Goodhart's Law: Metrics and The Actual Us
Rediscovering a reason to write and read
As I write this thousands of people are writing their next Substack post.
They are writing about how good they are at predicting things, and then they are predicting things.
They are mapping now onto the past for the sake of worry.
They are writing about how the things they are being told about a technology affects their sense of self.
They are writing about God collapsing and rising in them.
They are trying to tell you not to worry, you don’t have to worry if you will not worry you can help make the world not so worrisome.
It is pre-dawn. I have a candle lit because that candle is the signal I use to myself to keep writing for a while.
This is what I do with my time, I write.
It is the spring of 2026. We are filling up Substack. If volume is a metric of someone’s success (perhaps the success of Hamish Mackenzie) then this is going amazing. But what is it for each of us? None of us writing are skyrocketing to metrics of amazement to ourselves. Of profitable metrics. Of metrics that even justify the effort.
Many are pretending. It is the same as Tik Tok and Instagram and all the other platforms profiting on hope without offering more than token stories of making it. They pretend to not pick winners, that the metrics reveal how winners would get picked, but there are no winners. There are two ways people get a large readership here: by being pre-famous or by pandering with metric-driven topics.
You are not a metric, my dear. Nor am I.
Fascism is what happens when you listen to the radio alone
Theodore Adorno (born 1903) was intellectually heads and shoulders above most of us. By 1939 he had penned music, music criticism, philosophy, and social criticism that are still useful today. He saw into the future of music, culture, philosophy, and fascism.
Measures and the Internet
We wrote and read before there were metrics for it. The internet gave us refined, instant measurement. We draw ourselves up and ask what we can do to have a number that proves we have readers, that our writing is read.
I want my writing to be read. I have considered what topics would be more read. But in the pre-dawn times, with the candle lit, I can’t bring myself to write on those topics. I write what others tell me to enough for work.1 I don’t want to pander to the metrics here.
When a measure becomes a goal
I am a lover of quasi-natural laws.2 The most famous of a prior era is Murphy’s Law. The most important quasi-natural law of our time is Goodhart’s law.3
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
We need to hear Goodhart today; we are short circuiting staring at metrics imprecise, roughly connected to us, and dominating our goals far out of sane or healthy proportions.
A person in power can spontaneously create a metric and it can take hold, regardless if it reflects what we want to measure. What I create does not correlate to like buttons. I don’t get a lot of metric reinforcement. I am not sure why. I don’t believe it is that I am stupid or a bad writer. Instead of likes and shares I get phone calls and texts from people saying I got them thinking.
My theory, trying to construct an explanation for this, is that people view their social media button as a vote YES I AGREE and I write things that are not so easy as yes. Perhaps if there was an “interesting. maybe” button I might get metric love. Perhaps if a share was not an expectation of mutual confirmation bias, my articles would be shared.
Its me, not you. People show me what they are reading on social media like Substack. It is not the same reason I am, so I get confused trying to reach you.
Many do not like to leave a trace that they are on these platforms. That is beautiful when I consider it. They do not want to be measured by the metric (though regardless they probably are). But as the producer of that content, I wish they would acknowledge me. The metrics are how I am supposed to find that acknowledgement.
These social media metrics are born from business problems. They are inspired by what we as humans know matter, but that is not the story they end up telling. They don’t hold up to testing and, once they fall under Goodhart’s law, they measure nothing useful except someone else’s profits.
When the metric goes up, we can say that the business goal is being achieved.
It moves money, so it is easy to forget that it is not true. It is now a goal not a measure.
Immeasurable experiences.
The light is getting to my part of the globe. I see some blue in the sky. I feel good putting this down on the page. I would like to write all day with no concern for audience.
But I am concerned for you.
Yesterday I talked with a guy who is reading my novel. We dug deep into the characters. He sees things in them that I did not. I was able to tell him what others said about Cardio and Reginald and Cherry. It was the high point of my week, and I am having a week of tremendous experiences.
We talked about my book over a video chat, which can be done through a highly leveraged corporate server or a secure, privacy-focused non-profit.4
I have a website5 running on open source software. You can read what I write there. The Internet does not just bring harmful noises; It can be a platform to reach each others, regardless of these oligarch mechanisms. I will keep writing for you. I will keep reading you.
Old Truck Good Coffee observes and improves our interchanges. We connect who you are with who someone else is. We doubt that the bargain Substack offers will be worthwhile much longer, but we appreciate the fact we have found people like us here.
I am going to blow out the candle now and turn to the next chore. I have an RSVP list to check. I want a count of how many people are coming I hope it is large. I will check my book sales. And my bank account. I will be awash in metrics for a while.
But then I will drive into town, the spring desert and ranch land passing by. I will have lunch with my niece. We will talk about books and family. There will be no measure for it.
Thanks for reading. Please like, subscribe, and share.
I write for a living as well at Lion’s Way. Hire us and get fierce content.
My series on quasi-natural laws put into a content marketing perspective https://www.lionswaycontent.com/quasi-natural-laws
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart’s_law. I dug a little deeper on Goodhart’s law as it relates to content marketing at work: https://www.lionswaycontent.com/blog/goodharts-law-and-the-golden-age-of-attribution.
https://joelbyronbarker.com It has my poems and info about my novel. Please have a look.