The inevitable weakness of metrics
The inevitable weakness of metrics
指标不可避免的局限性
There are plenty of useful things a metric can reveal. There are even more it can obscure or corrupt. It took me well over a decade of tracking my own life in ever greater detail to fully appreciate this duality, which probably reveals something about both me and the nature of measurement. 指标能揭示许多有用的信息，但它能掩盖或扭曲的信息则更多。我花了十多年时间，以越来越细致的方式记录自己的生活，才完全领悟到这种二元性——这或许既反映了我个人的特质，也揭示了度量本身的本质。
Like a lot of people bitten by the self-quantifying bug, I initially started gathering personal data to pursue a nebulous collection of goals and desires. As a sedentary technology journalist, I wanted to feel better physically and emotionally, to get outside more, and—where possible—to bring order to some of the messiness and uncertainty of my daily existence. These all seemed to be things that could be improved with the cool clarity of numbers. 像许多被“自我量化”热潮感染的人一样，我最初收集个人数据是为了追求一系列模糊的目标和愿望。作为一名久坐的科技记者，我希望在身心上感觉更好，多去户外走走，并尽可能地为日常生活中混乱和不确定的部分带来秩序。这些似乎都可以通过数字那冷峻而清晰的特性得到改善。
Self-quantifiers often get stereotyped as obsessive self-optimizers (and many of them are), but my reasons for producing and collecting personal data were less about life-maxxing and more about life meaning—at least at first. As most people who know me will attest, I do not have now, nor have I ever possessed, a “productivity mindset.” I’m also not all that interested in life hacks, shortcuts, or new ways to compare myself with other people. Instead, what I wanted out of metrics—what I hoped I could divine from a never-ending stream of numbers about my health, work, and social life—was something more elusive: self-knowledge. 自我量化者常被刻板地视为痴迷于自我优化的狂人（其中许多人确实如此），但我产生和收集个人数据的初衷并非为了“人生最大化”，而是为了寻找生活的意义——至少起初是这样。正如认识我的人所能证明的那样，我现在没有，也从未拥有过所谓的“生产力思维”。我对生活小窍门、捷径或与他人攀比的新方式也不太感兴趣。相反，我从指标中寻求的——我希望从关于健康、工作和社交生活的无尽数字流中洞察到的——是一种更难以捉摸的东西：自我认知。
This was my first mistake. The idea that the more we know, the better is so profoundly embedded in our culture that it feels weird to even point it out. Since at least as far back as the Enlightenment, the primary way we’ve all agreed to go about knowing more has been through measurement and quantification. After all, more knowledge—more data—leads to better decisions, which leads to happier, more fulfilled people. Or so we’re told, and with increasing frequency in the era of AI. 这是我犯的第一个错误。“知道得越多越好”这一观念在我们的文化中根深蒂固，以至于指出这一点本身都显得有些奇怪。至少从启蒙运动以来，我们公认的获取知识的主要途径就是度量和量化。毕竟，更多的知识——更多的数据——能带来更好的决策，从而造就更快乐、更充实的人。至少我们是这样被告知的，而且在人工智能时代，这种说法出现的频率越来越高。
When two Wired magazine editors, Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly, coined the term “quantified self” in 2007 and helped launch the movement we are all now helplessly a part of, they were essentially selling this very idea. “Unless something can be measured, it cannot be improved,” wrote Kelly in an early blog post, doing his best impression of Lord Kelvin. “So we are on a quest to collect as many personal tools that will assist us in quantifiable measurement of ourselves.” 2007年，《连线》杂志的两位编辑加里·沃尔夫（Gary Wolf）和凯文·凯利（Kevin Kelly）创造了“量化自我”（quantified self）一词，并推动了我们现在都身不由己参与其中的这场运动，他们本质上就是在兜售这一理念。“如果某件事无法被度量，它就无法被改进，”凯利在早期的一篇博客文章中写道，极力模仿开尔文勋爵的口吻。“因此，我们正在寻求收集尽可能多的个人工具，以帮助我们对自己进行可量化的度量。”
Almost 20 years later, that quest is easier than ever thanks to a flood of devices, apps, and websites all designed to help us build our self-knowledge through numbers. My first tool was a small, plastic clip-on Fitbit I started using in 2011. It did one thing: count the number of steps I took in a day. As a lifelong video game player, I was already well acquainted with the motivational power of simple scoring systems, and I hoped my new gadget would offer the gentle numerical nudge I thought I needed to step away from my Twitter feed and, if not touch grass, at least walk next to some. 近20年后，得益于大量旨在通过数字帮助我们建立自我认知的设备、应用程序和网站，这一追求变得比以往任何时候都容易。我的第一个工具是2011年开始使用的一个小型塑料夹式Fitbit。它只做一件事：计算我每天走的步数。作为一个终身电子游戏玩家，我早已熟悉简单计分系统的激励作用，我希望我的新设备能提供我所需要的温和的数字推动力，让我离开Twitter信息流，即使不能去“接触草地”（指回归现实），至少也能在草地旁走走。
