metrics and language games
Yesterday I wrote about the fuzziness of metrics—the way they’re tools, not truths.
We need them, sure. They orient us like a compass. But they can be gamed, they can mislead, and often they consume more cycles than the work itself. Too often, I see people worshipping the statue of metrics while forgetting the deity it represents.
That’s the tension I was sitting with: the simultaneous need for measurement and the knowledge that measurement is flawed. The intuition that we could sometimes just act instead of measuring. But then the realization hit me: none of my philosophical objections matter if I’m working inside a business.
Metrics may be fuzzy, but they’re the language of the field I’m in now.
why critique alone doesn’t work
Mark Twain’s line comes to mind: “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” I love that. It’s sharp. It cuts.
But if I walk into a boardroom quoting Twain, nobody is going to say, “Oh, you’re right, let’s stop obsessing about the dashboard.” Why? Because metrics are embedded in what Ludwig Wittgenstein called language games.
I was listening to Stephen West’s Philosophize This! podcast the other day—highly recommend—and he makes this point beautifully: words don’t have mathematical essences. They live in context.
Take the word book. What is a book? Is it a 500-page hardcover? A stack of stapled zines? A Kindle file? The “essence” shifts with the context and the community. Every community has its own lexicon.
Software engineers. Musicians. Venture capitalists. Lawyers. Each plays their own game, with its own set of terms and rules. Unless you’re fluent in that game, you get left out.
entering a new game
That’s what hit me about metrics. They aren’t just measurements. They’re vocabulary. They’re the shared terms of value inside business and software.
If I walk into a meeting and say, “Well, metrics are fuzzy anyway, let’s just focus on shipping code,” I don’t sound wise. I sound like I’m playing the wrong game.
And it’s not just metrics. On my first day at the new job, people asked me, “So, what were you doing before this?”
Now, my mind goes to philosophy, spirituality, art. I could say: “Honestly, everything goes to dust. Read Ozymandias. Nothing we do will last. Why care so much about this metric or that project?”
But that’s not what they’re asking. They want context. They want to know my role, my title, my prior company. It’s shorthand for value, hierarchy, importance. That’s the grammar of their language game.
accent vs. tongue
This doesn’t mean I have to abandon philosophy. It means I have to learn to speak their language—with my own accent.
If I only speak philosophy, I’ll talk past people. But if I speak the language of business and metrics, with a philosophical accent, I can still bring something different. I can sound a little foreign, a little intriguing, maybe even refreshing. That’s part of the value I bring.
But I can’t refuse to play the game altogether. If I do, I’ll remain separate from the community. And eventually, I’ll be excluded.
still, learn the language
So here’s where I landed: metrics are the example, but the deeper point is about language games.
Every community has its own. You can dislike the rules. You can bring your own flavor. You can even critique them from the sidelines. But if you want to participate—if you want to create, sell, collaborate—you have to learn the language game the community is already playing.
You don’t have to lose yourself in it. You don’t have to erase your accent. But you can’t ignore the grammar.
And maybe that’s the broader principle worth holding onto: whatever the field, whatever the domain, learn the language game first. Then, speak it with your own accent. That’s how you integrate without losing yourself.
