Comment by mlsu

This reminds me of something that appeared on hacker news a couple days ago:

https://sohl-dickstein.github.io/2022/11/06/strong-Goodhart....

Basically, the proxy objective is "getting into YC" -- the real objective is producing value of course.

We've started optimizing for the proxy. Which produces outcomes like this, where YC is a Thing You Do, after Graduating From Stanford, and before Becoming a YC Alum.