[HN Gopher] Goodhart's Law and how systems are shaped by the met...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Goodhart's Law and how systems are shaped by the metrics you chase
        
       Author : neonate
       Score  : 43 points
       Date   : 2020-07-07 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (whyisthisinteresting.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (whyisthisinteresting.substack.com)
        
       | cs702 wrote:
       | Short, well-written, and interesting.
       | 
       | One question that popped in my mind as I was reading this was,
       | how about alpha, correlation, and volatility in financial
       | markets? Has the behavior of markets changed over time as alpha,
       | correlation, and volatility have become dominant metrics to be
       | chased?
        
       | aaron695 wrote:
       | I personally don't believe Goodhart's Law overpowers the benefit
       | of the metric, ever.
       | 
       | It's a quaint factoid, but just as the soviets would just execute
       | a factory manage gaming the system for producing pins or spikes,
       | people will see you at some level gaming the system and call you
       | on it. (and make a TV show like The Wire)
       | 
       | Just like other factoids (ie Risk compensation), the effects will
       | be real, but the factoid is so misused at extreme interpretations
       | the factoids do more harm the good.
        
         | mannanj wrote:
         | Instead of downvoting you I thought I'd ask, how likely do you
         | think people do see you gaming and don't call you on it? I've
         | been in many more situations where you don't have the power or
         | ability to call someone out on something because it's more
         | complicated than just "I'll tell on you".
        
           | majormajor wrote:
           | If everybody's gaming something a little bit, nobody is
           | incentivized to take action on most things, even if someone
           | reports it.
           | 
           | It often takes egregious abuses to get people to care.
           | 
           | (And is this so bad? The end result of "perfectly efficient"
           | is pretty brutal for the individual worker.)
        
       | ChainOfFools wrote:
       | What gets measured gets treasured.
       | 
       | alternate form: The uncountable is of no account
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | We need to rate the performance of our economy not by how much we
       | produce, but by how little.
        
         | choward wrote:
         | A better metric would be something related to happiness. If we
         | produce less and and GDP goes down but everyone is happier then
         | who cares?
        
           | Mirioron wrote:
           | There are many ways happiness can be manipulated though.
           | People tend to be happy when things are improving. The most
           | obvious way to manipulate this metric is to deliberately hit
           | rock bottom and then slowly improve from there.
           | 
           | Another problem is drugs. It's possible to manipulate
           | people's happiness rather explicitly with that.
           | 
           | Edit: these are out there examples, but here's a more
           | realistic one: borrow money from future generations. Set up a
           | system that will eventually fail, but provide a lot of
           | benefits/happiness in the present. When the long-term
           | consequences arrive politics have already changed.
        
           | sideshowb wrote:
           | Funny enough I recently published something on wellbeing as a
           | metric. Goodhart gets a mention...
           | https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/8/3180
        
         | alentist wrote:
         | Somalia, Congo, and North Korea produce very little. Is this
         | what you had in mind? If not, could you clarify?
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2020-07-07 23:00 UTC)