Society · Coordination
CounterfactualCurve
The value of options kept viable but never used, visible as the departure of a well-run project from the superficially most efficient path
Definition
Mechanism
Humans tend to treat options not taken as wasted effort. But being able to say 'if X had happened, I could have done Y' is worth something, and keeping options viable and their activation cost low changes the work actually done: the chosen path departs from the one that would be most efficient if everything went as expected. That departure is the counterfactual curve. A VectorOptionTimeline makes it visible and so lets it be judged: a project is well run if it kept the salient options alive and considered at each decision point, even if only a small share of them were ever activated, much as a squash player who holds the centre of the court has paid for shots they never need to reach.
Invariants
- Unused options have value if they were viable and cheap to activate
- Keeping options viable makes the chosen path less efficient than a perfect-foresight path
- Project quality is judged partly by the options kept alive, not only by those used
Risks
Failure modes
Judging a project only against the perfect-foresight path and calling preparedness waste
Keeping options nominally alive while their activation cost rises too high to use
Counting every imaginable alternative as an option, rather than the salient, viable ones
Relationships
Builds on
References
A project plan that records live options, their decision points and activation costs, and updates their value as the project proceeds, instead of a fixed sequence of tasks
Nothing in this library builds on this pattern yet.