Argo-Thanks for sharing this. I particularly love the journey you took for the reader on things like Industrial Revolution, Goodhart's, and on initiating a review on standards of measurement. Great read. Hope you're well this week. Cheers, -Thalia
This was just fantastic Argo - a really deep and super well written piece on the perils of metricization. Of course, my favourite part was your discussion on optionality :) I never considered how wide-reaching Goodhart's Law actually penetrated until you laid out your piece like this. I particularly also enjoyed your conclusion - never thought of metricization adding layers of lies to what is actually real and true - but you're so right.
What do you think are solutions to pathological metricization, if any?
I confess I have no idea if there are solutions to pathological metricization other than simply scaling down or fragmenting. Scalable systems run rampant because every rule set and ever metric managed forms part of Organizing Principles - which, if you remember, are shorthand principles we use to quickly convey shared goals and ideals to get around Communication Overhead. Refresher link below:
I can think of a few ways to fight pathological metricization:
Freeze your definitions and make it incredibly difficult to change them. This is the way the tripartite government of executive, judiciary, and legislative were supposed to work in my mind - with great power should come great responsibility and slowness, forcing any change through review. Naturally, by assigning the executive more leeway and the doctrine of judicial review, we got around that.
Limited-time charters/constitutions. Corporations/governments should be up for plebiscite of the shareholders/constituents. This is clearly very volatile, because if people just don't show up or even vote against the suprapersonal body, it just dies. This defeats the whole point of suprapersonal bodies, which is to spread risks and responsibilities so that people can focus. Rejected out of hand.
Competing institutions/world-systems: Job-hopping or moving between power blocs - imagine moving to the BRICS bloc from the US/EU bloc or vice-versa to find better conditions, or hopping to your current company's competitor for better pay/packages. After all, one set of Organizing Principles or the other should fit you better. This is probably the best eventual solution as long as wherever you are doesn't converge to the mainstream point of view/set of metrics. Problem being that many of the things ambitious people want - money, power, status, fame - all have particular principles and rules that must be followed, and said ambitious people go around like vampires, sucking the blood from unambitious people and using it to compete. See below:
There is also the possibility of simply placing some set of ethical metrics above all others, but that simply makes the rules and regulations prone to gerrymandering. Look no further than how much religions have changed over the years - not so much in the principles, but in the detail of how rules and doctrines are set. Catholicism is an excellent example for this, we have over two thousand years of philosophizing and legal autism behind everything we do at church.
In conclusion I think that we just have to live with pathological metricization being the norm, and trying to carve out our own less-pathological (to our minds) systems, defending them with time and money like how organic food costs more - you put the organic metric, which allegedly leads to the health principle, higher than others, and eat the economic hit. Or you can form a homesteader/semi-off-grid community and barter for what you need between yourselves.
You won't get rich or famous doing this, not for an equivalent amount of effort in the pathological world, but it can be done.
Argo-Thanks for sharing this. I particularly love the journey you took for the reader on things like Industrial Revolution, Goodhart's, and on initiating a review on standards of measurement. Great read. Hope you're well this week. Cheers, -Thalia
This was just fantastic Argo - a really deep and super well written piece on the perils of metricization. Of course, my favourite part was your discussion on optionality :) I never considered how wide-reaching Goodhart's Law actually penetrated until you laid out your piece like this. I particularly also enjoyed your conclusion - never thought of metricization adding layers of lies to what is actually real and true - but you're so right.
What do you think are solutions to pathological metricization, if any?
I confess I have no idea if there are solutions to pathological metricization other than simply scaling down or fragmenting. Scalable systems run rampant because every rule set and ever metric managed forms part of Organizing Principles - which, if you remember, are shorthand principles we use to quickly convey shared goals and ideals to get around Communication Overhead. Refresher link below:
https://argomend.substack.com/p/the-totalitarian-organizing-principle
I can think of a few ways to fight pathological metricization:
Freeze your definitions and make it incredibly difficult to change them. This is the way the tripartite government of executive, judiciary, and legislative were supposed to work in my mind - with great power should come great responsibility and slowness, forcing any change through review. Naturally, by assigning the executive more leeway and the doctrine of judicial review, we got around that.
Limited-time charters/constitutions. Corporations/governments should be up for plebiscite of the shareholders/constituents. This is clearly very volatile, because if people just don't show up or even vote against the suprapersonal body, it just dies. This defeats the whole point of suprapersonal bodies, which is to spread risks and responsibilities so that people can focus. Rejected out of hand.
Competing institutions/world-systems: Job-hopping or moving between power blocs - imagine moving to the BRICS bloc from the US/EU bloc or vice-versa to find better conditions, or hopping to your current company's competitor for better pay/packages. After all, one set of Organizing Principles or the other should fit you better. This is probably the best eventual solution as long as wherever you are doesn't converge to the mainstream point of view/set of metrics. Problem being that many of the things ambitious people want - money, power, status, fame - all have particular principles and rules that must be followed, and said ambitious people go around like vampires, sucking the blood from unambitious people and using it to compete. See below:
https://argomend.substack.com/p/vampire-society
There is also the possibility of simply placing some set of ethical metrics above all others, but that simply makes the rules and regulations prone to gerrymandering. Look no further than how much religions have changed over the years - not so much in the principles, but in the detail of how rules and doctrines are set. Catholicism is an excellent example for this, we have over two thousand years of philosophizing and legal autism behind everything we do at church.
In conclusion I think that we just have to live with pathological metricization being the norm, and trying to carve out our own less-pathological (to our minds) systems, defending them with time and money like how organic food costs more - you put the organic metric, which allegedly leads to the health principle, higher than others, and eat the economic hit. Or you can form a homesteader/semi-off-grid community and barter for what you need between yourselves.
You won't get rich or famous doing this, not for an equivalent amount of effort in the pathological world, but it can be done.