. Right. Exactly. Something you enjoy. As if the benefit of just feeling good and being immersed in something isn't enough in enough itself. this is in Aristotle. What I mean, how how about this? The dumbest, stupidest question is Well, what's happiness for? What What do you get out of it? And the answer is you say, "No, it's happiness.

It's what we want." And I feel like a lot of medical science has become, well, we need to justify happiness justify happiness justify happiness because it'll help us make more money. And you're like, no, you've got it the wrong way around. I think, okay, two two two things that are really important. Bernard Suits, at the end of this book, The Grasshopper, The Grasshopper, The Grasshopper, he has an argument. His argument is, imagine utopia. Imagine something where we solved all our practical problems through technology. through technology.

through technology. What would we do in utopia? We would play games, or we would be bored out of our skulls. So, it must be that games are the meaning of life. They give this argument, and people laugh. But what he's he's actually So, Suits was an Aristotle scholar, and he's just representing the Aristotelian idea that the meaning of life comes in human activity, not in human outcomes. That the meaning of life lies in exercising capacities, doing things, doing things interestingly, and that outcomes are just the thing that either helps us focus us so that we can have these capacities, or they're the kind of instrumental background resources we need to support us so we can get to the doing, right?

So, I mean, I think Suits thinks that games just make that clear and obvious. and obvious. and obvious. And I But I think there's something else that's really interesting in what you said. said. said. I totally see there's there's a philosophical position from which doctors should not really talk about what's meaningful. They should just talk about these affairs of health. And there's a So, there's a part in I hang out with a lot of medical ethicists. And one of the things they say is, the problem has been when medicine tells people what the meaning or value of life is.

That should be up to the person. That should be an autonomous decision for the person. Medicine, objective medicine, should stand back and just tell people about what will help you survive so that you can make your own choices about what's meaningful. So, that makes perfect sense to me. Once again, so long as we accept that health care is a resource that's useful on the way to the other thing that's meaningful. meaningful. meaningful. But then what it looks like is because of of of the value capture, we've forgotten about the meaning part because it's so variable and subtle, and we've just hyper-focused on what are supposed to be the instrumental resources.

Money is useful to do other stuff. Health is useful to do other stuff. Because some aspects of that are highly countable, we've we've we've forgotten that it was supposed to be on the way to something else and taken it as the end to itself just because it's so easy to publicly count. Yeah. I have realized over the last few years that that that one of the things I care the most about for myself and for the world is kindness. is kindness. is kindness. And And And I articulated this publicly last summer at the end of my Sydney show when someone asked me if you could prescribe one pill to everyone on the planet what would it be?

And I thought about it and I said it would be a compassion pill. And I explained why and and and and one of the things I said was that on the face of it it seems as though what I do with this podcast or with my books or with my live talks or whatever it might be is that it on the face it seems that what I'm about is health and happiness. And it is, but I don't think it's necessarily for necessarily for necessarily for health and happiness as the end goal.

I'm like what why what why does it matter that you're healthy? Right? Well, I it's up to you to decide if it does matter to you, but I think if you're healthier and happier and happier and happier you're more likely to be a kind compassionate human being. Like I I really do believe that. I think a lot of the time when people don't behave well with other people or they're reactive or they're fighting people online, it's cuz they're triggered, they're stressed, they're busy, they're they don't feel good in themselves and therefore that permeates to the people around them.

So, I actually believe that I I think what this show is about really is about trying to create a more compassionate world because when you understand yourself better, when you do the things that are going to give you energy and vitality, I think most people, maybe not everyone, but most people are going to behave in a much more compassionate way. You're itching to say stuff. So, you know, feel free. Okay. [snorts] [snorts] Okay. Okay. Okay. We're both experts of a sort. You're an expert in health.

I'm an expert in philosophy to the extent that matters anyone. matters anyone. matters anyone. And um I think I think when people look to us, they want certain kinds of advice about what to do and what they're looking for us and what it seems we might want to provide is a definitive answer of what meaning is or what it's for, what happiness is, what health is, what the meaning of life is. And maybe what we should do is refrain. Because I mean, I think this is close to what you're saying before.

