The McNamara fallacy is often considered in the context of the Vietnam War, in which enemy body counts were taken to be a precise and objective measure of success. War was reduced to a mathematical model: By increasing estimated enemy deaths and minimizing one's own, victory was assured.

— wiki

• often brought up in anti-tech, anti-automation points, I think ❐ The Glass Cage is an example

• measuring-learning-progress

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.

— Goodhart's Law (common form; literal Goodhart quote)

If you do not know how to measure a phenomenon, you can always begin, by way of introduction, with an arbitrary qualitative scale

— ❐ Light and Color in the Outdoors

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

— William Bruce Cameron