[kindkang2024]

Nice to know the name for this — Goodhart's Law. And I think the core reason is that the cost to fake these metrics is far less than what they claim to represent. Stars, reviews, ratings, trading volumes — all cheap to manufacture, and only getting cheaper with AI.

I've been thinking about this a lot. These metrics are all just marketing signals to draw people's attention, trying to make some kind of deals. So the fix should be: make the cost of the signal match what it claims to represent. I'm obsessed with something called DUKI /djuːki/ (Decentralized Universal Kindness Income, a form of UBI) — the idea is that instead of stars or reviews, trust comes from deals pledging real money to the world for all as the deal happens. You can't fake that cheaply.

So the metric becomes the money itself — if you fake X amount, it costs you X, and the world will thank you by paying attention...

Imagine if GitHub let you back a star with real money — the more you put in, the more credible the star. And that money goes out as UBI for everyone. For attention makers, star anything you want, as much as you want. For attention takers, just follow the money to filter through all the noise that's so easy to manipulate...

[utopiah]

> make the cost of the signal match what it claims to represent.

Well that's the WHOLE problem of trust. There is so much work on blockchain in proof of work, proof of stake, etc in order to protect ourselves from attacks, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack

If you do find a way it would apply to a lot more than "just" GitHub star for VCs.

[kindkang2024]

> Well that's the WHOLE problem of trust.

Great point. It all comes down to trust.

Some are masters at setting attention traps. They manipulate all these cheap metrics that normal people naturally pay attention to, confusing potential deal parties, serving self-interest while increasing risk and causing harm to the other side.

> It would apply to a lot more than "just" GitHub star for VCs

Yes. It would apply to a lot more than "just" GitHub stars for VCs — even more so if the 'interactions' are naturally deal-based.

Imagine a metric for proof of work named DUKI-ALM. If you give away $100 to the world, you gain 100 DUKI-ALM — absolutely equal to the cost.

Think of it as tips contributed jointly by the taker and maker of a deal, paid out to the world. The DUKI-ALM signal is the sum of all tips. They tipped $10? The metric value is 10.

Products that have the ability to make more deals and generate more surplus will naturally contribute more — and gain more signal of trust. Sybil attacks are prevented by design, since what's the point of attacking if you still need to tip the world 100 USDT to gain 100?

I'd love to hear if you see a hole in this — the cost of the signal matches exactly what it claims to represent.