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Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

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Re: Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

#81

Post by mikeash »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #61
mikeash wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If “progress” means murdering civilians by the thousand as part of a vain attempt to maintain a vestige of colonialism, count me out.

"If “progress” means murdering civilians by the thousand as part of a vain attempt to maintain a vestige of colonialism, count me out." Progress was defeating a ruthless and murderous North Korean Communist regime who, upon victory, mass murdered 10's of thousands of their own citizens, put 100's of thousands in concentration camps and ruthless oppressed their population for decades. My homework partner in high schoo…

Maybe if the natives hadn’t had to spend decades struggling for independence against various colonial powers, they would have been nicer after they won.

I’d like to point out that our allies in that war did all that stuff too, and there’s no reason to think they would have been much nicer if they had won. Part of why they lost is that they alientated much of the population by being oppressive and murderous.

Re: Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

#84

Post by sonnyblarney »

Semirhage wrote: post #68
sonnyblarney wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If “progress” means murdering civilians by the thousand as part of a vain attempt to maintain a vestige of colonialism, count me out." Progress was defeating a ruthless and murderous North Korean Communist regime who, upon victory, mass murdered 10's of thousands of their own citizens, put 100's of thousands in concentration camps and ruthless oppressed their population for decades. My homework partner in high schoo…

“Progress was defeating a ruthless and murderous North Korean Communist regime...” “Who, upon victory , mass murdered 10's of thousands of their own citizens...” Proofread! Or at the very least, try not to include outright contradictions in your outlandish claims. Claiming that the US won in one sentence, and in the very next declaring the opposite is baffling.

I'm not making any contradictions.

The Americans defeated the Viet Kong insurgency and the North Vietnamese, and then withdrew shortly thereafter.

After a few years, the North Vietnamese were able to rebuild their Army. They invaded and toppled South Vietnam.

Again, my point: people don't seem to have any idea of what actually happened.

Re: Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

#85

Post by stevenwoo »

dfee wrote: post #45

Another article on the front page decries Harvard’s holistic approach to admission - with arguments that admission should be based on a single measure of academic performance (like standardized test scores, GPA, etc.).

The most interesting approach I have seen as an alternative to current ones is the one that suggests emphasizing the student body of the school - leading parents to self integrate their K-12 schools on racial and socioeconomic factors. This would be unassailable under the current legal attacks used to fight against affirmative action.

https://ylpr.yale.edu/shifting-scope-how-taking-school-demog...

Re: Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

#86

Post by mwexler »

nikanj wrote: post #4

"You get what you measure" is the bane of KPIs everywhere. Measure deals closed, and you get deals with no regard for profitability. Measure profitability, and you will burn through your customer base by jacking prices and cutting quality. Etc etc.

But of course, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it", said by Drucker, says EVERYONE. Hence the cherry picking of preferential KPIs or OKRs.

But, actually, Drucker didn't say it. In fact, W. Edwards Deming said it. And what he actually said was "It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth.". So, basically, the quote held up as the "reason" behind excessive over-tracking of the wrong thing... is wrong.

https://blog.deming.org/2015/08/myth-if-you-cant-measure-it-...

Re: Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

#87

Post by sonnyblarney »

philipkglass wrote: post #71
sonnyblarney wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very well understand there were challenges in the war - and that 'body count' and 'battles won' was not going to be a good metric. This is a valid point: we though it was going great because hey - look at the 'battles won' and 'body' count, but really it wasn't. But the US did not remotely lose the war. There is no rational basis for suggesting this - it doesn't even make sense. This is the weird delusional pop cul…

National Security Action Memoranda number 52, May 1961: https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKNSF-330-... Subject: Program of Action to Prevent Communist Domination of South Viet Nam The US Objective: to prevent Communist domination of South Vietnam and to create in that country a viable and increasingly democratic society. The US had not achieved those objectives 12 years later. The communists won cont…

"The US had not achieved those objectives 12 years later."

Yes. They did.

The US did achieve those objectives in the early 1970s'.

The US vanquished the South Vietnamese forces, and did considerably damage to North Vietnamese forces using air power - to the point where North Vietnamese did not have a capable fighting force.

Communism was basically gone in the South, in the North, inoperable, at least militarily.

Then the US left.

A few years later, the North built up their armies and waltzed into the South.

It's really crazy, strategically that the US withdrew - all they had to do was leave about 50K soldiers, sitting 'behind the wire' not really fighting, maybe an aircraft carrier, i.e. 'the threat of violence' and S. Vietnam would be as free today as S. Korea. The Americans withdrew because of populist political pressure back home i.e teens protesting. I don't believe the US should have necessarily gone to war in Vietnam, but after they did, they should have stayed - it would have cost very little.

Anyhow - as per the article - 'points of measure' can be misleading, as it was with 'bodycount' in Vietnam, but they're not entirely misleading.

Number of enemy combatants, civilians, allies killed or wounded is a very important metric in every conflict. It's just not 'the' metric.

Re: Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

#88

Post by sonnyblarney »

ranger207 wrote: post #78
sonnyblarney wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not remotely delusional. What's delusional and troubling is the degree to which this war is completely misunderstood in pop culture. The US handily won the Vietnam war, full stop. In classical terms is was a clear and unambiguous outright victory. Think of Korea for example: a stalemate, whereas the US obliterated their oppponents in Vietnam. The US hardly lost a single battle and losses in the war are consi…

>The US handily won the Vietnam war, full stop. >In classical terms is was a clear and unambiguous outright victory. The only measure of success is whether or not you accomplish your objectives. The US did not accomplish its objectives in Vietnam of keeping a US-friendly government in power. Regardless of tactical measures of success, the US failed in its strategic objectives. I agree that popular culture has not acc…

" The US did not accomplish its objectives in Vietnam of keeping a US-friendly government in power"

Yes. They did. While there was conflict.

Then they left, and effectively abandoned those objectives.

When the North Vietnamese rebuilt it's army and re-invaded the South - propping up the S. Vietnamese government was obviously no longer a military objective, and barely a political one.

So the US won a war, withdrew, and then abandoned their ally.

Which is crazy.

Re: Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

#89

Post by ozim »

notEvenOnce wrote: post #23

(cough! cough! "scrum") (cough! cough! "agile") (cough! cough! "daily stand-ups")

Kind of we started optimizing for points and started to be smart about it. Because that what people above wanted. What happened we started communicating to PO more often, like: you want more points burned take this story out, close this and create an improvement.

Of course that was not childish silly sneaking and turned out we have as a team a lot better partnership with business. We deliver what is needed and can be finished.

I understand not everyone has luck to end up in such environment but it confirms there is no silver bullet. Only having right people is real silver bullet.

Re: Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

#90

Post by rsync »

Symmetry wrote: post #58
davidmanheim wrote: post #27

This is probably where I should mention my two longer articles that discuss this in depth; https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/06/09/goodharts-law-and-why-... https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/09/29/soft-bias-of-underspec... As well as my more recent paper categorizing the different ways it occurs; https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.04585

That was a much better take on Goodhart's Law than the Wikipedia article. It's easy to give up and say "Measurement is impossible!" but really we have to balance different factors and measurements are more dangerous at some times than at others.

Lots of content at ribbonfarm is very, very good ... highly recommended ...

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/11/05/ancient-rivers-of-mone...

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/03/02/fools-and-their-money-...

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