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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

#131

Post by vntok »

stcredzero wrote: post #117
stcredzero wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but this is a serious (and arguably offensive) falsehood. I'm sorry, but I will show you to be mistaken below. But the notion that US forces would just designate an area where everyone including civilians are to be killed is an outright and offensive lie. Then you should have an issue with the Ken Burns documentary. I think I got the terminology wrong; "free fire zone" means something else. However, the pra…

This is disgusting for HN. I debunk what the gp post says with citations and quotes. The result? I get downvoted more.

Complaining about it definitely won't improve the situation.

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

#132

Post by robertk »

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

Great stuff. Say hi to Scott!

Are you both at MIRI now?

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

#133

Post by stcredzero »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #130
stcredzero wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but this is a serious (and arguably offensive) falsehood. I'm sorry, but I will show you to be mistaken below. But the notion that US forces would just designate an area where everyone including civilians are to be killed is an outright and offensive lie. Then you should have an issue with the Ken Burns documentary. I think I got the terminology wrong; "free fire zone" means something else. However, the pra…

No, you have misinterpreted. The US does not declare that US forces should just go and kill anyone, rather, 'anyone' can be considered a target, which is perfectly reasonable policy while fighting an insurgency. In normal rules of engagement, the women and children running out of the village are obviously out of bounds. They are civilians. You can't fire at them for any reason. In a 'free fire' zone, anyone can be co…

> The US does not declare that US forces should just go and kill anyone, rather, 'anyone' can be considered a target

"There are no friendlies," one lieutenant told his men. "Shoot anything that moves." Over a seven-month period, they killed scores of unarmed civilians. Among their victims were two blind brothers; an elderly Buddhist monk; women, children, and old people hiding in underground shelters; and three farmers trying to plant rice. All were reported as "enemy... killed in action."

> In normal rules of engagement, the women and children running out of the village are obviously out of bounds. They are civilians. You can't fire at them for any reason.

During the Korean War, my grandmother had her life saved by a wad of cash (large, because of wartime inflation) hidden in a secret pocket in her skirt. It stopped a piece of shrapnel produced by strafing from a US Douglas A-1 Skyraider. Was she "in bounds?"

> The misinterpretation of 'free fire' or the 'loose application' of it are considered 'war crimes' by the US and it was absolutely never intended that the policy be used by soldiers to just shoot up people

Can you see how using Body Count as a metric would tend to produce "targeting" of the metric which would result in the targeting of people to turn into corpses? That is my whole point here.

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

#134

Post by stcredzero »

vntok wrote: post #131
stcredzero wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is disgusting for HN. I debunk what the gp post says with citations and quotes. The result? I get downvoted more.

Complaining about it definitely won't improve the situation.

Empirically speaking, this turned out to be incorrect.

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

#135

Post by sonnyblarney »

stcredzero wrote: post #134
vntok wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complaining about it definitely won't improve the situation.

Empirically speaking, this turned out to be incorrect.

Quoting a highly biased source, Ken Burns, and then misinterpreting it is not beneficial to the argument.

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

#136

Post by sonnyblarney »

stcredzero wrote: post #133
sonnyblarney wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you have misinterpreted. The US does not declare that US forces should just go and kill anyone, rather, 'anyone' can be considered a target, which is perfectly reasonable policy while fighting an insurgency. In normal rules of engagement, the women and children running out of the village are obviously out of bounds. They are civilians. You can't fire at them for any reason. In a 'free fire' zone, anyone can be co…

> The US does not declare that US forces should just go and kill anyone, rather, 'anyone' can be considered a target "There are no friendlies," one lieutenant told his men. "Shoot anything that moves." Over a seven-month period, they killed scores of unarmed civilians. Among their victims were two blind brothers; an elderly Buddhist monk; women, children, and old people hiding in underground shelters; and three farme…

"It stopped a piece of shrapnel produced by strafing from a US Douglas A-1 Skyraider. Was she "in bounds?""

Civilian casualties are generally avoided if possible. I'm happy that your grandmother was saved, but it's not relevant.

"Can you see how using Body Count as a metric would tend to produce "targeting" of the metric which would result in the targeting of people to turn into corpses?"

No. 'Body count' is used in every war and has been since the dawn of time, and we continue to use it today as one of many metrics.

Using this metric will not encourage professional soldiers to arbitrarily murder civilians.

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

#137

Post by ScottBurson »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #119
stcredzero wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Goodhart's law gives us a good insight. If the actual goal was to ensure the long term viability of a democratic South Vietnam, the endeavor failed. So what happened, is that the US government "gamed" it by targeting "Body Count" and "winning all the battles." In doing so, it failed to achieve the actual goal in its long term interest.

Ahhh - thanks for getting to the crux of the matter: The military objectives were 'gamed' by using 'body count' which mislead us in terms of progress.(Actually, they were not 'gamed' so much as the old metric of 'body count' was not useful in this type of insurgency - so more a matter of 'lack of insight'). BUT - the strategic objectives did not fail for this reason . The military objectives of defeating the VC and N…

The now accepted view of 'body count was misleading' actually did not fundamentally affect military outcomes. It was a bad measure, but the US still [won]. It affected some things, maybe a 'shock' to public opinion, but it was not existential in terms of changing the military outcomes.

No, it was existential, because that shock to public opinion was a large part of the reason that the strategic goal was abandoned. The draft may have been a larger part, but the point remains: tolerating and perhaps even encouraging excessive civilian casualties was a military failure that played a role in the geopolitical failure. They are not separate issues at all.

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