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“To demand or preach mechanical precision, even in principle, in a field incapable of it, is to be blind and to mislead others," as the British liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin noted in an essay on political judgement. Indeed what Berlin says of political judgement applies more broadly: judgement is a sort of skill at grasping the unique particularities of a situation, and it entails a talent for synthesis rather than analysis, "a capacity for taking in the total pattern of a human situation, of the way in which things hang together." A feel for the whole and a sense for the unique are precisely what numerical metrics cannot supply.”
― The Tyranny of Metrics
― The Tyranny of Metrics
“In the end, there is no silver bullet, no substitute for actually knowing one's subject and one's organization, which is partly a matter of experience and partly a matter of unquantifiable skill. Many matters of importance are too subject to judgement and interpretation to be solved by standardized metrics. Ultimately, the issue is not one of metrics versus judgment, but metrics as informing judgement, which includes knowing how much weight to give to metrics, recognizing their characteristic distortions, and appreciating what can't be measured. In recent decades, too many politicians, business leaders, policymakers, and academic officials have lost sight of that.”
― The Tyranny of Metrics
― The Tyranny of Metrics
Jan’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Jan’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
913 books
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21 friends
19 books
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15 friends
703 books
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57 friends
7 books
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34 friends
0 books
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26 friends
83 books
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23 friends
59 books
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33 friends
0 books
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17 friends
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