#SquirrelMeme has been wondering what happens when a program is rewarded for hitting a quantitative measure rather than for achieving the actual qualitative task. 
️ #GoodhartsLaw
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#GoodhartsLaw
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"Don't, whatever else you do, blame your decisions on the data. If you do you'll never get accurate data ever again."
Software Design: Tidy First? · Measuring Programmer Influence, Kinda Sorta
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Over time focussing exclusively on any metric will render it meaningless - #goodhartslaw and #nicolsonslament 'hitting the target but missing the point'. The temptation will be to debauch official statistics to get there - as happened with #unemploymentdata in the #uk in the 1980s! Not to mention reported economic growth in the #GermanDemocraticRepublic in the 1970s and1980s - which ended up fooling nearly everyone!
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It is easy to fall foul of #goodhartslaw and get growth figures that have lost their meaning - the experience of the last decade and a half of the German Democratic Republic is salutary! Genuine growth would go up as a result of reducing unnecessary uncertainty - for instance increasing the quality and reliability of official statistics and improving the auditing of local government - and releasing the 'animal spirits' of entrepreneurs -which could mean a change of #chancellor !
Churnalism, enshittification, and a bunch of other online deterioration phenomena (plus a mention of the Potemkin news site that spread misinfo during the Southport riot).
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/technology/internet/67864/dead-internet-theory-ai
www.prospectmagazine.co.ukIs anyone out there?Dead Internet Theory says that you’re the only human left online. It started out as a conspiratorial joke, but it is edging ever closer to reality
Thinking of something like “#GoodhartsLaw of Identity” which is like “when a measure becomes an identifier, it ceases to be a reliable identifier.”
It’s a sort of wave function collapse. Like maybe once we measure and document something, it ceases to be inherent to the thing and becomes a spoofable number, password, etc.
Is there already a term for this?
#DigitalIdentity
Valid #support organizations:
* pay experienced staff to review a large subset of support encounters regularly, with a focus on the work of agents with known performance issues, correcting mistakes and updating standard training as needed;
* directly link agents' performance ratings to their error rates as per the above reviews; and
* have a predefined error rate above which non-improving agents are dismissed.
If you prioritize speed rather than correctness, that's what you get. #GoodhartsLaw
XKCD: stop being so accurate about how strategists and senior managers think. It's creeping me out.
xkcdGoodhart's Law
Pointers to permutations on Goodhart's Law. See also 'Measurement Dysfunction', 'Campbell's Law', 'Surrogation', 'McNamara Fallacy' (a.k.a. #QuantitativeFallacy), & 'Asshole Genie Effect'. #GoodhartsLaw #CampbellsLaw
https://mastodon.me.uk/@garius/111221420396817895
mastodon.me.ukJohn Bull (@garius@mastodon.me.uk)What's the technical term for when you start measuring something to evaluate it, but then that shifts over time to people trying to meet the target not to do the actual thing.
Happens a lot in schools with exam results.
I know there is one.
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Goodhart's law says, 'When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure'. In the world of APIs, how do we navigate this tricky terrain? From the Cobra Effect to modern enterprise challenges, explore the intricacies of API metrics in the latest Net API Notes. #APIMetrics #GoodhartsLaw
https://netapinotes.substack.com/p/what-the-cobra-effect-says-about
Net API Notes · What the "Cobra Effect" Says About API Metrics
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@hotdogsladies Mazel Tov. Back in 2008 I discovered the nascent Fediverse, and - being what in those politically incorrect days was called a "freetard" - I thought "Brilliant! Now I can try doing that thing Merlin does on Twitter."
A long series of lame <140 char gags later, I ultimately decided I should stick to being funny unintentionally. But I'd found a lot of good people.
Relationships beat engagement metrics every time. #GoodhartsLaw
Some things to bear in mind when you see a news article about #SharePrices rising or falling.
Share price is, nominally, a function of how well rich people expect a company to do.
#GoodhartsLaw states that "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". High share prices long ago became a target, and so have nothing to do with how well a company is doing; at most, they are now a function of how rich people expect them to change. #SelfFulfillingProphecy
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"Intelligent machines, no less than naturally stupid humans, will have to confront the irritating fact that the absence of evidence is almost never evidence of absence." #bias #ai #GoodhartsLaw #stupidity
https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/ai-boom-could-expose-investors-natural-stupidity-2023-05-19/
ReutersAI boom could expose investors’ natural stupidity“My colleagues, they study artificial intelligence,” the Israeli psychologist Amos Tversky once quipped. “Me, I study natural stupidity.” The co-founder of behavioural economics, who died in 1996, did not live to see 2023, when more of his academic colleagues jumped on the AI bandwagon along with venture capitalists, corporate leaders, and stock jocks. But investors should pay closer attention to Tversky’s specialisation. Behavioural economics, which studies how psychological, emotional, and social factors affect human decision-making, has some important pointers for those hoping to cash in on AI.
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law #GoodhartsLaw
en.wikipedia.orgGoodhart's law - Wikipedia
Turning Goodhart's Law from a frustrating conclusion into a useful incentive
#Agility #Agile #GoodhartsLaw #Measuring #metrics https://commoncog.com/goodharts-law-not-useful/
Commoncog · Goodhart's Law Isn't as Useful as You Might ThinkGoodhart's Law is useless. It tells you about a phenomenon, but it doesn't tell you how to solve it. We look at how organisations actually prevent Goodhart's Law, and illustrate this with Amazon's Weekly Business Review as an example.
If you think about it, #capitalism is the epitome of Goodhart's Law («when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric»)
MD brain dead bad US health care policies contd..
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2801008
or, why hospice care is underutilized in dialysis when patients stop (see lower down in article for another example of #GoodhartsLaw)
