The Score

Book review for The Score by C. Thi Nguyen. I rated it 4 stars We live a lot of our lives based off of metrics. You want to get healthy? You might set a weight goal or count calories. However, philosophy professor and author, C. Thi Nguyen, argues that we sometimes focus too much on the metric and lose sight of our original goal. Weight loss doesn’t always equal health, for example, and in the author’s case led to him eating the same meals every day, as it made it easier to count the calories. This bias towards a specific number is a concept that Nguyen has coined “value capture”. On a larger scale, the world is full of metrics and ranking lists which people try and use to make informed choices - the top universities, the best wine choices. But Nguyen argues that ranking these on a pure number means you lose out on a lot of nuance. Certain universities will be better-suited for certain students, and the wine you should choose should vary depending on what food you pair it with, not…