Measurement replaces intuition, which is often fallible. It replaces trust, which is often misplaced. It finesses complexity, which is frequently irreducible. So faulty intuition, untrusted partners, and complex systems can be understood via intuitive, trustworthy, simple metrics.

Measuring is valuable because it works as a check on intuition, and as Hubbard notes, it is precisely the areas where no measurement has been done before that his method typically finds tremendous value in creating metrics.

Wherever and whenever metrics proliferated, overall, the world seems to have improved.

Metrics are popular because they allow people to use measures to make rules — and these rules can often be pretty effective.

at a high level, all systems respond to the rules and structures that exist. Managing any modern system, whether technical, human, or a bureaucratic mix, is an exercise in understanding the use and pitfalls of now-ubiquitous measurements.

When a measure becomes a metric, it ceases to be a good measure.

As Klein and Kahneman now agree, there are domains in which “raw intuition” beats reflection — and that linked dialog has some great stories about what those are