this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2025
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Just like calories don't technically exist in humans. It's useful even though it's not completely accurate
Life is filled with lots of these approximate lies that are more useful then not
Everything you said was true, but there's a small group of shortcuts that are very harmful when misused. "IQ", "GDP", and many others are routinely used in bad ways, and are therefore not 'more useful than not'. So overall, correct, but specific usage of these distinct meanings are very harmful, and always worth scrutinizing.
In German there's a saying "Wer misst, misst Mist."
"If you measure, you measure garbage."
The point here is that measurements often don't measure the exact thing you are looking for, but something adjacent to it. And measuring the wrong thing ends up optimizing that wrong thing instead of what you really want to optimize.