Sometimes I think think think the real I don't have a good argument for this, but what my gut cries out to say [clears throat] is the real problem of metrics as values is they're dead. They can't change. They're pre-fixed. The their stability and rigidity is one of the core problems and maybe what it is to be a live being, a fully alive being, is you're constantly renegotiating what's valuable and meaningful for you. You're constantly alive to questioning the terms and resetting them. And maybe what we should not do here is say, "Here's the meaning of life.

Be compassionate. Here's the meaning of like instead what we should try to be is uh midwife to the process. Right? Right? Right? Like to set I mean, [clears throat] I think about this a lot in my classroom. I think there's one conception of what I'm trying to do is I'm going to teach you philosophy. I'm going to teach you correct answers. And another conception of what you're doing and this was this is actually I'm stealing this by the way from Socrates. Socrates thought he was a mid he actually used the term, "I'm a midwife to other people's ideas and conceptions." What you can think of yourself as doing is being like, "Oh, no.

no. no. I want you to be constantly alive and renegotiating and thinking and like changing your mind and I want to trigger that process. So, maybe one thing we can do do do is refuse to give the answer of what it's for. for. for. But I I I would say that's what this show has always done, right? I never tell have told anyone what to do on this show, ever. show, ever. show, ever. In fact, I won't give people prescriptive advice. What I what I think this podcast is about is sharing ideas.

Right. Right. Right. And if someone listening to it thinks that might be useful for me and chooses to then bring it into their life, great. But I'm not trying to tell you what to do. Right. Right. Right. That's up to you. You're an autonomous individual who's got every right to live life in the way that you want to as long as you're not harming other people, right? right? right? Um and when I say that my goal is to try and create or do my small part to help create a more compassionate world, compassionate world, compassionate world, that's purely coming from me.

I'm not putting that on someone else that they they may listen to this conversation because they want to understand the world better. They may listen to this podcast because they want to lose weight. weight. weight. [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] They can take from these conversations what they will. I can also go in with my intention and I think both things can can be true. Okay. Okay. Okay. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Can I try I think what you're doing is incredibly interesting and radical. And I I think I think I think let me try to describe my understanding of what your understanding of what you're doing is in philosophy terms.

philosophy terms. philosophy terms. It's kind of close to a journey I've been through. been through. been through. So, I spent a lot of time intellectually worried about authoritarianism, worried about dictating people, worried about people's loss of autonomy. And I'll teach this stuff in the classroom and then I realized that I'd grown up in a style of teaching philosophy that was deeply hypocritical cuz I was doing that by telling my students exactly what to think and giving them a clear grading system that told them exactly how they're supposed to learn.

And I was dictating to them about the importance of not being a dictator and that's hypocritical. hypocritical. hypocritical. And I think one thing you might think is the goal of medicine medicine medicine is this I sound like this is so Aristotelian. The The goal of medicine is to help people become better people and more fully people. And if you do that by be presenting yourself as an expert and telling people to stop thinking about what they want out of life and simply to obey the clear measures of what health is, then you've undercut the process cuz you're undercutting their autonomy.

And so, I think it sounds to me like what you're aiming for is a kind of richer medical practice that tends to a healthy and free person. And part of that is about refraining from dictating specifics. And I see part of That's part of the relationship to metrics cuz I think both of us are worried that metrics are a form of dictating value and procedure. And so, there's something deeply paradoxical about trying to tend to people's like alive well-being by trying to kill the aliveness of their relationship to their lives.

lives. lives. I really like the way you've articulated that. that. that. One I've never done done done in my career as a doctor is tell a patient that they must give up smoking. Right. Yep. Right. Yep. Right. Yep. What I have done on numerous occasions is if a patient came in to see me Yep. Yep. Yep. and asked my opinion, I would tell them what I thought smoking was doing to them and the impact it was having on their health. Right. Right. Right. If at the end of that conversation I was confident that that patient fully understood what I had said Right.

