Mental model · Systems
Goodhart’s law
Goodhart’s law: When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. They are not hypothetical — someone will find them.
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When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure.
Try it now
Take a metric you are being held to. Write three ways to maximise it without doing the underlying thing.
What to do with the answer
They are not hypothetical — someone will find them. Decide which distortion you can live with, or add a measure that catches it.
Where it misleads
It is not an argument against measuring. Unmeasured work has its own, worse failure modes.
The module it belongs to
- Systems Thinking — Understand connections and consequences