Clarity Under Pressure
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All models are wrong, but some are useful.

George E. P. BoxStatistics for Experimenters, 1978

Read the quote as instruction, not as comfort. In a post-incident debrief where the organization wants closure, the word useful is where the cost hides. If you miss it, you will pay it later.

In a post-incident debrief where the organization wants closure, good engineers will do what the system rewards. You see it in a design decision that is legible today and costly tomorrow, and you can’t fix it with reminders. A clean stop line prevents optimism from keeping a failing bet alive long after the evidence turns.

George E. P. Box is a reminder to keep it concrete. Name the signal that ends the attempt and the action you will take when it appears. Do not hide the cost in prose.

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