This whole writing encapsulates everything from the McNamara fallacy (what is not observed or qualitative is bad), Goodhart's law (metric gaming) and Campbell's law (everyone wants to game the metric), maybe it is very cynical to think like this, or maybe people just want to "do it the easy way" and not have fun with what they don't enjoy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law#See_also
Hi Tom - I came across your blog from Mark's Daily Apple of all places. I'm really enjoying your writing. I need a thesaurus handy for a few words, but it's good for my vocabulary! I can strongly relate to this blog post. I've taught a little bit of Mathematics, and there can be beauty in numbers, but as you say, it's not the numbers in and of themselves that is the problem. I've yanked myself out of the depths of most social media platforms, but I dabble in the one for those wishing to tell the world that they exercise, Strava. I can make a fairly strong case that my recent running injuries were a result of wanting to 'post' some good numbers. Injuries are a good opportunity to re-assess, and I feel my philosophy around exercise has progressed as a result. I no longer wear smart watches to track my progress or heart rate. As you touch on, the mind/body and gut feel can tell you far more than any device. As long as I'm breathing through my nose and enjoying the scenery/birdlife, I know I'm on the right path. And as with most things in life, it's sometimes important to stop and ask ourselves, 'why are we doing this'? Is it for the pure joy of the activity or the dopamine spiking likes/comments following a 'good effort'. Anyway, I'm glad I came across your site. Not being on social media can make it difficult to discover new blogs/writers. From another Tom, keep up the good work!
Thanks for the kind and thoughtful reply, fellow Tom. It sounds like you truly ‘got’ what I was trying to say (obscure vocabulary aside!)
Congratulations on pulling yourself out of social media, this is something that I am actively working on at present. Social media is like warfare in that it is very easy to get into, very hard to get out of.
To your point, I think that fitbits and the like are a blight and that most people I know who have had fitness related injuries were heavily pursuing a goal/PB at the time. I believe that the body usually gives us warning signs but that modern distractions and poor mind/body connection mean that we are often deaf to them until it is too late.
I would love to know the pathway that lead you from Mark’s Daily Apple to here. I’ve been a long term reader of Mark Sisson so I was thrilled to hear this.
Thanks again for getting in touch and I hope we can have more discussions like this underneath future newsletters.
Thanks for the reply Tom. Also a big fan of Mark Sisson and primal living in general. He drops a 'Weekly Link Love' post each Friday and in his latest one he links to your blog on walking. Link below. You might be getting a few more Newsletter subscribers soon! Fingers crossed.
Totally agree re pursuing PB's etc will increase your risk of injury. And exercising to PB misses the point of exercise in my opinion. I'm doing my best to tame that impulse to focus on self, which, I believe, leads to a rather tiresome and dull existence. A focus on the collective and what you can do for others is far more fulfilling. Nothing revelatory there! Still, and it pains me to admit it, but it doesn't come as naturally as I would like. Luckily, there's nothing like the present in which to take action.
Thanks for letting me know, Tom, Mark Sisson is absolutely one of the good guys in this world. And yes there has been a bit of an uptick in subscribers which is fantastic.
It reminds me of the old blog culture (before this social media nonsense virtually killed that ecosystem) where people were generous and linked to each other’s stuff. This meant that everyone tried to write as well as they could and so everyone grew and a decentralised community was built. We need to bring that back.
I’m certainly making more of an effort to comment on people’s blogs and so on. You don’t get the same quick dopamine hit as you do with likes and RTs. Which probably indicates that it’s a worthwhile activity. Long term thinking.
‘Taming then impulse to focus on self’ is exactly right. This is basically the cure for most of lives ills as far as I can tell. Excellently put, Tom.
The way these Newsletters tend to work is that a good opening sentence pops into my head when I’m not trying to force it (so while out walking or showering or listening to music or whatever). And then ones I get that one sentence down on paper I am off to the races.
"The goal is creativity, not the mere mechanistic production of ‘content’- a Benthamite word if ever I heard one." Well put.
I loved the parallels between Benthamite ideas and the modern day buzzwords that have become so commonplace I scarcely even notice them, especially on "self-improvement/money/wealth/whatever twitter". It's all so bloody one-note and boring. If I spend more than 10 minutes scrolling I want to throw my phone against the wall and retire to a cave in the mountains.
But without it, I would never have discovered your writing, or the many other interesting thinkers on there. Such is the struggle.
Great article, happy to see the list keeps growing.
You’ve described the struggle in a nutshell. How do you discover new thinkers and voices without finding yourself trapped by the algorithm and addictive networks? And how did this come about?
You’ll notice that all three of these newsletters so far (catacombs, boredom, numbers) are all circling around the same issue of the ubiquity of social media and the problems this causes.
I want to move on to happier themes as I move forward but I think twitter and it’s ilk need to be dissected and examined and taken seriously. Maybe I’ll do that in the next issue.
