Personal Story: Academic Metrics and Misguided Focus

Thi Nguyen draws on the philosophy of games to explain how scores and metrics impact our lives—and what we can do to use them more meaningfully. 

— YOU’LL LEARN — 

1) How metrics can coopt our values and behavior

2) The hidden costs of the desire to quantify everything

3) Why the wrong people often seem to get ahead

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— ABOUT THI — 

C. Thi Nguyen is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Utah, and a specialist in the philosophy of games, the philosophy of technology, and the theory of value. 

A former food writer for the Los Angeles Times, Nguyen is active in public philosophy, writing for The New York Times, The Washington Post, New Statesman, and elsewhere.

• Book: The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game

• Website: Objectionable.net

• Bluesky: @add-hawk

— RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW — 

• Study: The Cultural Evolution of Bad Science by Paul Smaldino and Richard McElrath

• Book: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (The Institution for Social and Policy St) by James Scott

• Book: Trust and Antitrust: A Philosophical Exploration of Ethics by Annette Baier

• Book: The Grasshopper - Third Edition: Games, Life and Utopia by Bernard Suits

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