A couple of terms that I’ve commented on here recently —
“Delmore effect” (of unclear origin) is the same as the “bikeshed effect” (from open-source software, circa 1999) which was itself a renaming of Parkinson’s “law of triviality” (1957) — meaning that people spend more effort forming (and fighting over) opinions on the less-important parts of a project because they’re easier to understand or lower-stakes.
“Stereotype of the stereotype” (newly coined here on LW last month) is the same as “dead unicorn trope” (from TVTropes) — meaning an idea that people say is an old-fashioned worn-out cliché (a “dead horse” or “stereotype”) but was never actually popular in the first place.
There’s also “Goodhart’s Law” and “Campbell’s Law”, both pointing at the same underlying phenomenon of the distortion of measurement under optimization pressure. Goodhart was writing about British monetary policy, while Campbell was writing about American education policy and “teaching to the test”.
I think “Goodhart” took off around these parts mostly because of the pun. (The policy designers were good-hearted, but the policy ended up Goodharted.)
I’ve seen that in physics vs chemistry vs engineering (I even made a translation guide for some niche topic way back when) but can’t immediately think of good examples related to rationalism or AI alignment.
A couple of terms that I’ve commented on here recently —
“Delmore effect” (of unclear origin) is the same as the “bikeshed effect” (from open-source software, circa 1999) which was itself a renaming of Parkinson’s “law of triviality” (1957) — meaning that people spend more effort forming (and fighting over) opinions on the less-important parts of a project because they’re easier to understand or lower-stakes.
“Stereotype of the stereotype” (newly coined here on LW last month) is the same as “dead unicorn trope” (from TVTropes) — meaning an idea that people say is an old-fashioned worn-out cliché (a “dead horse” or “stereotype”) but was never actually popular in the first place.
There’s also “Goodhart’s Law” and “Campbell’s Law”, both pointing at the same underlying phenomenon of the distortion of measurement under optimization pressure. Goodhart was writing about British monetary policy, while Campbell was writing about American education policy and “teaching to the test”.
I think “Goodhart” took off around these parts mostly because of the pun. (The policy designers were good-hearted, but the policy ended up Goodharted.)