Uploaded September 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
How have metrics surreptitiously replaced our internal value guidance system? How much nuance is lost when we scale collective counting across contexts? How dangerous is data that at first appears independent, whist in fact having heavy value assumptions baked in from that start?
Today we have the worrying topic of value capture to discuss; that is the phenomena of how the majority of our personal values have been outsourced to external generic data sets and measurable scoring systems, often without us realising it. We discuss how, whilst useful in getting the wider picture, these measurables replace our internal lived sense of why things are important, motivating and worthy of goal directed behaviours. We also get into the root of this phenomena in the artificial demotion of the subjective to a lower level of value than the objective; how subjectivity is in fact supertangible and salient rather than intangible; and we get into how data is not neutral and has interests that in turn influence how we collect that data - risking a kind of objectivity laundering. On the other hand we also look at what measurables are good for, and how awareness of the tension between our external and internal value guidance, offers a middle road that gets the best of both worlds.
Fortunately to unpack this slippery topic we have the philosopher of games and art at the University of Utah, C. Thi Nguyen. He’s the author of over 70 academic papers and 2 books for the general public. “Games: Agency as Art”, and his brand new book “The Score: How to stop playing somebody else’s game”, that we’ll be focussing on today.
What we discuss:
00:00 Intro
05:20 Double Consciousness - W.E.B. Du Bois
09:05 “The Score”, how measuring everything warps our values.
10:35 “The things that are easiest to measure at scale don’t track what’s actually important”.
11:50 The constraints on scaled collective counting.
13:36 Amplification of particularly fashionable scaled data points distorts our values.
22:50 The ìdismissal of unmeasurables’ bias.
24:50 Its NOT subjective VS objective. It’s easy to count VS what’s subtle and specialist to count.
28:04 How mechanical public counting came to mean objectivity.
27:50 Theodore Porter - Trading away context-specific for transmissibility.
31:50 Rewriting the rules of the highly context specific.
34:20 The ‘Hyde’: old land measure = the land needed to sustain a family.
36:05 Universality is by definition over generalised.
40:22 Data’s abstract. Context relevance.
44:05 Data is not value neutral, it has interests.
46:20 The ‘screen time’ example of hidden value assumptions.
47:50 The IQ example.
49:20 The ‘categorisation of mortality codes’ example.
50:50 Information compression decisions.
54:10 Bias in science - Awareness over naivety.
55:10 A lack of time to check every specialisation.
57:50 Data has interest baked into it by human interest.
01:02:50 Objectivity laundering - cleansing data of initial value assumptions.
01:05:50 How data can take over our consciousness.
01:09:20 Data has also been GREAT for many things. E.g De-biasing.
01:11:50 Data led VS data informed.
01:15:35 Games scoring - getting the best from measurables.
01:18:50 Reduction in freedom via institutional power over measures.
01:15:00 We are becoming deaf to our internal values.
01:29:20 Solution #1. Awareness.
01:31:50 Solution #2. Critical thinking.
01:32:05 Solution #3. Playfulness.
References:
W.E.B. Du Bois - Double Consciousness concept
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-consciousness/
Wendy Nelson Espeland , Michael Sauder, “Engines of Anxiety: Academic Rankings, Reputation, and Accountability”.
jstor.org/stable/10.7758/9781610448567
Lorraine Daston, “Rules: A short history of what we live by”.
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691156989/rules
Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison - “Objectivity”.
https://share.google/QN9HbJEVOosh2Uf1C
Geoffrey C. Bowker, Susan Leigh Star, “Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences”.
https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/4738/Sorting-Things-OutClassification-and-Its
Natasha D Schull, “Addiction by design”.
Elijah Millgram, “The Great Endarkenment: Philosophy for an age of hyper specialisation”
global.oup.com/academic/product/the-great-endarkenment-9780199326020
Annette Baier, ’Trust & Antitrust*’ paper -
jstor.org/stable/2381376
QUOTE:
“The things that are easiest to measure at scale don’t track what’s actually important”. C. Thi Nguyen
How have metrics surreptitiously replaced our internal value guidance system? How much nuance is lost when we scale collective counting across contexts? How dangerous is data that at first appears independent, whist in fact having heavy value assumptions baked in from that start?
