Take your illustrative story. I’d say the problem here is not that the person is trying to focus on the narrow area of increasing productivity. It’s that they picked a bad metric and a bad way of continual measuring themselves against the metric. The story just kind of glosses over what I would say is the most important part!
I’d say that 65%-75% of the problem this person has is that they apparently didn’t seriously think about this stuff before hand and pre-commit to a good strategy for measurement.
The person who looks and says “I only wrote 100 words last hour?!??!” kind of reminds me of the investor checking their stock prices every day.
For this person three months or six months or a year might be a better time frame for checking how they’re doing. Regardless, the main point I want to make is that how well this person would be able to improve themselves in this area while maintaining their well being is largely dependent upon making good decisions on this very important question.
This is one of the weird issues with what I see as the problem I’m trying to illustrate with the story and the limitations of telling a single story about it.
What you say is true, but it’s a reduction of the problem to be less bad by applying weaker optimization pressure rather than an actual elimination of the problem. Weak Goodharting is still Goodharting and it will still, eventually, subtly screw you up.
This post is also advice, and so aimed mostly at folks less like you and more like the kind of person who doesn’t realize they’re actively making their life worse rather than better by trying too hard.
What you say is true, but it’s a reduction of the problem to be less bad by applying weaker optimization pressure rather than an actual elimination of the problem. Weak Goodharting is still Goodharting and it will still, eventually, subtly screw you up.
I think all self improvement is subject to Goodharting, even the type you recommend.
The best things available to us to do about that:
Be nimble and self-aware. Adjust your processes to notice when you’re harming yourself.
Be thoughtful in how you measure success.
I do not think this is actually a contradiction to your post, but, at least for me, it seems like a more actionable framing of the issue.
I think all self improvement is subject to Goodharting, even the type you recommend.
In particular, I’d worry that “not Goodharting yourself” is Goodharting yourself. Dunno that I have this very coherently, but things that feel like hooks:
Selling nonapples.
Don’t try to “get better at rationality”; rationality needs to have a goal outside itself.
“How are you doing at your goals?” “Well, I stopped measuring things that weren’t perfect metrics for them.”
This is one of the weird issues with what I see as the problem I’m trying to illustrate with the story and the limitations of telling a single story about it.
What you say is true, but it’s a reduction of the problem to be less bad by applying weaker optimization pressure rather than an actual elimination of the problem. Weak Goodharting is still Goodharting and it will still, eventually, subtly screw you up.
This post is also advice, and so aimed mostly at folks less like you and more like the kind of person who doesn’t realize they’re actively making their life worse rather than better by trying too hard.
I think all self improvement is subject to Goodharting, even the type you recommend.
The best things available to us to do about that:
Be nimble and self-aware. Adjust your processes to notice when you’re harming yourself.
Be thoughtful in how you measure success.
I do not think this is actually a contradiction to your post, but, at least for me, it seems like a more actionable framing of the issue.
In particular, I’d worry that “not Goodharting yourself” is Goodharting yourself. Dunno that I have this very coherently, but things that feel like hooks:
Selling nonapples.
Don’t try to “get better at rationality”; rationality needs to have a goal outside itself.
“How are you doing at your goals?” “Well, I stopped measuring things that weren’t perfect metrics for them.”