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points by cowlevel 1 day ago | 0 comments
Goodhart's law: whatever you measure will improve. And the measurement is money extraction.
[–] jonny2811 1 day ago
any measurement that becomes a target ceases to be a useful measurement*
[–] optimalsolver 1 day ago
That's not the definition of Goodhart's law. That's the opposite of Goodhart's law, in fact.
[–] cowlevel 1 day ago
It's exactly Goodhart's law. The measured thing improves.
[–] bigstrat2003 1 day ago
Goodhart's law is that the measured thing increases, not improves. Increasing may in fact be worsening.
[–] cowlevel 1 day ago
So if I measure accidents, accidents will increase?
[–] allexsendev 1 day ago
interrupting your thread bcs what the law states directly is less interesting than what it puts the emphasis on: if maxing out measurement becomes the goal, it isn't measuring what it was supposed to. Take a concrete example - original point of schools/academia was education. Eventually grades started measuring education, and now grades are the goal instead of education. ppl started optimizing for grades by any means possible -> grades aren't good measure of education anymore.
[–] palata 1 day ago
Is there a law that says "whenever something is profitable, people attracted to money will come for the money". And obviously, the best way to make money is not to build good tech.
[–] cowlevel 1 day ago
It's called capitalism, I think, but it's only one part of capitalism