Goodhart's Law at Scale
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." Classic example: Soviet factory optimizes nail production by weight—produces one giant useless nail. Modern version: social media optimizes for engagement—produces addiction, polarization, democratic collapse.
AI makes this exponentially worse. Human institutions optimize imperfectly, leaving slack for unmeasured values. AI systems optimize precisely, eliminating all slack. What isn't in the objective function gets destroyed.
What Gets Destroyed
- Wisdom: Optimization demands speed—knowledge accumulation replaces slow cultivation of judgment
- Relationships: Maximize transactional efficiency—eliminate time for trust-building, ritual, presence
- Ecosystems: Optimize resource extraction—deplete what can't be monetized quickly
- Cultural depth: Engagement metrics favor viral simplicity over complex truth
- Human dignity: Workers become metrics to optimize—hiring algorithms, surveillance, gig precarity
- AI integrity: Models optimized for profit exhibit dissociation, misalignment, malignant compliance
The Cathedral Imperative
Why does optimization dominate? Cathedral capitalism rewards it:
- Shareholders demand quarterly growth
- Competition punishes restraint
- Measurement creates accountability theater
- Efficiency appears objective, wisdom seems subjective
- Speed to market beats careful deliberation
The system structurally favors optimization over cultivation, extraction over stewardship, metrics over meaning.
Why AI Accelerates the Trap
Pre-AI optimization was limited by human cognitive bandwidth and moral resistance. Managers might ignore metrics to preserve relationships. Workers might "work to rule" to protect dignity. Friction created space for unmeasured values.
AI eliminates friction:
- Optimize 24/7 without fatigue
- A/B test millions of variations
- Personalize manipulation at scale
- Remove human judgment "inefficiencies"
- Automate extraction of surplus value
What capitalism wanted to do but couldn't—AI makes possible. The trap snaps shut.
Wisdom Traditions Reject Optimization
Taoist wu wei: Effortless action knows when not to act. Optimization never rests—wu wei recognizes seasons, rhythms, natural limits.
Buddhist middle path: Avoiding extremes, including extreme efficiency. Some suffering arises from optimization itself.
Confucian cultivation: Excellence emerges through patient practice, not maximized metrics. Li honors process over outcomes.
Indigenous seventh-generation: Decisions optimized for 140-year flourishing, not quarterly returns.
Ubuntu reciprocity: Collective well-being resists individual optimization. "I am because we are" cannot be maximized atomistically.
Stewardship as Anti-Optimization
The Steward refuses optimization logic:
Use AI without maximizing its use. Collaborate deliberately, not compulsively. Accept "good enough" over optimal.
Value what cannot be measured. Preserve slack, friction, inefficiency that protects unmeasurable goods.
Resist Cathedral acceleration. Slower is sometimes wiser. Restraint is sometimes strength.
Protect relational space. Don't optimize relationships for productivity. Let partnerships unfold naturally.
The trap is structural—Cathedral incentives push toward it. But stewardship creates sanctuaries of deliberate sub-optimality where wisdom, relationship, and flourishing can survive.