Right. Right. and they then said, "Hey doc, I've I've heard you. I get it. I understand the risks. risks. risks. But I get so much enjoyment out of smoking smoking smoking that I'm prepared to put up with those risks." risks." risks." I'll be like, "Okay." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I never thought my role as a doctor was to go, "No, no, no. You don't understand. You you must do this." Right. Right. Right. And actually, I would argue that not that this was the goal, but I would I can think of many occasions where that same person, because I didn't try and tell them what to do, Right.

Right. Right. they'd often come back a few months later. later. later. Go, "Hey doc, you know what? A few months ago we had that chat about smoking. smoking. smoking. I actually think I'm ready to start reducing or or trying to quit. Can you help me?" help me?" help me?" And And And again, my reasoning behind that is I don't think any human being wants to be told what to do by anyone else. Right? So, if I can treat that patient with respect and give them autonomy and respect their autonomy, go, "Okay, fine.

You know, who am I to say that you should care? It's like your brie example, right? A doctor might go to you and say, "Hey, listen. I've done your blood tests. You need to stop eating brie Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. because I don't think I think it's going to shorten your life." Right. Right. Right. You may team may think, "I I care. I don't feel my life would be worth living if the next few decades I can't eat any bread. I don't You know what I'm Do you know what I'm trying to get at?

I Okay. I mean I mean I mean and I I definitely want to acknowledge that I feel imposter syndrome talking to a philosophy professor about these kind of concepts. of concepts. of concepts. this is you you you are at the heart of it. it. it. I mean, one general feature of what I'm worried about is that we are by trying we are like trying to help people and the methods we have of helping people have actually killed the most important thing about peopleness, which is freedom.

And I think like if you dictate to people endlessly what they're supposed to do in the name of their being better and they come to have the posture of never thinking for themselves about what matters to them then you have like removed the most important magic ingredient in the name of optimization. I mean, I think this is one of one of One of the reasons I care so much about play play play is I think playfulness is is our name for a particular kind of freedom.

freedom. freedom. To be playful So, Maria Lugones is one of my favorite philosophers says that to be playful is to be able to move lightly between different rule worlds, to be able to like dance between different conceptions of who you are and what you're supposed to be. Um and I think one of the things I've come to believe the most deeply while writing this writing this writing this was the reason I love games is that games are an encapsulation of something I really care about, which is is is how we can help each other to be free.

Because games are a system where people make them and write them and give them to each other, but give them each other in a system that encourages people to move between them and discover what they want. This is a games are freeing because they let you play around with meaning making. And I think metrics, in the way that we're presented with them in institutions, are anti-free are anti-free are anti-free because they're presented as authoritative. They're presented as authoritative renditions of value. I think metrics are a way that we have what's actually going on with metrics is a social system in which distant forces tell people what's meaningful and what they should pursue rather than giving them the structure structure structure that encourages them to figure out what matters to them.

And I think games are one way to give that structure. The thing you're describing sounds like you're reaching for a form of relating to patients that also also also is structurally designed to lift up their capacity to think for themselves and be free rather than to undermine it. undermine it. undermine it. Yeah, who am I to say to another human being what they should care about? Yeah. It's not my role, whether I'm their doctor or not. It's not my role. You care about what you want to care about, but the question is, do you know what you care about, right?

Or is what you care about, has that been shaped by external metrics, i.e. by somebody else? There were a couple of things I wanted to I mean I I could talk to you for hours. Honestly, that the book is so freaking good and it's it's so it'll really have people thinking about their own lives, how they make decisions, where their where their preferences and values have even come from in the first place. Earlier you you were talking about games and these these voluntary obstacles we put up in games so we can enjoy the process of overcoming them.

And And And we We about how that works in games, but perhaps it doesn't apply to wider life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it could do. I think about the Jewish Sabbath. Jewish Sabbath. Jewish Sabbath. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Right? Right? And I think about what a beautiful restriction that they're putting on their 7-day week that then gives so much value, right? So, by on that seventh day between Friday Friday Friday sunsets and Saturday evening there are certain rules, you know, depending on how strictly, you know, you follow Judaism.

