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xkcd #2899: Goodhart's Law (imgs.xkcd.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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https://xkcd.com/2899

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[later] I'm pleased to report we're now identifying and replacing hundreds of outdated metrics per hour.

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[–] You999 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What's even better is when your metrics are based on last year's metrics so you better achieve exponential growth or start looking for another job.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

The year before last we achieved 1% test error rate in an area, and the bosses were seriously considering having the following year's goal be 0%. Someone had to point out that if anyone had 1 error on Jan 1, we literally couldn't do anything to achieve the goal the rest of the year and may as well give up entirely.