Reality Drift — Mechanisms of Misalignment in Modern Systems
A collection of short papers examining the mechanisms that cause systems to drift from the realities they are meant to represent.
Across AI systems, platforms, and institutions, decisions increasingly become guided by measurable signals. Metrics replace underlying goals, proxies become targets, and optimization begins operating on representations rather than reality.
These papers isolate recurring dynamics such as proxy optimization, metric capture, reward hacking, and goal displacement, showing how systems can remain functional while losing contact with the conditions they were designed to track.
Core Drift Mechanisms
- Why Systems Optimize Metrics Instead of Real Outcomes – Proxy Optimization in Complex Systems [PDF] [IA]
- When Metrics Become Targets – Goodhart’s Law and Metric Gaming
[PDF] [IA] - How AI Systems Exploit Objectives – Reward Hacking and Specification Gaming
[PDF] [IA] - Why Institutions Drift From Their Mission – Goal Displacement and Bureaucratic Drift
[PDF] [IA] - How Algorithms Amplify the Wrong Signals – Signal Distortion in Digital Platforms
[PDF] [IA]
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Core Framework
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Note: This site functions as a lightweight archive and reference layer for the Reality Drift framework. Primary essays and long-form writing are distributed across external platforms.
Part of Reality Drift Framework by A. Jacobs