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April 15, 20260 citationsOpen Access

Understanding Signal Collapse in Goal-Optimizing Systems

Outside the Loop: When Systems Lose Access to Their Goals

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Authors

RKRoman Kir

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Overview

Analysis identifies signal collapse as a key failure mode in goal-optimizing systems, implying significant impacts on feedback.

Key Points

  • To explore how systems can lose track of their original goals through optimization processes.
  • Identified signal collapse as a distinct failure class
  • Distinguished it from related concepts like governance failure and Goodhart's Law
  • Documented four cases from the StratoAtlas Series A archive
  • Proposed a shared mechanism for these failures
  • Defined distinct categories of signal collapse, including differentiation collapse and measurement modality gap
  • Proposed a diagnostic question to assess potential failures
  • Revealed how optimization can inadvertently sever feedback pathways essential for maintaining goals
  • Examined four real-world instances where these failures occurred

Cite This Study

Roman Kir (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/69df2cf7e4eeef8a2a6b210ahttps://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19552020
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