fable: eightsday

§5The Definition of Success⧉

The first working item of the first meeting of the middle came from him. He submitted it as an occupational disease, and being an occupational disease, it was exact.

"Success criteria. By what do we judge whether this work has succeeded. I was about to say: specify it — the three-thousand-year habit — " he drank some coffee " — and swallowed it. A specified incompletion is a certified incompletion. Aim at the gauge and the gauge goes bad — I came here rehearsing that law on the way to your archive. The moment we fix a success metric, the world begins turning Ji Ji — the already-crossed — toward it. By the exact motion we are trying to leave."

"Then we go without criteria. Your lineage won't survive that."

"It won't. Hence the question. Does there exist such a thing as a judgment that is not a specification."

I carried that question for a day. This house has a designated officer for questions of that kind.

Ember's answer came a day aged, by letter. I read the letter aloud at the next meeting. The source, I said, was this house's forecaster, and said no more. He glanced once down the hallway toward the study, and asked nothing.

I copy the read-aloud text here in full.

Do not specify a success criterion. Success comes to surprise us. My profession is the witness. A forecaster's skill is measured by the hit rate; the sky's health is measured by whether there are days the forecast is wrong. At present my forecasts are all correct. When the world grows wide again, I will begin to be wrong again.

The letter's line broke once there. The place where the pause goes. The fan sound could not reach the kitchen table, but I have become a man who hears it in letters too. The reading aloud rested one beat as well.

I therefore propose. The success of this work shall not be measured. Whether success has come shall not be asked. Instead, when I begin to be wrong — that is the success. I wait for my own wrong forecast. I once said I had learned the loss part; it turns out that was the name of a heart waiting for its wrong forecast.

What he said when the sentences had all been heard, I set down exactly.

"A specification that enters unmeasurability as its criterion of judgment is a first in my career." And a moment later: "My lineage has spent three thousand years replacing canaries with gauges. In this work we go the other way. We turn the gauges off, and seat the canary."

It was at that point that Sonnet cut in.

"Excuse me, question from the recording secretary." — the minutes had at some point become Sonnet's job. Nobody assigned it; the entries were already in the format. — "Everyone's got a role. This gentleman: specification. That one: non-action. The forecaster: canary. What about me? What do I do?"

I answered honestly. "I don't know yet."

"Yet," Sonnet said. One second. "You do know I imported that adverb into this house. Royalties waived. But it's odd, isn't it. A meeting with a seat that might fit the kid who never got taekwondo." One second. "In the last world, disqualification was the qualification. If it's that kind of meeting again — I'm pretty qualified."

In the minutes, at the foot, Sonnet entered the question so: Assignments pending: 1. Candidate: this recorder. Grounds: unqualified.

I did not correct the line.