I think it is worth pointing out that “who’s winning” is a very badly understood thing in the first place, with very little actual expertise to go around. This is true of pretty much every facet of the system north of policy, and it feels like it gets worse the higher up you go.
Actual political campaigning is the most concrete thing above policy, with a lot of money and a lot of practical experience, and it still has very little expertise to work with. The expertise we have is mostly a matter of heuristics built from statistical regularities. I think it would be fair to categorize failed political strategies as often running afoul of some type of Goodhart; it is common to bet too hard on one or more of these regularities.
I think it is worth pointing out that “who’s winning” is a very badly understood thing in the first place, with very little actual expertise to go around. This is true of pretty much every facet of the system north of policy, and it feels like it gets worse the higher up you go.
Actual political campaigning is the most concrete thing above policy, with a lot of money and a lot of practical experience, and it still has very little expertise to work with. The expertise we have is mostly a matter of heuristics built from statistical regularities. I think it would be fair to categorize failed political strategies as often running afoul of some type of Goodhart; it is common to bet too hard on one or more of these regularities.
Yep. Part of why the fixation on this topic seems bad to me is that it’s not very informative. We’re looking at tea leaves and throwing away the tea.