16-goodharts-law.yml

id: goodharts-law
name: Goodhart's Law
oneliner: >
  When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
description: >
  Goodhart's Law highlights the issue with focusing solely on the value of a
  measure as an indication of success or progress. Often, observers will
  artificially change their behavior to reach a target without caring about the
  reason for the measure. In other words, they'll try to game the system. The
  law was originally stated as: "Any observed statistical regularity will tend
  to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes."
examples:
  - >
    Google's PageRank algorithm would rank websites based on the number of
    incoming links from other websites. This led to webmasters gaming the system
    by artificially increasing the number of links to their website.
  - >
    A company requiring writers to write a specific number of words a day will
    probably produce low quality, filler content as writers try to meet their
    quota.
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
categories:
  - social-dynamics