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Every system that selects does so through a filter: natural selection, hiring pipelines, recommendation algorithms, peer review. The filter can only evaluate what it can measure — a proxy for the real trait it wants.
When the proxy correlates well with the real trait (good focus), the filter works. When the proxy drifts — when a resume keyword stands in for competence, when a click stands in for understanding, when citation count stands in for insight — the filter optimizes the proxy and ignores the thing itself.
The filter then scores the wrong thing. It passes candidates that match the form but lack the substance. It keeps noise and discards signal. The system fills with what looks right but nothing that is right.
Real filters that broke: Google Flu Trends (search volume as a flu proxy that failed), college admissions (test scores as an intelligence proxy that collapsed during COVID), and content moderation algorithms (engagement as a quality proxy that amplifies outrage).