Scientific Definition
Treating the measure as the goal it was meant to approximate.
Plain-English Definition
Treating the measure as the goal it was meant to approximate.
Feynman Explanation
If you can't measure what matters, measuring what's easy will quietly replace it.
Core Principle
Treating the measure as the goal it was meant to approximate.
Mechanisms
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Inputs (Triggers)
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Outputs (Behaviors)
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Behavioral Signature
If you can't measure what matters, measuring what's easy will quietly replace it.
Examples
- Schools optimizing test scores at the expense of learning.
- OKRs that produce green dashboards and a red business.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Pair every metric with the underlying outcome it serves.
Measurement Approaches
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Evidence
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The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Pair every metric with the underlying outcome it serves.
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Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Inability to see the incentives shaping one's own behavior.
Accumulated workarounds for misaligned incentives that compound like technical debt.
Reward systems slowly diverge from the outcomes they were meant to drive.
Without active design, incentives decay toward gameable proxies.
Behavior bends toward whatever the system actually rewards.
Clear ownership of outcomes, not just tasks.
Asymmetric information attracts the worst counterparties.
We defer to perceived expertise, rank, or uniform.
Vastness that exceeds existing schemas dissolves the self briefly.
Negative feedback returns a system toward a target.
Membership in a group is a baseline human need.
Individually rational choices that produce a collectively bad outcome.