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I agree, and the article doesn’t really explain a difference, either. Two quotes: > Campbell’s law states that the more important a metric is in social decisio
by codeflo 5y ago
I agree, and the article doesn’t really explain a difference, either. Two quotes:
> Campbell’s law states that the more important a metric is in social decision making, the more likely it is to be manipulated.
> Goodhart’s Law, states that “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”.
These are basically paraphrases if you accept that “target” = “important in decision making”, and “likely to be manipulated” = “not a good measure”.
That’s fine, important discoveries are often made multiple times independently, but let’s not pretend there’s some important difference where there isn’t any.
- kodah 5y agoGoodhart was an economist and Campbell was a social psychologist. The fact that they independently made similar observations in different fields is substantial. Though, maybe it's more efficient to remember the over-arching idea, it also makes sense to identify them independently.
- dpierce9 5y agoI agree they are basically saying the same thing but there is a subtle difference. Goodhart is observing a fact about measures, Campbell is offering an explanation of Goodhart’s observation, that is, why the target ceases to be a good measure. Goodhart is making a very general observation which might be true for a number of reasons. One alternative to the Campbell version is that value of a measure ages so, by the time the measure has become a target, the world has moved on and the target isn’t any good.