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by cortesoft 546 days ago
The Cobra Effect is an example of a Perverse Incentive, which is where an attempt to incentivize a behavior ends up incentivizing the opposite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive

I think most of the examples fit this, but a few don't.

1 comments

This also sounds similar to Goodhart's Law which states that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

I do think the two phenomenon are related... they both are caused when people fail to take into account the knock on effect of their actions