Dec 5, 2025 · 48 min · 12 segments
Earlier today, we joined in announcing the Resonant Computing Manifesto: a call for restoring a culture of technology that empowers users and enriches their lives. The manifesto was created by a group…
Alex KomoroskeGuest
Mike MasnickHost
For many, many years, I called out the fact that in almost every academic study or even governmental study that looks at rates of innovation, the proxy that they use for innovation is number of patents.
And I've pointed out, I don't think that patents necessarily correlate all that closely with innovation.
And you get situations where then people are just rushing out anything that they can patent.
in reality can actually hold back innovation because you have patent trolls and you have other things that sort of limit innovation and growth.
And, you know, you just sort of have this realization that it's like, as soon as you put a number on something, it, you know, then you automatically start optimizing for it.
And it is once you start optimizing for a metric, it ceases to measure the thing you care about.
And the intuition is every metric has to be a simplification of the real messy world of reality.
And now there's dimensions that are kind of go against what you care about, but are not captured in the metric.
And if all you're measuring is this metric, all the other dimensions won't be optimized for.
And the easiest way typically is to trade off some other thing that's invisible to you to get this benefit.
And so it fundamentally emerges basically everywhere when there's a timescale mismatch of the principals and agents and when there is any kind of swarm.
Because you say all the members of the swarm, all the individuals who are optimizing go, well, if I don't turn this knob, that person is.
For many, many years, I called out the fact that in almost every academic study or even governmental study that looks at rates of innovation, the proxy that they use for innovation is number of patents.
And I've pointed out, I don't think that patents necessarily correlate all that closely with innovation.
And you get situations where then people are just rushing out anything that they can patent.
in reality can actually hold back innovation because you have patent trolls and you have other things that sort of limit innovation and growth.
And, you know, you just sort of have this realization that it's like, as soon as you put a number on something, it, you know, then you automatically start optimizing for it.
And it is once you start optimizing for a metric, it ceases to measure the thing you care about.
And the intuition is every metric has to be a simplification of the real messy world of reality.
And now there's dimensions that are kind of go against what you care about, but are not captured in the metric.
And if all you're measuring is this metric, all the other dimensions won't be optimized for.
And the easiest way typically is to trade off some other thing that's invisible to you to get this benefit.
And so it fundamentally emerges basically everywhere when there's a timescale mismatch of the principals and agents and when there is any kind of swarm.
Because you say all the members of the swarm, all the individuals who are optimizing go, well, if I don't turn this knob, that person is.
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