C. Thi Nguyen

And there are other times I'm like, no, this is just another trade-off.

This isn't just another trade-off thing.

We just have to be careful about the trade-off.

And there's something we should be careful about, which is going too far in the direction of only metrifying and only...

recognizing as important what we can measure via logical institutional data, but we can pull back from that.

So part of it that I'm of two mind, but there's a deeper, there's a deeper, there's a, this is my artsy fartsy reason.

The two endings to the book are kind of my own private glorious joke.

I know.

And the joke is this, this whole book is about

What kinds of external systems tell you what's important versus what kinds of external systems let you find what's important for yourself?

What kind of external systems squash agency and which kinds of ones permit agency?

And one of the interesting things to me is that large scale institutional metrics, even though they superficially look like games, are agency squashing machines because they tend towards singular renditions of value that suck everybody in.

And games, I think, are agency promoting machines in that they let people jump between different scoring systems and try on different things.

And towards the end of the book, you probably notice like there's this moment where I'm talking about this stuff and I'm like, hey, look, there's some kinds of technologies and ways of presenting things that encourage agency and other ones that don't.

And my example of an agency encouraging.

So I think there's some earlier in the book, I talk about agency destroying cookbooks that just tell you this is the right way to do things.

This is the perfect muffin.

This is in the end going to go back to why your wife is right about rotten tomatoes.

Look, this is terrible because you make this thing and it's good, but you're never going to explore and find out what's the muffin for you.

And then there's this other cookbook, Jacques and Julia Cook at Home, where the whole structure of the book is in every recipe, there's Jacques' version and Julia's version, and they're different.