Derek Thompson

A personal example, I care a lot about my Oura Ring HRV, heart rate variability.

But I recently discovered that my HRV can be negatively affected if I stay out late with an old friend or have a cocktail with a buddy from work.

A life lived purely by HRV maxing might be healthy, but it wouldn't be very interesting.

There is, in fact, no fitness tracker metric for good friendships, and a life lived exclusively to maximize HRV might be one in which I see my friendships wither.

140 years ago, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche criticized Christianity because he said it anchored its worshipers to an external system of values that stood in the place of our own motivation, our own instinct, our own identity.

In a similar way, I think for many people, metrics, the quantified life, has become our modern religion.

a system of values that takes us over and can keep us from living the more authentic life we want to live.

Today's guest is the philosopher C.T.

Nguyen.

He's the author of the book, The Score, How to Stop Playing Everybody Else's Game.

We talk about metrics, the games of life, a little Nietzsche, not too much, and how to listen to the parts of ourself

that cannot be reduced to numbers.

I'm Derek Thompson.

This is Plain English.

CT Nguyen, welcome to the show.

Hello, hello.

Tell me about rock climbing.

So with rock climbing, you fall in love with an activity.

you find a metric that at first seems to push you toward becoming a more advanced rock climber, but ultimately that metric becomes the single thing that you focus on.

It takes over your life.