The Limits of Measurement

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We pay attention to what we measure. Over the last few decades, it's become an obsession. The saying goes if we can't measure it, we can't control it. We've at a stage where if we can't measure it, it doesn't exist.

Measurement is a hard, statistical, intellectual exercise. Reducing things to numbers. Our obsession with measuring is such that when we find something that won't measure easily, we use a proxy.

Proxy: a figure that can be used to represent the value of something in a calculation.

Oxford Dictionary

Over time, we no longer the proxy. We think wealth is measured in money, or importance in terms of celebrity, or our potential in terms of exam results.

We exclude the vast majority of what's important, but difficult to measure. We subordinate our senses to a measuring tape, and our ambition to a random judgement on our abilities to repeat things in exames we'll probably never use again.

And we do it willingly.

That might have some use when our situat…