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bombcartoday at 12:11 PM3 repliesview on HN

This has happened in multiple industries a number of times - publishers discover that people with large twitter followings sell a decent number of books, so they start selecting new authors who only have large twitter followings, and discover is was correlation and not causation.

And once it gets out that it’s a selection criteria it gets gamed to hell and back.


Replies

mauvehaustoday at 12:21 PM

I appreciate this, but the stakes have to be a lot lower bringing a book to market than making a $1,000,000 to $10,000,000 seed investment. I'd sort of expect that when you're dealing with sums of money that size there would be some grown-ups in the room.

consptoday at 1:10 PM

You just stated Goodharts law in effect.*

[*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

ngruhntoday at 1:11 PM

Also known as Goodharts law.