Book completed (yesterday)

[eve_prime]

The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game, by C. Thi Nyugen. The author is a philosopher who studies both games and data metrics, and here he brings them both together in a very readable book. He explains why games – or any sort of recreational activity with rules and expectations that limit your choices – are great, but whenever we create systems for combining a whole lot of information using rules, etc., it also ends up limiting our choices. There are many times when we want our choices to be limited, like if we’re trying to diagnose a sick kid quickly and optimize our treatment for them. However, as a society we don’t want our choices narrowed in these ways – always prioritizing things that can be easily measured over quality and values. Lots to think about! He does an excellent job of writing for the general public, and although I can tell that he’s more interested in drinking to excess than I am, I also get the impression that he’d be a very fun person to know.