Avoiding Value Capture
There is something deeply reassuring about a metric.
A ranking tells you which university is “best”. A sleep score tells you if you’re well rested. A portfolio dashboard tells you if you’re beating the benchmark. Numbers feel objective. Clean. Actionable. They turn the grey space of real life into something legible.
And legibility is seductive.
In The Score, C. Thi Nguyen describes what happens when that seduction goes unnoticed. He calls it value capture. It happens when a proxy for success quietly becomes the definition. A metric begins as a tool — a rough signal meant to guide attention. Over time it becomes authoritative. The score stops serving our values and starts shaping them.
We don’t notice the shift because it feels like progress.
Before U.S. News began publishing law school rankings, students choosing a school engaged in real soul-searching. They considered culture, professors, regional strengths, areas of specialization. They asked what kind of lawyer they wanted to become. Once rankings took hold, the plural, inward process collapsed into a single outward comparison: “Where does it rank?”. What began as measurement became instruction. Academia converged toward what the rankings rewarded, while students internalized the hierarchy as a proxy for worth. A diverse landscape narrowed into a ladder.
Or take the pastor Nguyen describes who found his colleagues competing on monthly baptisms. A leaderboard was introduced. Sermons changed. The long, patient work of spiritual formation — which resists clean measurement — gave way to messaging optimized for conversion events. No one declared that depth mattered less than belief. The metric quietly made that decision for them.
The pattern also appears in policy. Consider how governments measure sex trafficking. Because trafficking is hidden and difficult to observe directly, performance is often evaluated through conviction rates. But conviction rates can fall when crime falls. If poverty declines and trafficking diminishes as a result, there are simply fewer traffickers to convict. Yet when conviction rates are the performance metric, a drop in convictions can register as failure. The system begins to reward visible enforcement over structural solutions. Justice becomes “cases closed.” A wrong premise, carefully measured, still leads away from truth.
The flattening of complex realities into simple metrics reaches its extreme form in social media. A tweet that moves someone deeply and one that earns a passing chuckle both register as a "like." Then the metrics become visible. People stop asking "Does this matter?" and start asking "Will this perform?" The profound post gets 12 likes. The throwaway observation gets 12,000. You internalize the lesson. Depth became indistinguishable from poor performance. The platforms didn't just measure engagement—they redefined it. We stopped sharing what moved us and started optimizing for what moves the algorithm.
The same flattening explains why bold cinema is dying. Aggregation platforms do not ask how intensely anyone cared. They only record whether the reaction leaned positive or negative. A divisive masterpiece registers as mediocre when its reception is averaged, while a forgettable crowd-pleaser scores higher. This is not just a measurement problem—it changed what gets made. Matt Damon described how Good Will Hunting couldn't be produced today. No IP. No franchise potential. Too risky. Studios now greenlight projects based on pre-tested formulas and projected Rotten Tomatoes scores. Opening weekend metrics have become the definition of success. The result: everything is a sequel, a reboot, or an adaptation. Originality became a liability the moment it could be scored. The capture goes deeper. Films are now edited for audiences watching on phones. Plot points get repeated three times because test screenings revealed people aren't paying attention. But this isn't accommodating human behavior—it's reshaping art around the conditions of distracted consumption. What survives compression is what provokes the least resistance. Studios stopped asking "Is this good?" and started asking "Will this score well?" The aggregation platforms didn't kill bold cinema by rejecting it. They killed it by teaching everyone to optimize for average approval.
These aren't isolated failures. They share a common architecture. For a metric to scale, it must be simplified—and what is simplified cannot capture nuance. A thousand qualitative assessments of student essays do not travel; a GPA does. High portability and high nuance are directly at odds. This is why value capture is so pervasive. The metrics that dominate are precisely those that can be transmitted, compared, and aggregated—which means they're the ones least capable of capturing what actually matters.
Why do we accept this trade?
Many of the most important, rich values we care about resist measurement: love, trust, justice, wisdom, meaning. They are contextual, layered, and often contradictory. They require personal judgment. Yet it is precisely in these domains that we outsource most eagerly to scores.
We're vulnerable for three reasons.
First, metrics resolve anxiety cheaply. Culture reinforces scoring systems because they are instantly comparable. They make justification easier. It is easier to point to a number than to defend a judgment. Easier to conform when everyone is looking at the same scoreboard.
Second, they're addictive. Clear goals. Visible progress. Immediate feedback. A rising follower count, a higher ranking—each offers the small dopamine hit of measurable improvement. It is far easier to optimize a visible metric than to sit with ambiguity.
Third, we borrow our scorecards without realizing it. Every metric embeds a judgment about what counts. Once internalized, that judgment begins to feel like our own. Hobbes wrote that the ultimate source of power is control over language—the one who defines success and failure governs from within. Metrics perform this function when they capture us. Buffett emphasized the importance of an internal scorecard—measuring success by personal standards rather than external validation. Few people truly have one. The metrics tell us how we are doing before we have decided what "doing well" even means.
People now make multi-year—even decade-long—commitments based on a single metric. They choose a four-year program because of its ranking. They climb career ladders guided by compensation bands and titles. They assess potential partners through algorithmic dating scores. Yet the decisions that shape your life — where you live, who you love, what you devote yourself to — demand slow, inward judgment. Outsourcing these decisions to simplified scores offers certainty at the irreversible cost of your agency.
In games, scoring systems can sharpen focus and create meaningful striving. We can enter and exit the game. We can change the rules. The score serves the player. The danger arises when we forget that we are playing. When the metric becomes authoritative — when it defines success rather than measures it — we are no longer using the score. The score is using us.
The most important question is not whether a number is precise. It is whether it is aligned. Before reacting to a ranking, a rate, or a dashboard, ask: What was the point? Is this metric helping me pursue it, or quietly redefining it? Am I choosing this game, or did I inherit it?
Because the danger is not that we will fail at the game.
It is that we will succeed — and only later realize it was never the one we meant to play.
J