Wiser Metrics project and dashboard

Started work on “wiser metrics”: an effort to tracks (more of) what matters in this moment of metacrisis and second renaissance - and to provoke dialogue about the whole value vs what you can measure question :slightly_smiling_face:

At present, it is a basic dashboard (just 2 metrics with more to follow soon):

https://wiser.lifeitself.org/

:bulb: Welcome suggestions for metrics to include (and pointers to similar existing efforts). Would like the positive stuff (if we feel it exists) as well as the clear polycrisis/metacrisis pointers

:muscle: love help from others - writing, coding design etc all helpful. Source repo here GitHub - life-itself/wiser-metrics: Because we are what we measure.

Background

This is another of those projects that we’ve thought about for a long time eg a decade plus ago started collecting datasets with others at datahub.io project and we even wrote an (unsuccessful) pitch to One Project 4y ago (need to dig that out).

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This is great! Just to gather suggestions so far from whatsapp, they include:

Some other related efforts/metrics:

Objective function is a London-based community I’m planning to chat with at some point.

https://www.objectivefunction.co.uk/

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Before delving into metrics, I’d like to explore some sort of a framework of the phenomena of interest, as briefly mentioned in Whatsapp. I guess there has been discussion on wisdom before elsewhere in the forum, but some ideas that come to my mind:

  • altruism / care / compassion (at its roots, love?)
  • preservation of life
  • ability for entertaining multiple perspectives simultaenously / creating a shared understanding of things
  • consideration of second-and-nth order effects

I guess some metrics for these could be the already mentioned values data; number of initiatives that stem from commons-related projects/unsolicited altruism; metrics related to the depth of polarization in different forums where people interact… and so on.

I recognize some resistance toward inclusion of common sustainability metrics (such as Planetary boundaries framework), perhaps stemming from a belief that they haven’t led to effective change in the past. However, they surely are valid given the initial elements of a framework sketched above. And of course, one option could be plotting the “unwise” effects of “intelligent activities” - e.g., Jevon’s paradox (energy efficiency ↔ total amount of consumption).

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OK, i’d love to organize a short hackathon on this - perhaps the next research hackathon or during the coworking week after the gathering.

Hackathon could be in person and online and also cover mapping.

Who would like to join?