Goodhart’s Law
Notes
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. If a measure of performance becomes a stated goal, humans tend to optinmize for it, regardless of any associated consequences. the easy example is in India or France when they wanted to get rid of rodents, and they paid for each rodent brought, so people decided to breed them and the population grew instead of declining. It is true to our personal lives as well. If we define healthy nutrition as eating a salad, we might count a pasta salad as a salad, thus defeating the purpose. That's why when we set out metrics for measuring our performance, we have to be very carful of the Incentives that the measures create simply by existing.
There are several potential approaches to reduce this problem:
- Use multiple metrics - To reduce the potential harm, we can Multitrack - to create several metrics simultaneously, especially a combination between quantitative and qualitative. The variety will make the "min-max" optimal point both harder to find, and harder to reach.
- Set anti goals - Add anti goals along side the positive goals. The positive goals will provide the direction, while the anti goals will provide safeguards to prevent abusing the goals' definition. For example, a positive goal could be to eat a salad, while an anti goal can be to avoid eating any type of flour based meal, which would rule out the pasta salad, and many other unhealthy alternatives.
- Connect through values - Measures and incentives trigger the Econs side of our mind, causing us to think in terms of personal, economical gain, which crowds out other considerations such as social norms and values. If we frame the metrics in such a way that connects with the person's values and resonates with their emotional side, we would have much fewer cases of abusing the metrics Inspiration.
- Have no metrics at all - When possible, it is better to replace External Motivation that these metrics embody with Intrinsic Motivation. If we can find a way to spark their drive to act better without measuring or rewarding them for their behavior, this will lead to win win situations.
Visual
Overview
🔼Topic:: Incentives Origin:: The Curiosity Chronicle by Sahil Bloom 🔗Link::