unwaver
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- Jonny Thomson
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
- Goodhart's Law
Mar 22, 2026 4:51 PM
unwaver
20355
695
6
- Jonny Thomson
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
- Goodhart's Law
hitshappens
I know this has nothing to do with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, but I can't help but think there's some poetry in how there's a general similarity here.
cowboycoco
In the shipyard industry we have a metric called the DART rate to track safety. Guess what we started optimizing for. Hint: Not safety.
Donfolstar
Remember when the Internet was going to be used for the free exchange of information to enhance the human condition, instead of endless click- and rage- bait to drive engagement?
Spidey209
Attach a number to anything and the gamers will game.
GuyPilot
Op is using the definition of Goodharts law, then labelling it as the cobra effect.
Conclusion isn't that you don't suspend measuring of things like hospitals and schools, it's that you change your measurement strategy to look more at desirable outcomes.
Guidocat
This is why AI is so dangerous. A poorly defined scoring method for a missile system, such as "casualty count" could lead to hitting cruise ships instead of battleships.
cousteau
https://xkcd.com/2899/
SenOfFiveTails
There's always an XKCD. :p
vowofloudness
In economics this is called a "perverse incentive". The cobra story is probably apocryphal, but wikipedia has many real examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
downsouthfarm
It has a basis in fact https://friendsofsnakes.org.in/cobra-effect/
DevilsAdvocat
ok, all of that checks out except for the 'waiting' bit.. that's not attempting to fix or measure something, that's straight up reclassification to ignore the issue
businesses do this regularly.. if they've driven their name brand into the ground, they'll change their name to something that doesn't have the same stink to it
barbarian818
It can have an even more sinister effect. Many of the Americans war crimes in Viet Nam can be traced to the idea of measuring martial success by body count. It made "we had to destroy the village to save it" a positive thing in jr officer evaluations. Dead villagers counted the same as dead enemy soldiers.
straha242
Local transit company started cancelling trains outright. Because a cancelled train didn't count as delayed so their delay stats (which gave penalties/bonuses) improved even though the disruption to travelers was worsened.
mikea77
I see it all the time with LTL trucking companies. They routinely cancel pickups with unspecified reason that they are not going to make on time because then it doesn't count t toward a missed pickup.
billstranger
If you're a business in the US i recommend icat for LTL.
somethingstupidandclever
When you colonize a different country, don't put bounty on snakes? I dislike the "wisdom" gained through colonialism. Did they have a problem with snakes? I bet the colonizers did, but what in sayin is these stories are like colonialism propaganda. Would there have been a problem if England didn't go about it in THEIR way and respected the people of the land and labor they so desperately wanted.
Daemencer
It will inevitably happen in any capitalistic society because some morons will try to "optimize" what they can't comprehend. More on that, any system that gets optimized becomes more fragile in the process. In a world that will inevitably become more and more fluctuant, we need less optimization and more robustness
ElbowDeepInUserSub
Many of those things now (hard to say about British colonial rule) are that way due to intentional tampering, rather than blind bureaucracy. When we change the definition of a term like "unemployed" or "poverty" etc and it reduces the visibility of a problem, there is always a conservative pushing for it to happen.
NotThatPrivate
When Fast Food places ask you to pull up and they have someone bring your food out, this is because it doesn't slow down their line times.
The intent was to have faster lines and save money, but now they employ an extra person just to run food out to people.
tavinjer
Humans instinctively turn rules into methods to avoid accountability.
OkButWhyWereTheyFilming
Measures being targets isn't bad. It isn't bad to target lower homelessness rates, for instance. The problem is when you change the metrics to achieve the targets.
ugopb4me
Fascinating philosophy that hits psychologically, economics, and government policy.
MoonMoon89
aka: "Tax the rat farms."
MystikMaps
GNU Terry Pratchett
BaWitda
The specific story didn't happen exactly like that. The bounty program was a failure (deaths from cobras remained steady before, during, and after), but when they suspected people were cultivating cobra, they just lowered the bounty so raising cobras wasn't worthwhile. Anyone raising the cobra would have just brought them in for the reduced bounty, not released them.
There have been other examples of perverse incentives that /did/ go that way, though, like a rat bounty program in Hanoi.
MrPengy
I swear this describes my work place almost perfectly. We have so much focus on hitting a target number just to hit it, with no regard for the actual purpose of reaching that level.
mouthfullofpebbles
This is the workplace that burnt me out 20 years ago. I was an activities and wellbeing coordinator at a care home (movie club, bar nights, walks outside one on one with patients, etc.) Then all employees had to start document everything they did down into the smallest detail to "document effectivity". On a shared computer. Immediately after each action. Can't start next task before. It was such a long wait time that I went from 10 walks + bingo in one day to ONE SINGLE WALK.
AnimalRescueGuy
That story just taught me that humans really, really, REALLY suck and ruin everything. Which I already knew, so at least it wasn’t a shock.
jaggcomputing5
Not all and not all of the time. There are several people who have been fairly good at doing some ok stuff
Alexap30
That's the Goodhart's Law. Described by Goodhart when Thatcher tried to KPI the doctors by the operation outcome, in which case doctors didn't operate on patients that were high risk. It's not just some snakes, it can have real life implications. Imagine not being able to get a doctor to operate on you because if you died their score would go down.
TheJuiceLoosener
A local ocean lifeguard force likes to brag that they have never lost a rescue. Of course, if the situation is deemed beyond their ability to have influenced, those situations are classified as recoveries.
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
measuring ratios on different basis is very common and depends on what you want to judge - can you blame a lifeguard for not saving a swimmer that was mauled by a shark?
TheJuiceLoosener
Go re-read the OP. I'm offering this as an example of the Cobra effect. The idea that there's a distinction worth making between hopeless situations where you're just dragging a corpse out of the water and situations where rescues are possible is fine, but when you turn and say, "This distinction exists, we're tracking it in our metrics, but we're also the judges, and guess what? We're batting 1.000, YAY!" count me skeptical.
OhIfIMust
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
Yeah, school grades are a very poignant example of this.
straha242
The school parts of The Wire come to mind.
Sherpafish
And knowing is half the battle.
ChelVanin
The other half is EXTREME VIOLENCE.
getadogupya
ontarioOT
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Madderrs
“Body massage…body masssaaaage.”
wejustdontknow
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