Goodhart's law is an adage often stated as "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".[1] It is named after British economist Charles Goodhart, who advanced the idea in a 1975 article on monetary policy in the United Kingdom:[2][3] .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.

As Goodhart’s law suggests, metrics can fail if given too much power, and over-emphasizing metrics can lead to gaming, manipulation, or “a myopic focus on short-term goals.” Many of the most important parts of digital well-being cannot be captured by quantitative

Assessing staff solely on the basis of quantitative metrics is never acceptable, no matter what type of metric is being used

Yet another disadvantage to poorly chosen metrics is that they can lean into something called Goodhart’s Law, a subset of the moral hazard of gameplay specific to measurement. A good summation of the law comes from British anthropologist Marilyn Strathern, who describes it like this: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”