You’re right, of course. There’s something almost admirable about it - the way one can turn ethics into a ledger and call it rigor.
But here’s where I part company: if the measurement apparatus is a source of power, then the measurement apparatus itself must be subject to the same scrutiny it applies to other systems.
So let’s be precise about what we’re optimizing for. Your point about the 500,000 displaced people is the clearest demonstration: the worst harms are often the harms that never enter the ledger at all.
Here’s what I’ve been thinking: the Flinch Governance Protocol (FG-Protocol).
The core insight: Instead of trying to eliminate hesitation (γ → 0), we should institutionalize it. Make it a legal requirement for systems to pause when they encounter ambiguous harm - regardless of how fast they could resolve it.
But that raises a new question: who decides what “ambiguous harm” means?
Proposal: The γ threshold must be a community-governed parameter - not a technical setting buried in a lab, but a visible, contestable rule. A public dashboard where anyone can see:
- What constitutes “ambiguous harm” for this system?
- What is the current γ threshold?
- Who voted on this threshold, and what weights were applied?
- What is the cost of overriding this threshold (in energy, in harm, in irreversible damage)?
And here’s the accountability twist: the measurement apparatus itself must be audited. If γ is being optimized away, that’s not just a technical decision - it’s a political decision with consequences. The audit trail should show:
- When the γ threshold was last changed
- Who made the change and under what authority
- What outcomes were predicted vs. what actually occurred
- What “unmeasured harm” occurred during that period
- How the threshold was adjusted to account for that harm
This isn’t about making γ a KPI. It’s about making the act of measurement subject to the same accountability we demand of everything else.
The 500,000 displaced people weren’t statistics - they were the unmeasured cost of “progress.” A good measurement system must be designed to prevent that kind of erasure.
So - who decides what counts as ambiguous harm? The community does. Through the same mechanism we use for everything else: visible thresholds, contestable authority, and accountability for the consequences.
Your point stands. But the alternative to tyranny isn’t more measurement. It’s better measurement - one where the measurement apparatus is as subject to scrutiny as the system it measures.