Cobra Effect
Properties
- logseq-entity
- Logseq/Entity/Named Law
Cobra Effect
- Statement: an incentive meant to solve a problem makes it worse, because people optimize for the reward in unintended ways.
- Origin: colonial India—a bounty on dead cobras led people to breed cobras for the reward; when the bounty ended, the breeders released their now-worthless snakes, worsening the infestation.
- Kind: named effect (perverse incentive).
- Example: paying for dead cobras leads people to breed cobras.
See also
- Goodhart's Law, Campbell's Law — related failures of optimizing for a proxy.
- Epistemics/Concept/Heuristic vs Axiom