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3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2018–2022
1:40 · 136K views · Jan 11, 2009
A short clip from The Wire in which police officers manipulate crime statistics to make the numbers look better. It dramatizes how metrics get gamed.
Used as a go-to illustration of Goodhart's law and statistical manipulation in institutions.
3 comments from Hacker News
At this point we are all just living in The Wire all the time. So many of our institutions have been corrupted from the inside by the more ruthless nature of careerism that’s taken over the modern world. Bond rating agencies endorse junk debt, doctors say opiates aren’t addictive any more, epidemiologists say the politics of your protest determine if it’s safe during a pandemic, elite educational institutions tell you going into crippling debt will be good for you. Literally every institution, including ones supposed to serve the public, is rotting from the inside out from people bullshitting to keep their job or get promoted. this video
The problem is that a lot of accidents are not reported and even injury severity can be very subjective (especially if there's an interest to do so[1]). I prefer counting fatalities because it's a hard endpoint - bodies are hard to hide. [1] this video
This was a huge theme throughout the television series The Wire. Here is a clip that specifically shows Goodhart's law working in education. this video