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The Score
Brief
C.T. Wendt, author of The Score: How to Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game, talks with Roman Mars about how metrics shape — and often distort — what we value. Wendt opens with his own academic story: chasing journal rankings drained the curiosity that led him to philosophy, so he embraced a framework he calls “value capture,” where institutions or devices replace nuanced personal values with simple, measurable proxies. The conversation uses vivid examples — Wendt reading Kant on his iPad and his nine‑year‑old cycling between ASMR, WWII history videos, and building logic gates in Minecraft — to show how screen‑time totals flatten qualitatively different activities into a single bad metric.
Mars and Wendt explore the paradox that scoring systems can both enable joy and corrupt systems. Wendt explains why games feel liberating: their scoring rules are temporary, consensual, and support “striving play” (valuing the struggle) rather than pure achievement. He illustrates this with fly fishing (dry‑fly technique requires minute, changing attention to insects and rising trout) and family game nights (e.g., Wingspan). He also warns public metrics can be gamed — citing NYPD case‑closure targets — and that aggregate measures favor what’s measurable (mortality) over what matters (flourishing). Their practical takeaway: keep ironic distance from dominant KPIs and, where possible, create local scoring systems you control — Wendt’s experiment letting students design their own grading system produced deep engagement and taught systems thinking.
Why it matters
C.T. Wendt (guest) coins and defines “value capture”: institutions or technologies feed simplified, usually quantified versions of a person's rich values, which then replace those original values (example domains: academic journal rankings, Duolingo, step counting).
Key details
- Wendt and host Roman Mars give concrete screen-time examples: Wendt's iPad screen time spiked because he was reading two translations of Kant, and his nine-year-old alternates between ASMR, WWII history videos, and building logic gates in Minecraft—showing device-measured screen time is a poor proxy for value (Roman Mars anecdote, 2026-07-07 episode).
- Wendt contrasts scoring in institutions versus games: in games scoring systems are temporary and player-controlled and can unlock ‘striving play’ (valuing the struggle) versus ‘achievement play’ (valuing winning). Roman Mars identifies as a striving player and describes family game nights and playing Wingspan as examples.
- Wendt uses dry fly fishing as an example of striving play that trains attention: locating rising trout, identifying insects (which can change every ~20 minutes), and sustained focus produce altered mental states and deeper engagement that the metric-free river alone doesn’t produce.
- On public metrics, Wendt cites New York policing case-closure metrics: they initially improved transparency but were later gamed (discouraging reports, using easy-to-close citations). He argues large-scale metrics (e.g., mortality) are easier to count than subjective outcomes (e.g., mental health), and recommends designing local metrics you control — he let his students democratically design a grading system, which produced high engagement and systems thinking.