Too Much Efficiency Makes Everything Worse: Overfitting and the Strong Version of Goodhart's Law
Jascha Sohl-Dicksteinsohl-dickstein.github.ioSaved by sari and
Too Much Efficiency Makes Everything Worse: Overfitting and the Strong Version of Goodhart's Law
When each link is managed somewhat separately, the system can get stuck in a low-effectiveness state. The problem arises because of quality matching.1 That is, if you are in charge of one link of the chain, there is no point in investing resources in making your link better if other link managers are not.
Richard Rumelt • Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters
A related doctrine known as Goodhart’s law, after the London School of Economics professor who proposed it,38 holds that once policy makers begin to target a particular variable, it may begin to lose its value as an economic indicator. For instance, if the government artificially takes steps to inflate housing prices, they might…
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Nate Silver • The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't
Increased efficiency can sometimes, counterintuitively, lead to worse outcomes. This is true almost everywhere.
Jascha Sohl-Dickstein • Too Much Efficiency Makes Everything Worse: Overfitting and the Strong Version of Goodhart's Law
As I noted in my post on metrics, “Building systems using bad metrics doesn’t stop their self-optimization, they just optimize towards something you didn’t want.” Underspecified goals interact with this process in an interesting way.