It goes “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” How does that work in practice?
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Goodhart’s Law is like saying if you’re playing a game and the score is just for fun, you play differently than if the score decides who wins a prize. When the score becomes the way to win, you might play just to get points, not to enjoy the game or play well.
In real life, if a school decides to judge teachers by their students’ test scores, teachers might just teach to the test. The scores go up, but it doesn’t mean kids are learning better overall. The test score stops being a good sign of real learning because it’s now a target, not just a measure
So, Goodhart’s Law warns us that when we turn a measurement into a goal, it can stop showing what we originally wanted to measure because people start changing their behavior to meet the goal, not to improve the actual thing we care about
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