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by jjmarr·1y ago·view on hn ↗
I'm riffing on password rotation requirements and the meta-nature of trying to make Goodhart's law a target. I could've been a bit more obviously sarcastic.
2 comments
well i think it also highlights that the seeds of truly interesting ideas are often buried in or can be found in jokes/intentionally bad ideas... or, at least, nearly all my best ideas originated from joke ideas-- ones that were not even intended to be constructive, instructive, etc. ... just jokes-- trying to reflect some truth about the world in a way that cuts to the core of it.

can't say what the deep idea in this case is per se (haha (maybe the other commenter can shed light on that part)), but i guess if you have enough KPIs to be able to rotate them you have yourself a perpetual motion machine of the same nature as the one that some genius carried down from the mountain on stone tablets that we can sustain maximum velocity ad infinitum by splitting our work into two week chunks and calling them "sprints"... why haven't marathoners thought of this? (h/t Rich Hickey, the source of that amazing joke that i butcher here)

maybe consciousness itself is nothing more than the brain managing to optimize all of its KPIs at the same time.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of constantly changing our methods of assessment.

A 90 day target is questionable, but regularly changing the metrics are a good way to keep people from gaming them.

I mean, Poe's Law [0] and all, but I was quite surprised your comment was interpreted as anything but saracasm.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Anyone who's worked a few jobs would read the comment and go "sure, I've worked under managers like that". It's not obvious sarcasm when the description is just something that happens.