Today we have the worrying topic of value capture to discuss; that is the phenomena of how the majority of our personal values have been outsourced to external generic data sets and measurable scoring systems, often without us realising it. We discuss how, whilst useful in getting the wider picture, these measurables replace our internal lived sense of why things are important, motivating and worthy of goal directed behaviours. We also get into the root of this phenomena in the artificial demotion of the subjective to a lower level of value than the objective; how subjectivity is in fact supertangible and salient rather than intangible; and we get into how data is not neutral and has interests that in turn influence how we collect that data - risking a kind of objectivity laundering. On the other hand we also look at what measurables are good for, and how awareness of the tension between our external and internal value guidance, offers a middle road that gets the best of both worlds.
Fortunately to unpack this slippery topic we have the philosopher of games and art at the University of Utah, C. Thi Nguyen. He’s the author of over 70 academic papers and 2 books for the general public. “Games: Agency as Art”, and his brand new book “The Score: How to stop playing somebody else’s game”, that we’ll be focussing on today.
What we discuss:
00:00 Intro
05:20 Double Consciousness - W.E.B. Du Bois
09:05 “The Score”, how measuring everything warps our values.
10:35 “The things that are easiest to measure at scale don’t track what’s actually important”.
11:50 The constraints on scaled collective counting.
13:36 Amplification of particularly fashionable scaled data points distorts our values.
22:50 The ìdismissal of unmeasurables’ bias.
24:50 Its NOT subjective VS objective. It’s easy to count VS what’s subtle and specialist to count.
28:04 How mechanical public counting came to mean objectivity.
27:50 Theodore Porter - Trading away context-specific for transmissibility.
31:50 Rewriting the rules of the highly context specific.
34:20 The ‘Hyde’: old land measure = the land needed to sustain a family.
36:05 Universality is by definition over generalised.
40:22 Data’s abstract. Context relevance.
44:05 Data is not value neutral, it has interests.
46:20 The ‘screen time’ example of hidden value assumptions.
47:50 The IQ example.
49:20 The ‘categorisation of mortality codes’ example.
50:50 Information compression decisions.
54:10 Bias in science - Awareness over naivety.
55:10 A lack of time to check every specialisation.
57:50 Data has interest baked into it by human interest.
01:02:50 Objectivity laundering - cleansing data of initial value assumptions.
01:05:50 How data can take over our consciousness.
01:09:20 Data has also been GREAT for many things. E.g De-biasing.
01:11:50 Data led VS data informed.
01:15:35 Games scoring - getting the best from measurables.
01:18:50 Reduction in freedom via institutional power over measures.
01:15:00 We are becoming deaf to our internal values.
01:29:20 Solution #1. Awareness.
01:31:50 Solution #2. Critical thinking.
01:32:05 Solution #3. Playfulness.
References:
W.E.B. Du Bois - Double Consciousness concept
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-consciousness/
Wendy Nelson Espeland , Michael Sauder, “Engines of Anxiety: Academic Rankings, Reputation, and Accountability”.
jstor.org/stable/10.7758/9781610448567
Lorraine Daston, “Rules: A short history of what we live by”.
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691156989/rules
Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison - “Objectivity”.
https://share.google/QN9HbJEVOosh2Uf1C
Geoffrey C. Bowker, Susan Leigh Star, “Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences”.
https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/4738/Sorting-Things-OutClassification-and-Its
Natasha D Schull, “Addiction by design”.
Elijah Millgram, “The Great Endarkenment: Philosophy for an age of hyper specialisation”
global.oup.com/academic/product/the-great-endarkenment-9780199326020
Annette Baier, ’Trust & Antitrust*’ paper -
jstor.org/stable/2381376
QUOTE:
“The things that are easiest to measure at scale don’t track what’s actually important”. C. Thi Nguyen
