GPAs. Citations. Step counts. Likes. We love a good metric, don't we? It tells you exactly where you stand, no arguing. Mention a 4.0 to a high schooler and they'll know exactly what you mean. Tell a fellow Fitbit-wearer you just hit 10,000 and they'll nod approvingly. But that clarity has a price. To make a metric that clean, that portable, you have to sand off all the nuance, all the context, everything that made the thing worth measuring in the first place. And philosopher C. Thi Nguyen thinks that's quietly rewiring us. In his book The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game, he argues the metrics we chase have stopped measuring our values and started setting them.

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