The inevitable weakness of metrics

A reflective long-read from MIT Technology Review examines what more than a decade of personal quantification taught its author about the fundamental limits of measurement: that metrics reveal some things clearly while systematically obscuring or distorting others. The piece arrives at a moment when AI systems are routinely evaluated through benchmarks and scored outputs, making its central argument — that the act of measuring shapes what is measured, often to the detriment of what matters most — unusually timely. It is the kind of quieter, philosophical journalism that tends to age better than product announcements.