tags: #publish links: [[Cognitive Biases]] created: 2021-12-14 Tue --- # Goodhart’s Law **When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.** > Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes. > *\- Charles Goodhart* Example: People anticipate the effect of a policy, then behave in a way that changes the situation. Complication: Non-measurable (or difficult-to-measure) aspects may be altered the most by this target-driven distortion - because they're invisible to the metric but still subject to people's actions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law related: [[McNamara Fallacy]]