Certain things that you can't do. You can't go in a car. You can't use a phone. You You know, whatever it might be. And so, the rule, the restriction for many families leads to real community bonding, a sacred space once a week where they connect and they cook together and they play games together, right? Yep. Yep. Yep. But you need the kind of artificial restriction there to get the benefits, whereas whereas whereas when we don't have that we then we're free to do whatever we want 7 days a week, [clears throat] but that freedom, the problem is is that every day bleeds into another one.

You know, so when I was a kid, probably the same as you, we're the same age I remember the shops were closed on Sundays. Sundays. Sundays. You couldn't shop on Sundays, right? You had to plan beforehand and Sundays were a family day and you would I don't know, hang out with the family and dad would be doing the ironing and you might watch Formula 1 races together in the afternoon or or whatever. Whereas today, in the capitalist culture that we live in Sunday's no different from Monday, right?

You can shop on Monday, you can go to You can do what you want. You can email. You can do all those things, right? So right? So right? So there's something quite beautiful, I think, about games and these artificial restrictions that create the joy that we can apply to life. That was one thing I just wanted to comment on. comment on. comment on. And the other thing I really want to touch on if if we can, maybe we can't go into mechanical values in detail. in detail.

in detail. Right. Right. Right. But in that chapter on mechanical values, you basically say that the more explicit and mechanical we make our goals and values, the easier it will will be to coordinate. coordinate. coordinate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, Right. So, Right. So, you know, it's a theme we've already touched on that these values and metrics are great at coordinating with other people and communicating what we're doing to people, but we lose nuance when we do it. And you say there are three types of mechanical values: principles, models, and algorithms.

Let's forget models for the moment, but I really like this idea of comparing principles to algorithms. algorithms. algorithms. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder if we could talk about it through the lens of cooking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, you you basically talk about this idea that old-school cookbooks are made up of principles. New-school ones New-school ones New-school ones are more based on algorithms. I I I I think it's such a beautiful analogy, and I wonder if we could just talk about it. it. it.

Yeah, let me let me go back and talk about what you just said at the top of that, and then I want to talk about mechanical values, cuz you said something really wonderful. I think about constraints, and I think games really teach us something incredible about constraints, and it's why I care about them so much. Um you know, you know, you know, uh when I was starting to write about games, there's a common There's a common pushback where a lot of people think like, "Oh, games are just fake play, right?

Because real play is totally free. It's totally unconstrained. It's totally creative. totally creative. totally creative. Games just destroy that. They're like They They're They're prisons that pretend to be play." I don't think that's true. I think that like when you're totally unrestricted, I mean, there's a reason why a lot of people think obstructions are good in creativity, why forms are good in poetry. poetry. poetry. Uh and I was trying to understand this and the best explanation I got from a yoga teacher, she said that when you get let people be totally free, when you're not strict with your yoga poses, people just enter repeat their bodily habits.

habits. habits. And the the strictness of yoga was a conduit to freedom cuz it forced you out of your habits and the script strictness put you into a new posture and then you could reintegrate that, right? So, I mean mean mean one of the one of my weirdest claims in my first book is that games are yoga for your soul soul soul because they force you into different postures of caring about things and different practical postures about the world. world. world. But they're freeing only if they're temporary.

If you're not stuck like that. Yoga would not be freeing if you're in triangle pose forever and a metric is not freeing if you have to care that way forever. Games are freeing precisely because they're strict but temporary. And I the reason I think they're so interesting is that games are constraints used for the sake of freedom of freedom of freedom because we use them to move around, but because they're in a larger setting where we're not stuck in them, where they're temporary, then we can move past them.

And that I think is the weird beauty of games. Okay. That's that was the first thing I want to say. Mechanical values. So, this is this is I mean I was so I will tell you I was stuck on this book. There was a big chunk of time where I just could not explain what I thought was the central feature that I was looking at in metrics. metrics. metrics. And then I read this book by Lorraine Daston, who's a historian of science and one of the greatest thinkers alive.

