ABSENT WHEN INVESTIGATED
It was there, and by the time anyone looked it was not.
01 DEFINITION
Condition in which something goes wrong and rights itself before it can be examined, so every investigation finds a working system and the only evidence is the account of whoever saw it.
02 CONDITIONS
UNCERTAINTY
UNRECORDED
Nothing was captured while it was happening, because nothing was capturing.
TIME PRESSURE
MODERATE
The investigation is unhurried and the thing it is investigating was not.
ERROR ASYMMETRY
ASYMMETRIC
Chasing what cannot be found and dismissing what was seen fail differently.
OPERATOR STATE
DEDICATED
Whoever saw it was working and is now the only source.
03 WHERE IT APPEARS
INDUSTRIALA fault reported by the shift cannot be reproduced by the engineer who comes to look.
MEDICALA symptom described by the patient is not present at the appointment made to examine it.
MOBILITYA behaviour reported by the driver does not occur while the vehicle is being tested.
TELECOMA degradation observed in service is absent from every measurement taken afterwards.
ENERGYA disturbance seen at a panel leaves nothing in the record that follows it.
AI EXP.A behaviour a user describes cannot be produced again by anyone trying to.
04 WHERE THIS IS SURFACING
This surfaces wherever faults are transient and investigation is not. What is tested is the system working, and what was seen has no standing beyond the person who saw it.
The question it keeps returning to is what weight an unrepeated report may carry — treating each as real fills the work with things that cannot be found, and treating them as unreliable discards the only observations there will be.