Somewhere Charles Goodhart is sitting at a pub nursing a pint and smiling quietly.
I wrote something similar: "We are choosing convenience over cognition and calling it progress...When you train yourself to press the button instead of doing the work, you eventually press the wrong button." More: https://www.whitenoise.email/p/lost-in-truncation
This is a welcome antidote to the OpenClaw insanity and the AI hype machine. The flip side of this insanity of fake numbers going up is real numbers going down.
From today’s WSJ:
The Dow Jones Transportation Average, which has surged to records lately, is down more than 5% and on track for its worst day since last April when President Trump unleashed his barrage of tariffs. All 20 components of the index, which includes airlines, railroads and freight firms, are trading lower. The hardest hit shares belong to logistics firms C.H. Robinson Worldwide and Landstar System, down 21% and 18%, respectively, in midday trading.
The sell-off appears to have been sparked by a news release from a Florida firm called Algorhythm Holdings, which said its SemiCab unit had boosted customers' freight volumes more than 300% "without a corresponding increase in operational headcount."
Prior to August, the company's main business was selling karaoke machines, according to securities filings. It said it sold the karaoke business in August and changed its name to Algorhythm, from The Singing Machine Company.
I found your writing via The Information’s rollup this weekend. It’s true we have more tech, tools, and toys than ever. More speed, convenience, and options at our fingertips than any prior generation. In 1670, Pascal wrote a defense of the Christian religion, describing a God-shaped hole in the heart of every man. Can new, more, better technology fill it?
Change is ecological. I’m not convinced we’ve even begun to articulate the other end of the Faustian bargain…
“What gets measured gets done” - for good or for ill
😁
🤓
😇
🫡
### The "Measurement" Quote Evolution
* “What gets measured gets done.”
* Source: Tom Peters (Co-author of In Search of Excellence).
* Context: Used as encouragement for managers to track progress and maintain focus.
* “What gets measured gets managed.”
* Source: V.F. Ridgway (1956).
* Context: Originally a warning about the "dysfunctional consequences" of performance metrics—not a recommendation.
* “To measure is to know.”
* Source: Lord Kelvin (William Thomson).
* Context: The scientific foundation that mathematical precision is the only path to true knowledge.
---
### The Measurement Skeptic’s Hall of Fame
* Peter Drucker: “There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.”
* W. Edwards Deming: “It is a costly myth that if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.”
* Charles Goodhart (Goodhart’s Law): “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
* William Bruce Cameron: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” (Note: Often misattributed to Albert Einstein).
A camera can be both a tool and a tool shaped object, it depends on how it’s used. Just like an LLM.
The author’s point is that the way LLMs are currently used, they are the latter. (No useful output is produced.)
My camera (on my phone) is definitely a tool shaped object. Over the past year, I’ve taken hundreds of photos, which neither me nor anyone else will ever look at.
Somewhere Charles Goodhart is sitting at a pub nursing a pint and smiling quietly.
I wrote something similar: "We are choosing convenience over cognition and calling it progress...When you train yourself to press the button instead of doing the work, you eventually press the wrong button." More: https://www.whitenoise.email/p/lost-in-truncation
This is a welcome antidote to the OpenClaw insanity and the AI hype machine. The flip side of this insanity of fake numbers going up is real numbers going down.
From today’s WSJ:
The Dow Jones Transportation Average, which has surged to records lately, is down more than 5% and on track for its worst day since last April when President Trump unleashed his barrage of tariffs. All 20 components of the index, which includes airlines, railroads and freight firms, are trading lower. The hardest hit shares belong to logistics firms C.H. Robinson Worldwide and Landstar System, down 21% and 18%, respectively, in midday trading.
The sell-off appears to have been sparked by a news release from a Florida firm called Algorhythm Holdings, which said its SemiCab unit had boosted customers' freight volumes more than 300% "without a corresponding increase in operational headcount."
Prior to August, the company's main business was selling karaoke machines, according to securities filings. It said it sold the karaoke business in August and changed its name to Algorhythm, from The Singing Machine Company.
source: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp-500-nasdaq-02-12-2026/card/ai-panic-hits-trucking-transport-stocks-mDnmV0VOWt4X5rl8zmgx
I found your writing via The Information’s rollup this weekend. It’s true we have more tech, tools, and toys than ever. More speed, convenience, and options at our fingertips than any prior generation. In 1670, Pascal wrote a defense of the Christian religion, describing a God-shaped hole in the heart of every man. Can new, more, better technology fill it?
Change is ecological. I’m not convinced we’ve even begun to articulate the other end of the Faustian bargain…
Thanks for articulating so elegantly :)
“What gets measured gets done” - for good or for ill
😁
🤓
😇
🫡
### The "Measurement" Quote Evolution
* “What gets measured gets done.”
* Source: Tom Peters (Co-author of In Search of Excellence).
* Context: Used as encouragement for managers to track progress and maintain focus.
* “What gets measured gets managed.”
* Source: V.F. Ridgway (1956).
* Context: Originally a warning about the "dysfunctional consequences" of performance metrics—not a recommendation.
* “To measure is to know.”
* Source: Lord Kelvin (William Thomson).
* Context: The scientific foundation that mathematical precision is the only path to true knowledge.
---
### The Measurement Skeptic’s Hall of Fame
* Peter Drucker: “There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.”
* W. Edwards Deming: “It is a costly myth that if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.”
* Charles Goodhart (Goodhart’s Law): “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
* William Bruce Cameron: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” (Note: Often misattributed to Albert Einstein).
What’s a camera then. A tool shaped objects?
Your highlight of FarmVille is pretty cheap.
I understand you did not use AI to write this. But it did not make the content better or truer. So what’s the point.
A camera can be both a tool and a tool shaped object, it depends on how it’s used. Just like an LLM.
The author’s point is that the way LLMs are currently used, they are the latter. (No useful output is produced.)
My camera (on my phone) is definitely a tool shaped object. Over the past year, I’ve taken hundreds of photos, which neither me nor anyone else will ever look at.
maybe ‘tool shaped products’ would have conveyed your point more clearly.
in any case, failure to extract value from a tool-shaped-anything is less often an indictment of the tool and more often the user.
your woodworking analogy is apt; we all know what they say about the carpenter who blame his tools.
I'm not sure how much I agree this is happening, but it's a really well thought out warning.