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RE: (IJCH) "Campbell's Law" (or How rewards and metrics lead to the "Gaming" of any system)

in #blog6 years ago

Gaming the system has become an American past-time. Everyone wants to get over. State the rules and immediately people start thinking of creative ways to get around them. Some of them want to outright break the rules, some just want to bend the rules a little. Many will simply say the language was "vague" or can be interpreted in several ways.

This reminds me of the old joke told about W.C. Fields. He was allegedly reading a Bible one day and someone asked him why. He reportedly said he was looking for loopholes.

I don't think we need an overrated psychologist to tell us that gaming any system is easy if you just state the rules. We see it every day. People do it. They've been doing it throughout the history. But the only system, it seems, that can't be gamed is nature itself. Try defying the Law of Gravity and see where that gets you.