Source · last reconsidered September 17, 2026
Lost Purposes
An essay on how organizations keep measuring and rewarding intermediate steps after the goal they served is gone.
- Areas
- AppearancesSkill
Yudkowsky, Eliezer. "Lost Purposes." LessWrong, November 25, 2007.
Article · LessWrong · 2007 · Accessed September 17, 2026
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sP2Hg6uPwpfp3jZJN/lost-purposes
Interpretation
Its examples — production quotas, teaching to the test, significance thresholds — cover the same ground as Strathern and Scott without citing either.
Provenance
is the origin of
- Long chains of delegation lose the purposePosition
The quoted passage and the argument around it (paragraph beginning “A single human mind can track”).
related to
- Eliezer YudkowskyPerson
Eliezer Yudkowsky is an author of the piece.