##  [Goodhart's Law](/goodharts-law) 

  ##  [Goodhart's Law](https://engineering.quantumdictionary.io/goodharts-law-0) 

  

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**Engineering & Applied Technologies Dictionary**

 







 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

Definition

An observational principle that when a quantitative measure is turned into a target for optimization, agents or the system adapt in ways that degrade the measure’s reliability as an indicator of the underlying objective; the measure therefore becomes a less accurate proxy for the intended performance.