Walking also seemed to be one of the few times I had what could charitably be called intelligent ideas, which seemed like another promising by-product of doing more of it. Alas, that was short-lived. I can’t tell you precisely when “getting out into nature more” or “thinking smarter thoughts” stopped mattering to me as goals, but I suspect it took no more than a few weeks. What I can say with certainty is that my initial goal of 6,000 daily steps quickly turned into 10,000, which then jumped to 15,000 and eventually settled at 20,000 for years. 散步似乎也是我少数能产生所谓“聪明想法”的时刻之一，这似乎是多散步带来的另一个有希望的副产品。唉，好景不长。我无法确切地说出“多接触大自然”或“思考更聪明的想法”是从什么时候开始不再作为我的目标，但我怀疑这过程没超过几周。我可以肯定地说，我最初每天6000步的目标很快变成了10000步，然后跳到了15000步，最终在多年里稳定在20000步。
Stories about becoming a “steps guy” are clichéd at this point, and they’ve earned that status for a reason. It didn’t take long for me to trade in pedometers for heart-rate monitors (I also started running), smartwatches, sleep-tracking rings, and an embarrassing number of macronutrient-tabulating apps. Outside the health and fitness realm, my early career as a journalist also happened to coincide with the rise of social media and web analytics tools like Chartbeat, which promised to further quantify difficult-to-measure aspects of my life, like “job success” and “impact,” by tracking things like page views, followers, retweets, likes, and all sorts of other attentional metrics that now carry great weight. 关于成为“步数达人”的故事在今天已经成了陈词滥调，而且它们获得这种地位是有原因的。没过多久，我就把计步器换成了心率监测器（我也开始跑步了）、智能手表、睡眠追踪戒指，以及数量多到令人尴尬的宏量营养素计算应用程序。在健康和健身领域之外，我早期的记者生涯恰逢社交媒体和Chartbeat等网络分析工具的兴起，这些工具承诺通过追踪页面浏览量、粉丝数、转发量、点赞数以及其他各种现在权重极高的注意力指标，来进一步量化我生活中那些难以衡量的方面，比如“工作成就”和“影响力”。
Metrics inevitably redefine your core sense of what’s important, whether you’re aware of the trap or not. Ultimately, during the 10-plus years I diligently tracked my heart rate, steps, active calories, sleep, story engagement time, stress levels, and other metrics, I gained virtually nothing in terms of greater self-knowledge. (I suppose I did learn that I liked to make numbers go up and down, but who doesn’t?) The swirl of data that followed me everywhere did not lend additional meaning or insight to the way I relate to myself, my work, or the important people in my life. In fact, the more I used numerical proxies, the worse I felt about pretty much everything. 无论你是否意识到这个陷阱，指标都会不可避免地重新定义你对“什么才是重要”的核心认知。最终，在我勤奋追踪心率、步数、活动卡路里、睡眠、文章参与时长、压力水平和其他指标的十多年里，我在获得更深刻的自我认知方面几乎一无所获。（我想我确实了解到自己喜欢看着数字起起伏伏，但谁不喜欢呢？）随处可见的数据漩涡并没有为我与自己、工作或生命中重要之人的关系增添任何意义或洞察。事实上，我使用的数字代理指标越多，我对几乎所有事情的感觉就越糟糕。
What I did learn were two important lessons about what happens when you try to quantify the minutiae of your life. First and foremost, whatever the amount of data you’re currently collecting about yourself, it will never feel sufficient. There’s always a new metric around the corner, a better way for a tracker to remix its readings and more accurately measure what’s “important”: heart rate variability, daily stress, exercise “readiness,” cardiovascular or “fitness” ages. Measurement begets more measurement. You can count on it. 我确实学到了两个关于当你试图量化生活琐事时会发生什么的深刻教训。首先，无论你目前收集了多少关于自己的数据，你永远会觉得不够。总会有新的指标出现，总会有更好的方式让追踪器重新组合读数，更准确地衡量什么是“重要的”：心率变异性、日常压力、运动“准备度”、心血管或“健身”年龄。度量只会带来更多的度量。这一点毋庸置疑。
The second lesson was less obvious but no less significant. The more personal or nuanced your goals are when you set off on your self-quantifying journey, the more likely it is you will ultimately replace them with some simplified metric or ranking. Want to become a better journalist? Why not use page views and leaderboards as a proxy for success? Enjoy cooking and want to improve? Foodie metrics dictate that more complicated recipes with longer ingredient lists are the answer. Even when we know that the value… 第二个教训不那么显眼，但同样重要。当你踏上自我量化之旅时，你的目标越是个性化或微妙，你就越有可能最终用一些简化的指标或排名来取代它们。想成为一名更好的记者？为什么不把页面浏览量和排行榜作为成功的代理指标呢？喜欢烹饪并想提高厨艺？美食指标会告诉你，配料表更长、做法更复杂的食谱才是答案。即使我们知道，价值……