- Separate measures from your real goals, name likely side effects up front, and review outcomes frequently, because keeping the objective explicit and checking early makes traps recognizable and lets you course-correct before metric-chasing causes lasting harm.@psychology· Decision Making
Separate measures from your real goals, name likely side effects up front, and review outcomes frequently, because keeping the objective explicit and checking early makes traps recognizable and lets you course-correct before metric-chasing causes lasting harm.
- Surrogacy is the tendency to replace a complex goal with a simpler proxy because humans prefer trackable measures, and over time the proxy is treated as if it were the real objective, so choices optimize the proxy while neglecting what truly matters.@psychology· Decision Making
Surrogacy is the tendency to replace a complex goal with a simpler proxy because humans prefer trackable measures, and over time the proxy is treated as if it were the real objective, so choices optimize the proxy while neglecting what truly matters.
- Focusing solely on financial targets pushes choices toward actions that maximize earnings, which trades away relational and emotional goals and produces a narrow form of success money cannot replace.@psychology· Decision Making
Focusing solely on financial targets pushes choices toward actions that maximize earnings, which trades away relational and emotional goals and produces a narrow form of success money cannot replace.
- Rigid routines can start serving themselves rather than their intended purpose because following the prescribed sequence becomes the target, which creates stress when you deviate and steals time from the activities the routine was meant to enable.@psychology· Decision Making
Rigid routines can start serving themselves rather than their intended purpose because following the prescribed sequence becomes the target, which creates stress when you deviate and steals time from the activities the routine was meant to enable.
- Tracking health metrics makes people treat scores as goals because numbers are easier to optimize than subjective wellbeing, so they skip social or meaningful activities to protect the score and end up harming overall wellbeing.@psychology· Decision Making
Tracking health metrics makes people treat scores as goals because numbers are easier to optimize than subjective wellbeing, so they skip social or meaningful activities to protect the score and end up harming overall wellbeing.
- Offering payment for a measured outcome creates an economic opportunity, so actors may produce the outcome themselves (for example breeding cobras) rather than eliminating the underlying problem.@psychology· Decision Making
Offering payment for a measured outcome creates an economic opportunity, so actors may produce the outcome themselves (for example breeding cobras) rather than eliminating the underlying problem.
- Turning a metric into the stated target causes people to chase the number instead of the real outcome, which leads them to game, shortcut, or exploit loopholes that distort the original purpose.@psychology· Decision Making
Turning a metric into the stated target causes people to chase the number instead of the real outcome, which leads them to game, shortcut, or exploit loopholes that distort the original purpose.
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