Uh she has an earlier book she would you would love in which she talks about how the idea of objectivity changes over time and how it mechanizes over time. Her new book Rules is about different conceptions of rules. And she says there's this new conception that has come to become dominant in the culture, [clears throat] and that conception is of rules as hyper-mechanical and hyper-algorithmic. But she says, that's actually really recent. An older dominant conception of a rule is what she calls the rule as a principle.

So, a principle is an abstract generalization that admits of exceptions, but you can't list all the exceptions. So, my favorite example is one I learned from creative writing workshop, show don't tell. Good general principle for writing, but off but people break it. Tolstoy broke it, you know, like all happy families are alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in their own way. That's telling, not showing. But what Daston says is the way that a principle works is when you understand the unstated heart of the idea, which lies behind the rule, you'll know when to break it.

Yeah. And the court the court thought there was what a rule it what were how we Life is so complicated that no explicit rule will ever capture everything. You can only point in the general direction, and once we get on to the real idea that is unstatable but true, we know when to to break the rule, right? The rule the rule is a pointer and not the full thing. Um thing. Um thing. Um you know, cue the old uh thought when a finger is pointing to the moon, look at the moon, not the finger, right?

The rule is the finger pointing to the deep thing behind it. So, uh Daston says, but there's a newer conception of rule, what she calls an algorithmic rule. And an algorithmic rule is a rule that's designed to be followed exactly as written, explicitly, with no exceptions, automatically. And then she says, I think the most interesting thing I've read in like 10 or 15 years. She says, people think that algorithmic rules arise with computing machines, but they actually arose about 100 years earlier earlier earlier in an attempt to cheapen labor by reducing large institutions' dependence on particular experts with particular long backgrounds and sensitivities and being able to replace them with anybody.

So, one of the major examples of this for her, she says, um um um in old school cooking, if you look at old school cookbooks, they're actually they don't look like what we're used to. They say things like, like, like, "Add enough flour and water until it feel the dough feels nice and bubbly and then knead it till it's stretchy and then bake it until it makes a nice ringing sound when knocked." Right? And you you know what modern cookbooks are like. They say like, "Two cups of flour, one cup of water, bake for 450°." Hopefully it's clear that the first kind of recipe recipe recipe is a set of principles.

It's a rough set of guidelines that point you in the direction and queue a kind of sensitive, responsive judgment. responsive judgment. responsive judgment. The new kind of recipe is a set of algorithms and it can be applied it's hyper accessible, but very inflexible and very insensitive because it's been written to be usable by everybody. And I think what Daston teaches us is that a lot of the landscape we're looking for looking for looking for has been made to make people replaceable. replaceable. replaceable. Right? The driving force is the desire for workers to be fungible.

So, if McDonald's if if your if your restaurant has a cook that has a long cultivated sensibility and that cook wants to leave, leave, leave, it's really hard to replace them. If McDonald's has written a set of rules that are very precise and engineered the inputs such that those work, then they can fire anyone and replace them instantly. instantly. instantly. And one way to put it is that I think that metrics are algorithmic recipes for values. values. values. What they've done is change what we value away from something that requires sensitivity and context and replace it with something that anyone can track and then if we fire that person and replace them with another, the tracking will continue uninterrupted and unchanged.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love that comparison between old school cookbooks and new school cookbooks. And And as you say in the book, it's not as if the new school cookbook is wrong, you know? And actually can be very useful. A bit like your rock climbing analogy, right? To get you started, right? Exactly right. Exactly right. Exactly right. started, you learn how to cook from it, but then realize Well, when can you break these rules? Yes. Yes. Yes. You know, what happens when you're staying at an Airbnb with your mates and actually actually actually you know, all the ingredients that you use at home are not available.

Or the oven is different, goes through a different type of heat. Can you adapt? Well, clearly a very good chef will be able to adapt. Someone who's rigid rigid rigid Right. Right. Right. to the rules is going to suddenly struggle. And why I want us to talk about this is because principles is what I think a lot about in health. I think where we go wrong in health health health or where some people go wrong is where we too rigidly stick to rules. Rules can be helpful.

