漂移原则：为什么系统即使“正常运行”也会变差

I keep noticing a pattern across social platforms, news cycles, UX design, and now AI assistants. At some point the system starts doing exactly what it was built to do, but the experience gets worse. The Drift Principle is my attempt to describe that moment:<p>When a system optimizes faster than it can preserve context, fidelity to reality starts to slip.<p>Examples are everywhere. Social feeds tighten around whatever drives engagement, and the range of content shrinks until everything feels like a remix of itself. Customer support flows become friendlier but less helpful because the metric rewards tone over resolution. Helpful AI assistants become smoother and more cautious while quietly dropping specificity. Even individual users fall into it, once you learn what works, your online behavior slowly converges toward the safest version of yourself.<p>Nothing catastrophic happens. The system still functions. But the texture that made it feel real gradually thins out. You get efficiency without depth, volume without variety. That gap between what the system optimizes for and what humans actually experience is where the drift shows up.<p>Curious how others here think about this pattern, or whether you’ve seen better language for describing it across domains.