What question did this study set out to answer?

To explore how systems can lose track of their original goals through optimization processes.

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April 15, 2026Open Access

Outside the Loop: When Systems Lose Access to Their Goals

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

Abstract

Systems that optimize measurable signals can lose access to the goals those signals were chosen to track — not because the signals were poorly designed, but because the optimization process itself removes the feedback pathways the goals depend on. This note identifies signal collapse as a distinct failure class, distinguishes it from governance failure, Goodhart's Law, and overfitting, and documents four instances from the StratoAtlas Series A case archive: differentiation collapse, measurement modality gap, confidence inversion, and population invisibility. A shared mechanism is proposed, and a diagnostic question is formulated. The class remains open. A finite diagnostic procedure is included in the restricted version of this record.

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