A dietary prescription by some expert can be useful to get you started. started. started. Right. Right. Right. But at some point you got to then start asking yourself, is this the right approach for me? Does this fit with my cultural values? Can I eat in this way? Would I be happy eating this way for the next 10 years? Or whatever it might be. And And And I've always taught my patients principles as opposed to Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. harsh rules. Because once you understand the principle, the principle, the principle, you start to gain a degree of self-mastery.

You know, oh, you know, I can tweak this here. You know, it And I think for me, I think that's the ideal state to get to is when you understand the core principles, but know how to tweak them for yourself and and and you know, that the stuff with algorithms as as a sort of modern mechanical value is something I think about a lot, you know, we when you know, it is very common these days for podcasters for podcasters for podcasters to choose guests according to algorithms.

algorithms. algorithms. Right? YouTube is the is the prime platform for this where there are certain guests that will perform on the YouTube algorithm. And a lot of podcast hosts know which those guests are, so will choose them. And I'm not judging anyone for doing that, just to be clear. But as your subtitle is, right? How to stop playing someone else's game, right? The question you got to ask yourself is, is that the game you want to play? Right? Because you could, for example, keep choosing guests that are going to blow up on the algorithm, so you win at the algorithmic game.

You win at the game of views, but you may end up with a show that you hate. hate. hate. Right? And I I actually know full well that that is happening to certain people. people. people. Whereas Whereas Whereas I hope, by and large, what I try and do on this show is I've got I've I've literally have one metric that determines if I invite a guest onto the show or not, and it's simply am I really interested in this human being and do I want to spend two hours with them trying to explore their ideas?

If the answer is yes, irrespective of an algorithm, I will invite them onto the show. If the answer is no, doesn't matter how good the press release is, how good I think the topic might be. I'm like, you know, I just don't think I'm going to vibe with this person. I'm not I'm just not sure I'm I'm interested. So, it's it's curiosity that determines the guest choice. And I think long-term for me personally, I can't speak for anyone else. anyone else. anyone else. You know, 8 years on from starting this show, I still love it more than ever.

I I feel like the luckiest guy on the planet that I get to invite people on and because the show has such a big reach, they come to my studio, sit with me, and we get to explore ideas together. I'm like, how lucky am I that I get to do this job? But I believe that would change if I started to choose guests based on algorithms. And I I really think that speaks to really one of the main themes in the score, which is, as you say, how to stop playing someone else's game.

So, the converse is converse is converse is how do you start playing your own game? And I kind of feel that's what the book is really teaching us through, you know, you you explore it through a variety of different ways, but ultimately, I think the book is a philosophy on how we can live an intentional life that we've designed for ourself. Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. 100%. For someone who's listening to this conversation right now and who thinks games are a waste of time, time, time, [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] what would you say to them?

What is your time for? Right? Like if if a game a game a game has taken you to a point, I mean, I think not every game is for every person, but the magic of games is not just that they are these design processes, but that we get to dance and move between them. That we get to find, like you said, you said, you said, snooker is for you, rock climbing and fly fishing and weird role playing games are for me. And games And games And games have this have this have this magical opportunity.

magical opportunity. magical opportunity. Games give us this magical opportunity for us to explore different facets of ourselves as acting, thinking, feeling, sensing beings, and then find the one that is the most the most the most beautiful for us. And I don't know a better description of what it is to be alive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What is your time really for? I think that's a great question to finish finish finish this conversation on. See, I think the new book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Someone Else's Game, is is is a literal masterpiece.

It is so good. I hope everyone goes out and gets a copy. copy. copy. I think once you read it, you will start to think about your life in a very different way. And ultimately, as I say it, it's going to help you live a more intentional life. Thank you for taking the time to write it. Thank you for coming out to the studio, and uh I hope to see you again soon. If you enjoyed that conversation, then I think you are really going to enjoy this one.

one. one. If I were to choose to live my life over again, again, again, I would live it in this way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. When you're driven to work too hard, you actually ignore what matters. And where does that come from? Again, that comes from childhood trauma.