This whole writing encapsulates everything from the McNamara fallacy (what is not observed or qualitative is bad), Goodhart's law (metric gaming) and Campbell's law (everyone wants to game the metric), maybe it is very cynical to think like this, or maybe people just want to "do it the easy way" and not have fun with what they don't enjoy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law#See_also
This whole problem is even being dissected by Collen of Desystemize, and in a non-science way of describing a way of "out-numbering the numbers" is this: (a) have multiple sets of metrics or heuristics that often complement each other in ways that negate each others risk of becoming tyrannical, and (b) practice observing for more qualitative or categorical heuristics. https://desystemize.substack.com/p/desystemize-8/comments https://swellandcut.com/2017/09/04/the-five-types-of-paired-indicators/
Hi Tom - I came across your blog from Mark's Daily Apple of all places. I'm really enjoying your writing. I need a thesaurus handy for a few words, but it's good for my vocabulary! I can strongly relate to this blog post. I've taught a little bit of Mathematics, and there can be beauty in numbers, but as you say, it's not the numbers in and of themselves that is the problem. I've yanked myself out of the depths of most social media platforms, but I dabble in the one for those wishing to tell the world that they exercise, Strava. I can make a fairly strong case that my recent running injuries were a result of wanting to 'post' some good numbers. Injuries are a good opportunity to re-assess, and I feel my philosophy around exercise has progressed as a result. I no longer wear smart watches to track my progress or heart rate. As you touch on, the mind/body and gut feel can tell you far more than any device. As long as I'm breathing through my nose and enjoying the scenery/birdlife, I know I'm on the right path. And as with most things in life, it's sometimes important to stop and ask ourselves, 'why are we doing this'? Is it for the pure joy of the activity or the dopamine spiking likes/comments following a 'good effort'. Anyway, I'm glad I came across your site. Not being on social media can make it difficult to discover new blogs/writers. From another Tom, keep up the good work!
Thanks for the kind and thoughtful reply, fellow Tom. It sounds like you truly ‘got’ what I was trying to say (obscure vocabulary aside!)
Congratulations on pulling yourself out of social media, this is something that I am actively working on at present. Social media is like warfare in that it is very easy to get into, very hard to get out of.
To your point, I think that fitbits and the like are a blight and that most people I know who have had fitness related injuries were heavily pursuing a goal/PB at the time. I believe that the body usually gives us warning signs but that modern distractions and poor mind/body connection mean that we are often deaf to them until it is too late.
I would love to know the pathway that lead you from Mark’s Daily Apple to here. I’ve been a long term reader of Mark Sisson so I was thrilled to hear this.
Thanks again for getting in touch and I hope we can have more discussions like this underneath future newsletters.
Tom.
Thanks for the reply Tom. Also a big fan of Mark Sisson and primal living in general. He drops a 'Weekly Link Love' post each Friday and in his latest one he links to your blog on walking. Link below. You might be getting a few more Newsletter subscribers soon! Fingers crossed.
https://www.marksdailyapple.com/weekly-link-love-98/
Totally agree re pursuing PB's etc will increase your risk of injury. And exercising to PB misses the point of exercise in my opinion. I'm doing my best to tame that impulse to focus on self, which, I believe, leads to a rather tiresome and dull existence. A focus on the collective and what you can do for others is far more fulfilling. Nothing revelatory there! Still, and it pains me to admit it, but it doesn't come as naturally as I would like. Luckily, there's nothing like the present in which to take action.
Thanks for letting me know, Tom, Mark Sisson is absolutely one of the good guys in this world. And yes there has been a bit of an uptick in subscribers which is fantastic.
It reminds me of the old blog culture (before this social media nonsense virtually killed that ecosystem) where people were generous and linked to each other’s stuff. This meant that everyone tried to write as well as they could and so everyone grew and a decentralised community was built. We need to bring that back.
I’m certainly making more of an effort to comment on people’s blogs and so on. You don’t get the same quick dopamine hit as you do with likes and RTs. Which probably indicates that it’s a worthwhile activity. Long term thinking.
‘Taming then impulse to focus on self’ is exactly right. This is basically the cure for most of lives ills as far as I can tell. Excellently put, Tom.
“The path to hell, they say, is paved with good intentions. I disagree. I say that the path to hell is paved with numbers.”
This is OG shit. Loved that opening.
Thanks for saying that Jamil.
The way these Newsletters tend to work is that a good opening sentence pops into my head when I’m not trying to force it (so while out walking or showering or listening to music or whatever). And then ones I get that one sentence down on paper I am off to the races.
I appreciate you getting in touch.
See you on Sunday,
Tom.
"The goal is creativity, not the mere mechanistic production of ‘content’- a Benthamite word if ever I heard one." Well put.
I loved the parallels between Benthamite ideas and the modern day buzzwords that have become so commonplace I scarcely even notice them, especially on "self-improvement/money/wealth/whatever twitter". It's all so bloody one-note and boring. If I spend more than 10 minutes scrolling I want to throw my phone against the wall and retire to a cave in the mountains.
But without it, I would never have discovered your writing, or the many other interesting thinkers on there. Such is the struggle.
Great article, happy to see the list keeps growing.
All the best!
You’ve described the struggle in a nutshell. How do you discover new thinkers and voices without finding yourself trapped by the algorithm and addictive networks? And how did this come about?
You’ll notice that all three of these newsletters so far (catacombs, boredom, numbers) are all circling around the same issue of the ubiquity of social media and the problems this causes.
I want to move on to happier themes as I move forward but I think twitter and it’s ilk need to be dissected and examined and taken seriously. Maybe I’ll do that in the next issue.
Thanks for getting in touch Conor.
See you on Sunday.
Tom.