taw comments on The Importance of Goodhart's Law - Less Wrong

75 Post author: blogospheroid 13 March 2010 08:19AM

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Comment author: gwern 14 March 2010 02:11:39AM 8 points [-]

Soviet Union did ok with other metrics like access to clean water, electricity etc.; life expectancy, child mortality, and pretty much everything else you can think of.

Is that really true?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Soviet_Union#Statistics

By the numbers, Russia fell off a cliff when the USSR dissolved; I've always wondered how much of that was genuinely due to transition troubles, kleptocracy etc. and how much was just poor USSR performance finally showing up in the statistics.

Comment author: taw 14 March 2010 08:44:34AM 3 points [-]

It was genuinely due to transition troubles. Many former Communist countries did reasonably well in transition - usually those that were close enough to the west that they could switch their trade patterns effectively and not be caught up in the mess; and you really have no way to fake life expectancy and such - which suffered a lot in the most transition-affected countries like Russia.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 14 March 2010 07:34:06PM 14 points [-]

citation needed

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