Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic@mamot.fr  ·  activity timestamp 7 days ago

Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: Goodhart's Law (of AI); and more!

Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/11/five-paragraph-essay/

#Pluralistic

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A black and white photo of an old one-room schoolhouse, seen from the back of the classroom. A teacher sits behind a desk and a US flag at the front of the class. Beside her, a small girl stands, reading aloud from a book. The image has been altered. In the foreground is a Robin Hood figure, seen from behind, holding a bow, a quiver of arrows on his back. Behind the little girl is the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' An arrow vibrates dead-center in the eye. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en -- Lee Haywood (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/leehaywood/4659575229/ CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
A black and white photo of an old one-room schoolhouse, seen from the back of the classroom. A teacher sits behind a desk and a US flag at the front of the class. Beside her, a small girl stands, reading aloud from a book. The image has been altered. In the foreground is a Robin Hood figure, seen from behind, holding a bow, a quiver of arrows on his back. Behind the little girl is the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' An arrow vibrates dead-center in the eye. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en -- Lee Haywood (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/leehaywood/4659575229/ CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
A black and white photo of an old one-room schoolhouse, seen from the back of the classroom. A teacher sits behind a desk and a US flag at the front of the class. Beside her, a small girl stands, reading aloud from a book. The image has been altered. In the foreground is a Robin Hood figure, seen from behind, holding a bow, a quiver of arrows on his back. Behind the little girl is the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' An arrow vibrates dead-center in the eye. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en -- Lee Haywood (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/leehaywood/4659575229/ CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
Poligofsky 🇨🇦
@8r3n7@mstdn.ca replied  ·  activity timestamp 6 days ago
@pluralistic

If some measures become targets, then some targets were formerly measures.

Money (net worth) has become a target. Was/is money also a measure?

Is the “measure everything” mentality used inappropriately, like the proverbial hammer? Is this one of those bad side effects of the corrupted “rationalism” that has haunted the IYIs since the enlightenment—as John Ralston Saul argued, in Voltaire’s Bastards? (“IYI”: Intellectual Yet Idiot, Taleb’s term.)

Once someone learns how to use a tool, they always want to use it everywhere, even if it’s ill-suited. That’s a fundamental characteristic of the human psyche. It’s efficient, except when it’s not

It takes a kind of meta-cognition to recognize the pitfalls of this behaviour. A sort of self-awareness that is usually only acquired by failure and self-reflection. Not a thing common to bros, especially young cis-het tech bros, who believe that the world belongs to them.
Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic@mamot.fr replied  ·  activity timestamp 7 days ago
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Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic@mamot.fr replied  ·  activity timestamp 7 days ago
Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic@mamot.fr replied  ·  activity timestamp 7 days ago