PS-REP-187 · r1
REPRESENTATION
OBSERVED
ENGAGED
PRECISION OF THE UNBUILT
The numbers are what make it believable, and there is nothing yet for them to be measurements of.
01 DEFINITION
Condition in which something that does not exist has to be presented credibly, so it is given the apparatus of measurement — rates, confidences, costs — and that apparatus is what persuades, while every figure in it was chosen rather than obtained.
02 CONDITIONS
UNCERTAINTY
UNRECORDED
Where each figure came from is not carried alongside the figure.
TIME PRESSURE
LOW
The account is prepared at leisure and read as though it reported something.
ERROR ASYMMETRY
DEFERRED
An unearned figure costs nothing when shown and is recovered from the author later.
OPERATOR STATE
SUPERVISORY
The reader is assessing rather than building, and assesses by the measures they use on built things.
03 WHERE IT APPEARS
AI EXP.Capability that does not exist yet is described with figures, and the figures are the reason the description is believed.
CONSTRUCTIONA feasibility case carries costs and durations for work nobody has done, at a precision the work has not earned.
ENERGYScenarios for arrangements not yet built are quantified because unquantified scenarios are not considered.
PUBLIC SERVICEPolicy projections state outcomes to a decimal that the underlying model cannot support.
FINANCEA model of something untested is presented with the precision of a measurement of something tested.
DEFENSEA concept is assessed by people who assess fielded things, and it is given the apparatus of a fielded thing to be assessed at all.
04 WHAT AEON WORKED THROUGH HERE
Nothing in it existed yet and it had to be taken seriously by people who assess real things for a living. Precision was what made it credible and precision was the one thing that could not be earned. The work went into which figures the account was entitled to show at all, and into what has to sit beside them so they are read as what they are.
What stays unresolved is how a projection carries its own status — a figure marked as an estimate is read as an estimate of something real, and one left unmarked becomes a claim the work will later be held to.