Quantifying everything is our penchant, our comfortable and defensible safe space: just point to the data and your protocols for validation.
In this process we categorize, stripping context for the abstraction of numerical value, sans human value. True cost/benefit analysis is too complex, those making decisions are too far removed, requiring a limited proxy by which to understand. The over-reliance on proxies (abstracted values) is embracing self-deception, leading not only to mediocrity, but harm.
Harm: Instead of data-based decisions leading to equity and providing a platform of wisdom that never lies, it encourages gaming the system. People begin to work for the numbers, not the good or results that the numbers should indicate. (Goodhart’s Law states that any number that becomes a target becomes a bad number, losing reliability.)
This encourages reliance on metrics that the practitioners have manipulated: teachers teach to the test, surgeons avoid complex cases, and attorneys only take winning cases, leaving the world less just and rejecting curiosity or risk. Sure, you can game the system, but from our safe place of data, we live a pale life only benefiting those who never really needed our help.
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