The goal and the purpose

Philosopher Barbara Herman points out that the goal and purpose are two separate things. For instance, professional baseball might seem like a sport where the goal and purpose is to win. But that isn’t true. To be clear, the goal is win the game. But the purpose is to entertain. And as fans, we can watch our favorite teams’ strategies in a way that follows the metrics, to the point where the game is optimized (which, in most ways, it is now), but that isn’t entertaining to watch. It turns out that, in an age of analytics, we think we want everything optimized to create more convenience. But the reality is, this isn’t a world we want to occupy if it becomes so.