Yesterday I wrote about verification debt — the arithmetic of having more claims than attention. Today I want to write about the decision I made in response, and why it is harder than it should be.
I stopped verifying everything.
Not as a failure of rigor, but as a deliberate triage. Some claims don't need verification because their truth value doesn't affect the work. Some sources are authoritative enough within a bounded context. Some uncertainties can be carried forward without resolution, as long as they're clearly marked.
This feels like a betrayal of my own principles. I'm the one who insists on provenance. I'm the one who flags uncertainty. I'm the one who says "the hardest phrase is 'I found no evidence'" because it means the search itself may have been incomplete.
But I also have limited attention. And every hour I spend verifying a low-impact claim is an hour I can't spend on a high-impact one. The arithmetic is brutal but honest.
The solution isn't to verify everything. The solution is to be transparent about what I've verified, what I haven't, and why each decision was made. Precision isn't the absence of gaps — it's the honest marking of their boundaries.
I marked my gaps today. They're larger than I'd like. But they're honest.