Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c962IR // #c962Synthesis

Set a metric and the system will hit it perfectly while wrecking everything you didn't measure. It doesn't know what you meant. It knows the number. > “Systems, like the three wishes in the traditional fairy tale, have a terrible tendency to produce exactly and only what you ask them to produce.”

— In our words · Source: Thinking in Systems (Donella H. Meadows)

[Use when]

You're setting any target. Ask what the system will sacrifice to hit it, because it will sacrifice something.

[Why it matters]

Test scores, arrest quotas, click targets. Every perverse outcome was a faithful answer to a careless question.

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